Photo Credit: @mpvinny300
[Freeway Rick Ross](https://www.instagram.com/freewayricky/?hl=en) deserves all his flowers, a true definition of someone who was all the way down bad and changed his life for the better. Born in Texas but raised in South Central Los Angeles, the 61-year-old is best known for building one of the most fruitful drug empires back in the 80’s—equating a profit of up to 7 figures on the daily. While he was sentenced to a life sentence, in 2009 he was released on appeal... 20 years later.
To date, Freeway is a newfound person, enjoying every second of every day as he cherishes his freedom that he aptly reminds us should never be taken advantage of. Not only does he exude the most kind, positive energy, but he serves as an inspiration and role model for all those with a dollar and a dream. And still, on top of his endless business endeavors, he finds time to train his kids in tennis, practicing for 3 hours nearly every single day.
Formerly a tennis player of his own, he states, “sometimes we give up on our dreams just a little too fast. That’s what happened to me, but it’s not going to happen in the cannabis industry,” he states with a laugh. “I love the cannabis industry.”
Freeway’s day in the life includes receiving 150 to 200 calls each day, which is why I’m super blessed to have him as a guest on my new show Shirley’s Temple. On the 12th episode, I sat with Freeway Rick Ross at Matrix Studios in Los Angeles to discuss his newfound passion in the cannabis industry, his own company LA Kingpin, reading 300 books behind bars, enjoying his 20 years in prison, mutual respect for everyone, Rick Ross avoiding him, being vegan for 31 years, _Snowfall_ stealing his life story, not knowing cocaine was addictive, fatherhood, and more!
Photo Credit: @mpvinny300
**What’s the latest with your cannabis company, LA Kingpin?**
LA Kingpin, we're going to do everything. We’re going to be integrated: edibles, weed, concentrate, the fixtures, all the accessories that go with it. I want to have everything. I want to be all the way in this industry. I love this industry, people are going to be amazed at what I’m able to accomplish in the cannabis industry. I’ve been accomplishing a lot of things. I’m waiting for it to come to a head, to a jail and get me in that position I want to be in.
**You said you were pulling a million dollars a day, sometimes 3. Did you get to enjoy it at all?**
I enjoyed the moment. Even when I was in jail, I enjoyed being in jail. I enjoyed my time in jail.
**All 20 years?!**
I mean, not every day. You have good days and bad days, no matter where you are. You could be living in the biggest house on the hill and have everything you want, we all have bad days. I’ve learned that bad days are part of life, it’s something we all go through. It’s best to deal with it and figure out how to get through it. When I had bad days, I got a good book and I read.
**You read 300 books in jail…**
Over 300 books, I don’t know how many magazines and newspapers. When people see what’s happening with me right now, they might say “oh, he’s lucky.” No, I studied and planned. I didn’t necessarily know I’d be in the cannabis industry. I was in prison in Texas and I didn’t know weed was legal. It was only when I came home that I discovered people could legally smoke weed. They could legally sell weed. I remember my first time going to a cannabis cup in San Bernardino. I see these people with great big jars of weed, trash bags of weed. Pinch myself, is this shit real? \[laughs\]
**There’s people locked up in prison for weed!**
Absolutely.
**How are you with prison reform?**
I help out a little bit. I try to help in as many ways as I can. I’m only one person, only get 24 hours in a day. Sometimes, it gets a bit overwhelming. My phone rings constantly. I field about 150, 200 phone calls every day. My schedule’s crazy. I do a little prison reform. Matter of fact, I’m talking to a Congressman in Chicago. They’re talking about bringing a program into the jail where they teach inmates how to work inside the cannabis industry.
**Wow, I thought you were going to say how to read or something.**
No, they’re getting aggressive. It’s a good idea because a lot of the people want to be in this industry. It’s sad that everybody won’t be able to get licenses. Some people will have to take normal cannabis jobs, which pay pretty good. Most cannabis jobs, you can get paid a little more money.
