Rick Ross’s legal team is already pointing at the calendar. His attorney says the woman accusing the rapper of domestic violence “did not even file a police report until a month after the claimed incident allegedly took place.”
Ross, whose legal name is William Roberts II, was arrested in Miami Beach early Thursday, according to the Associated Press. Online court records show Ross, 50, faces a felony charge of battery by strangulation along with a misdemeanor battery charge.
Jail records showed him being held Thursday morning on $5,000 bail. His arraignment is set for October 22.
Defense attorney Steve Sadow didn’t waste time framing the case. In a statement, he said Ross is being wrongfully accused by a former girlfriend whose true motivations are unclear.
“Mr. Roberts is innocent and has pled not guilty to the charges,” Sadow said. He added that Ross “respectfully requests that his friends, fans and the general public not prejudge the situation and allow the judicial process to run its course.”
That request lands differently for anyone who remembers Ross’s last serious legal fight. In 2017, according to news reports, he pleaded no contest to kidnapping and assault charges and was sentenced to probation.
That case centered on two groundskeepers who said Ross and his bodyguard held them against their will at his suburban Atlanta home. They alleged he stormed into the guest house where they were living and beat them with a gun, and one man said the pistol attack chipped his teeth and mangled his jaw.
Ross pushed back hard at the time. In a 2015 countersuit, he disputed the beatings, said the men weren’t supposed to be living on his property and accused them of trying to extort him.
The arrest is a jarring headline for an artist so tied to South Florida. Ross helped put Miami on the rap map in the early 2000s, back when most fans looked to Atlanta and Houston as the South’s hip hop headquarters.
His 2006 debut single “Hustlin'” went double platinum with the RIAA and set off a bidding war for his signature. He landed at Def Jam, then headed by Jay Z, and his debut album “Port of Miami” opened at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 on its way to platinum.
More chart toppers followed with “Trilla” in 2008 and “Deeper Than Rap” in 2009. Along the way he picked up nine Grammy nominations.
In 2008 he also launched Maybach Music Group, the label that gave major boosts to Wale, Meek Mill and French Montana. That business side of his career has kept his name in the conversation even between albums.
The timing stings too. Ross only released his latest album, “Set In Stone,” in July, and now the attention is shifting from the music to a Miami courtroom.
For now, fans are left weighing a serious accusation against a defense built around a reporting delay of a month. The next real moment of clarity arrives October 22, when Ross is due back before a judge.
