Ghostwriter

Album: Black Market (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • The dark art of ghostwriting was a big topic in the rap world during 2015 because of the beef between Drake and Meek Mill. This song finds the Maybach Music Boss opening up about his own experience penning lyrics under someone else's name with their consent.

    Ross told Time: "I finally wrote a record telling the way it feels for me to be a ghostwriter, and not only a ghostwriter, but one of the biggest in the rap game. Because of my own personal success I've always been able to keep that in the shadows. On this record, I just felt it was so current. It was needed."
  • Rick Ross expanded on the background to the song in a track-by-track interview with Billboard magazine: "That's just me speaking of one of my more lucrative hustles. It's pretty much a given known fact in the industry that before I was successful, I wrote for other artists. I had a lot of fun with it and I wanted to make that a record because it's such a trending topic. I wanted to make a record to let the fans and listeners see it from the inside."

    "I do see a lot of young artists who write records or sacrifice records, because there are a lot of older artists who are preoccupied, they don't have as much time as they used to to be in the studio. Here is this young artist putting out five albums a day who can just sit there and come out with these ideas from verses and rhymes, whatever it is. They play their music for an artist, an executive or a label, and they end up letting that label use their music – which can also be a good thing for a writer if they have their s--t in perspective."

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