**Right, I said fuck the music industry!**
Music is a tough one, it's so fake too. I’m getting ready to do some stuff in music though. I’ma take my cannabis money and invest it in some music. I’m going to help artists become more known, put some financing behind them and help do videos. The production, develop them. The labels don’t develop artists anymore, so I’ll do some development. \[laughs\]
**How do you feel about Rick Ross stealing your name?**
I don’t really care. I think he avoids me. A couple times I went to places he’s supposed to be and he disappeared, nowhere to be found. I reached out to him too, I tried to make amends. If we worked together, we could help more people. He went on The Breakfast Club and dissed me. \[laughs\]
**How did you feel about that?**
I was really more disappointed in The Breakfast Club because they didn’t invite me on to refute what he said about me. Whoever’s paying their bills, that’s who they roll with. You could be wrong with two left shoes and if you got some money, they’ll roll with you. I call it “sucking up.”
**One thing I admire about you is you treat everyone the same, no matter what their status is.**
Oh yeah, I don’t care how much money you got. To me, you’re another human being. In saying that, I look at you as if you’re a great human being. I believe we all are great. We all have something to offer the world. Each and every one of us are unique in our own ways, we should be respected in that form. That saves me a lot of problems, I don’t get mad.
**What do you do when someone disrespects you?**
Well, I very seldom get disrespected. Life is what we give out. If you give out disrespect and dishonesty, then it comes back to you. If you give out love and happiness, that’s what you get back.
**You were set up, what was going through your head when you’re being handcuffed?**
That I’d been betrayed by somebody I care deeply for. Somebody that I almost did anything for. It was shocking, I couldn’t believe it for a while. It took me a minute to accept the fact that my friend was really gonna do me in.
**How old were you?**
I was 35, it was heartbreaking.
**But it also changed your life, right?**
Yeah, you have to come to the realization that their life is more important than others. He felt that his life was more important than mine, that he needed to be with his family and his kids more than I needed to be with my family and my kids. He traded his life sentence for my freedom and vice versa.
**What’re your thoughts on today's snitching culture?**
The way I look at it is snitching is a part of the game. If you get into the game, somebody’s going to snitch on you. That’s how it works.
**That’s so liberating to think of it like that.**
That’s how it really is. When I had to do my soul searching and understand that nobody put a gun to my head and told me to sell drugs.
**You say you sold cocaine because you had no other avenue.**
I thought it was my only avenue. When you’re not really thinking correctly, one of my teachers said it’s like looking at the world through a colored lens. You put a yellow lens in front of somebody’s face, they'll think the world is yellow. If you clean that lens up and people can see what’s really going on, there was opportunity out there for me the whole time but I didn’t recognize it. I was being led by others. It was only when I went to prison, I found out a lot of the things I did, I didn’t do because I wanted to do it. I did it because I wanted to be accepted by everyone around me.
**What was the first 10 years like? What was the second 10 years like?**
It had gotten to the point where I accepted being in jail. I came to the realization that when it was time, I’d be getting out. Not to be worried about getting out because I wouldn’t be getting out until it was time. Once I started to grasp that feeling and accept it as a reality, my time started to go by really fast. I didn’t have enough time. I wanted more time in the day. “Whew, I need more time.”
**What were you doing back there?**
Well, I got a lot of shots for conducting business. I was hooking up videos. I got in trouble talking to Domino when his record was on the radio about the director that did his video. He’s hooking me up with him so they could do a video for somebody else, the guards came and got me for that. I was shaking and baking while I was in jail.
**You learned how to read at age 28, with the help of your cellmate. That’s wild!**
He helped me, he made me some queue cards and convinced me I could read. I was under the perception that I couldn’t read or write, and that I’d never.
**You went through 28 years of your life without needing to read or write?**
Yeah, I found out we read people. When you can’t read a book, you read people. It’s another quality. It’s funny about humans, the way our system works. When you get weak in one area, you’ll be stronger in others. I read over 300 books, I read the newspapers everyday. I was soaking up education, learning how to be a better person. I knew I didn’t want to come back to jail. I knew I had no schooling, no educational background. If I was going to be successful, I had to be smarter than everybody around me.
