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Rick Ross Blames Promoters, Not Gangs, for Canceled Tour

Rick Ross tour cancellation beard threats bawse

Last week, Rick Ross canceled his Maybach Music Group tour as news spread about public threats made against him by various local chapters of the Crips-affiliated Gangster Disciples crew. Due to his use of their founder’s name, Larry Hoover, in his 2010 hit “B.M.F. (Blowin’ Money Fast)” and also of their symbol, the Star of David, on the cover of his recent Black Bar Mitzvah mixtape, the GDs suggested that the Bawse cut them a check. We described it as “gangland copyright infringement,” but as Ross points out in a new interview with Miami rap station 99 JAMZ, there’s another name for it as well: “I consider that extortion.”

Sounding definitively Bawse-like in the chat, Ross shuts down the rumors that his dates were nixed over the menacing YouTube videos, most of which were posted at least a month ago. “I was in Chicago a week and a half ago, that’s the birthplace of the GDs … Y’all Google up, y’all get online. You pull up my footage of being in Chicago when I walked out with that $40,000 black chinchilla, you understand? I told ’em cut the music off, I want ’em just look at me for a little while, ya hear? Look at my beard. Look at the coat. Look how I walk. And that ain’t no disrespect. I’m here to get money … I salute every set.”

The cancellations came, he said, because promoter Shawn Gee (Lil Wayne, Kanye West, Drake) “wasn’t really handling his business.” Ross claims Gee dropped three earlier shows without permission, and that he pulled out of the rest to put Gee in his place: “I just felt like there was some power that I needed to take away from homie, so I canceled the rest of the dates. I just shut it down, and never was it due to any threats.” That said, he offers no explanation as to why Gee nixed the initial dates, and it’s worth noting that the GDs called out promoters as well, saying, “If you wanna book Rick Ross, you need to talk to us.”

But Ricky Rozay demonstrated that he gets the GDs, perhaps better than the young disciples themselves: “Anybody that understand anything about GDs … it’s all about growth and development … The old man, Mr. Hoover, that’s why I put him in my song, because I respect his scriptures, his philosophies. It’s all about support, it’s all about coming up. It’s not about one sucka … that got a personal vendetta, and that’s something we gonna address … I wanna say that I salute Mr. Larry Hoover, I salute the beautiful Ms. Wendy [his wife], who I spoke to recently. She’s very honorable, she’s very intelligent. Shout out to young Larry [Hoover, Jr.].”

More priceless wisdom from the MMG CEO: “If I go to Chicago to handle my business, like I did, I have no problem going to North Carolina or South Carolina, where the ladies are brown-skinned, brown-eyed, they got nice curves and they make the best apple pie, so don’t never get it twisted … I’m certified worldwide. I could put a thousand gangsters in any hood, but that ain’t what I’m here for. I’m here to make stars, I’m here to make icons, I’m here to break records, I’m here to be Grammy nominated, so that’s what I’m doing. To me, rich is gangsta. Loyal is gangsta. Family is gangsta. If that’s not gangsta, I don’t wanna be gangsta.”

Sniff sniff. His impassioned plea for the New Tenets of Gangta is almost enough to bring a tear to the eye. Oh, and if you wanna see a Bawse’s beard in action, fast-forward to 3:11: