Rick Ross is back in a big way. The rapper released Black Dollar -- his best-received project in some time -- earlier this year, before following it up with a flurry of impressive singles and remixes.
Today, he sat down with Billboard, revealing the cover art for his upcoming LP Black Market, and talking to the publication about the new approach he's taken to his music following his recent house arrest. He also got into the criteria behind selecting his remix material, and why he loves Adele.
Check out some excerpts from the interview below. Read the full story here and check out the artwork (both standard and deluxe) in the gallery.
On the approach to Black Market:
This is gonna be a person to person Rick Ross LP, maybe the first one I recorded this way... You know, a lot of times I love writing in the capacity of groups of people, clubs, visions; rarely is it intimate moments where you're just totally confined to yourself. And I did a lot of writing and I had a lot of time to do that. The music kind of came out that way.
You know, this album is, I feel like, most definitely gonna be a Rozay on a higher, intellectual level, just discussing a different array of things. When you listen to records like "Foreclosure," that's like me sitting in a room by myself just rapping about things that's running across my mind and things that have been bothering me. And during my incarceration, that was the type of music I created. Just in that short moment of time, I really just sat there... I'm a muthafucka that flies six million miles a year and just to halt one day, out of the blue, for three weeks? It's just, "Woah." There's a lot of shit that I wrote and a lot of shit that I thought about. I came back out and scrapped a lot of music and I recorded some dope songs, but my first day home I recorded six records. So that's why I was able to put out the Black Dollar record and have been releasing a slew of freestyles, just feeding the fans and everybody that's been asking for that Rozay music.
On selecting remix material:
It's just whatever I like, or what I'm a fan of. I might ask on Twitter every blue moon, I might ask my fans what they want me to retouch. I asked them that a day or two ago and they told me [Future and Drake's] "Jumpman" and I gave it to them a few hours later.
On his Adele fandom:
I love the Adele single. I'm a huge fan of Adele, her last album, the 21 project, I loved that album. I'm just a fan... I'm reaching out through you guys right now. Adele, I love you, baby. Get at me -- I got a wonderful idea for us. [Laughs] Congratulations on your new music.