**Where does that discipline come from?**
Discipline is something you have to ease into. You don’t one day become this strictly vegan person. It takes some months and time to convince yourself and come up with the reasons why you should be doing whatever is you want to do. You have to have reasons, like I became vegan.
**You’ve been vegan for 31 years, how do you feel?**
I don’t know any other way. I ate meat in the beginning of my life, but it’s been so long since I ate meat, milk, eggs, or butter. I don’t even know what it’s like anymore. I can only imagine what it tastes like. Now I can equate vegan stuff with the tastes I had when I ate meat and other animal products.
**You love oatmeal, right?**
\[laughs\] I eat a lot of oatmeal. When in prison, they didn’t have the substitutes. I said “I’ma be eating oatmeal and peanut butter.”
**Do you still eat peanut butter?**
I do. Now it changed from peanut butter to almond butter. Almond butter is a little better for us than peanut butter so I do the almond butter quite often, once or twice a week. I put almond butter in my smoothies.
**Are you on the herbs too?**
I do some herbs as well. I take vitamin D3 every day for the Coronavirus. It’s one of the biggest immune boosters we can have.
**How does it feel to experience something like the pandemic?**
It’s been crazy. It threw me all the way off when it first hit. For 4 months, didn’t come out the house. Parked the car, watched TV and talked on the phone. Try to make deals over the phone. For the first couple months, it was really tough.
**Were you with your daughters?**
With my 2 youngest kids, my 2 youngest babies. I have 3 daughters and 5 boys. Big family, 15 grandkids.
**And you have to get them all gifts?**
No. I don’t celebrate birthdays, I don’t celebrate Christmas, so I don’t have to get no presents. \[laughs\] They don’t celebrate mine either.
**When’s your birthday?**
January 26. My friends will throw me a get together dinner or a party, but it’s not something I’m over excited about doing. For me, every day is a party. I’m enjoying myself every single day. When you lose your freedom and you get it back, you learn to really appreciate the small things that a lot of people overlook. I appreciate the small things. To be able to go to a store any time you get ready is something we should appreciate. There’s people that can’t go to the store and get a bag of chips, something to eat or drink. We have to look at what we have and really be thankful for what we got.
**Talk about your merch, I see the Freeway hoodie.**
These are my sweatshirts, I designed this. I get the blanks from one of my friends who make them. High quality, feel how thick it is. I got another one that’s fire for the ladies.
**How many businesses do you have?**
Ooh wee, I’m doing so much. I have 2 boxers now, a kid named Nafear Charles who won his first belt 3 weeks ago. Bad, fights like Mike Tyson. I have another kid I signed out of Austin, Texas named Kid Austin. This kid here, he’s so slick. It’s poetry in motion to watch him move around the ring. I got into boxing so I could help these guys make money. So often you see our boxers, they box and their career is over. They wind up broke. My goal’s to make sure these guys get out of boxing with a lot of money, and with their sense. Boxing’s a tough business. I told a couple kids I work with, “are you into boxing to make some money? ‘Cause if you are, you’re in the wrong business.”
**What are they in it for?**
Some of them are in it for the money. It’s a tough way to make some money, not easy. When I was in prison, I thought about myself. The way I started selling drugs, I went to a dope dealer and asked him how to make money. You know what he did, he gave me some drugs. \[laughs\] When I should’ve been going to the banker, asking the banker: “Hey, how do you make your money?” He would’ve shown me how to loan money out and charge interest.
**How do you feel about people comparing you to the _Snowfall_ television series?**
They stole my life story, It’s a fact. John Singleton and I were supposed to be working on a movie. It’s coming out, we’re finna start casting for the movie. I got the word, they called me yesterday and they said everything’s in pre-production. I’m all over the place. One of my guys called me the other day because I’m finna do some music stuff too. We’re talking on the phone and he said “man, you’re a wheeler and a dealer.” \[laughs\] He said I just want to be in a deal. I don’t care if it’s cars, music, weed, I want to be doing deals.
**What’s the funnest one?**
This weed. The weed business.
**Why don’t you like smoking?**
If I smoke, it’ll take away from my hustle. And I smoke a lot. The edibles, I could take one edible and it’ll knock me out. I’ll be out all night long. It relaxes me, because I need to unwind sometimes. I be so go, go, go. I need to flop on the couch. You know how the weed guys do it, they flop on the couch. They get their video game and sit there, the edibles do me like that. I can flop on the couch, don’t care. Let the world go by. Let everybody do what they’re gonna do. I’ma sit on this couch and eat. \[laughs\]
**What do you like to snack on?**
I love vegan pizza, if it’s cooked right.
**Do you cook?**
Very little. My favorite meal is rice, beans, and sweet potatoes. I love sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese. It’s crazy, people don’t know that everything they do regular, you can do vegan. To me, it almost tastes like I remember what it used to taste like. I slowed down on the vegan meat a little bit. The Beyond patties are as close as I can remember to beef. They got hot dogs. The food is close man, it’s hard to tell it’s not really meat.
**Will we get your hand in the food industry too?**
I plan on doing it. I want to build my cash up right now. Once I build my cash up, we about to take over again. Did you see my new video that came out? It’s done over a million and a half views in less than a week. I got a new director helping me out, he did it for my weed strain.
**What sets your product apart from the rest?**
Really nothing. There’s so many different growers, so many different strands. It’s really the preference of the smoker. Some people like OG, Zazas, Blue Dream, Ice Cream Cake. My goal in this industry is to bring as many strains to the public as I can. I want weed to be as affordable as possible. We shouldn’t be gouging the consumers just because. My customers are my strong point. They’re the ones that make me who I am and without them, there’s no me. There’s no need for me without them. I should treat them as fair as I can and be totally honest with them. When we inflate our prices, something that costs us $300 to $400 to grow and we charge them $4000 for it, that’s really being disloyal to your customers.
**What is your take on addiction today?**
When I first started, I didn’t know what addiction was. I didn’t know you could be addicted to cocaine. I thought addiction was something you did with heroin. I didn’t know cocaine was addictive because all the people doing it were well to do people: lawyers, doctors. The average person back then couldn’t afford to smoke cocaine. A gram of cocaine was $350, who could afford it back then in the 80’s? You had to be doing well. The average person was making $200 a week.
For a person to get high, you’d have to take a whole week’s check and get one gram — which they could smoke in less than an hour, especially if they had help. Most people didn’t like freebasing by themselves. Most people got high with other people. You rarely saw someone that would come in and get high by themself, they wanted it. Once I started to learn about addiction, I saw the hypocrisy in myself. I didn’t want my brothers, my sisters, my uncles and aunties getting high, but here I am selling cocaine to everybody. I thought “this doesn’t fit. It’s not proper, it’s not the way to be.” That’s how I eventually quit.
**What do you want fans to take away from _Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography_?**
I got 2 books: _21 Keys to Success._ So many people told me my book has helped them. I get so many calls right now from people telling me how much game they get from watching my tapes. I want to educate people. I want people to become more informed. When we’re informed, we can make logical decisions. If you make a decision with falsehood, it ain’t your fault when you make a mistake. That’s what they do to a lot of our kids: they give them a lot of misinformation and hope the kids make the right decisions. It’s not going to happen.
**You say you can predict the future, where do you see 2021 going?**
My movie is finna be the biggest movie in the world that’s ever hit the stage. They’ll be asking me to do more, more movies. They’re going to finally wake up. I can’t understand Netflix. I had the #1 documentary on Netflix for a year and a half, they never came and talked to me. _Crack_ is the #2 documentary on Netflix. They still haven’t come and said, “why do we keep putting all this stuff with you in it on our platforms?” They'll wake up and see. The marijuana industry, I’ll have the biggest brand in California. The country, I’ll be bigger than Cookies. I read 14 books on marketing when I was in jail so I know how to market. People see the stuff that’s happening and they think it’s luck. No, all this stuff was planned.
**You often refer to your article in Los Angeles Magazine, how’d you feel talking to the journalist about your obituary?**
To know that somebody as powerful as the LA Magazine thought you were dead is saying a lot, and you’re still alive walking the planet. I had the chance to define what they thought. All their readers thought I was crazy when I was talking about record labels, books, clothing lines, boxing. That’s what I mean, I can predict the future. I had a life sentence, I was in prison. Even in the beginning when you watch the _Crack_ documentary, we use the tape he recorded to write that article. Me and him are talking, you can hear him ask me “do people need a hero that’s in prison for life?” I told him “they put me in jail, but they didn’t stop me from dreaming.” We gotta continue to have vision. A lot of people perish for lack of vision, they can’t see themselves in the future. See I can’t remember what happened yesterday, but I know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I live in the future, not in the back.
**Do you have advice?**
Working, making it easy for everybody else. Make sure everybody else gets what they need.
**How do you feel about lazy people?**
I don’t really like lazy people. Why be lazy? Too much excitement out here. Let’s get it. \[laughs\]
**The Temple 10 (spitfire round):**
**Favorite emoji:**
I don’t know what emoji is. I don’t like texting. People text when they don’t want to talk. People that do all that texting be cowards, they don’t want tell you what they want. Most of my texts I get are “can i borrow $100 bucks? Can I get $20?”
**Do you give them?**
Sometimes, depending on who it is. They borrow $100 today, then next week they come: “I need $20 this week.” Well, you ain’t pay me back my $100.
**Favorite snack:**
Earl’s Hot Dog, the best vegan hot dog in the whole world. They made me fat, but they’re so good. Crazy good. I love my mustard, relish, and onions.
**Favorite song at the moment:**
That “Blue Magic” with my video I showed you. I love that song. I hadn’t heard it in a long time, it’s so important for what’s going on right now. It says that people are changing. We gotta change because if we don’t change, we’re going to destroy our only planet we have, that we know we can live on. I’m hoping we wake up and smell the coffee, cut out these senseless wars. Doing things really out of ignorance, not out of logical thinking. It’s crazy but if we don’t change our ways, we’re gonna find ourselves in a position we don’t want to be in.
**Favorite thing to do for self-care:**
I try to walk. I do a few push-ups every now and then. I really want to go back to working out. I used to workout 2.5 hours every day in prison. I was ripped. I was only 7% fat when I got out of prison. I was nice, I’d like to get back to that. It’d be tough, I’ve been trying. Once I get my money up where I can sit around, smoke weed and talk shit all day, then I can workout as well.
**Hot or cold?**
I’m usually cold. I hate the cold. I like it hot.
**Greatest fear?**
Dying. I don’t want to die at all. Let me live. My mom used to tell me “boy you can’t live forever.” I pray I live as long as I can. \[laughs\] She used to tell me, “I’ma pray for you when I go to church.” Well pray that I live forever. I don’t want to die, I love it here right now. I’m having so much fun. It should be illegal. They should put me back in jail, I’m having that kind of fun. There has to be something wrong.
**Is there trauma at all from that?**
You know, I have nightmares. I still do. I might wake up at night sweating that I’m in jail. It’s embarrassing coming back to jail and all your friends say, “we knew you were coming back.” That’s the first thing everybody in prison says: “we knew you couldn’t stay out.” Guys be hating on you when you leave. One of my traumas is the nightmares, and I’m not the only one. I talked to other guys in prison a long time, they have the same nightmares.
I’m overcoming them, they’re not as frequent as they used to be. When I first got out, it was every other night. I’ve woken up with a dream that I’m committing a cocaine crime. The police got the whole house surrounded, knocking on the door.” Come out with your hands up, we know you’re in there!” Oh shit, I’m going to go back to prison for life again. I have those dreams.
**What’s your idea of perfect happiness?**
Letting life be what it is. Living life to the fullest, enjoying the moment. Don’t worry about how you messed up yesterday. Let life go, try not to make the same mistakes you made before.
**Biggest lesson learned behind bars?**
You can’t do something wrong and hope you get a good outcome. A lot of times we’re doing things that aren’t right, hoping that wrong is eventually going to turn into a right. It doesn't work like that.
**One book we must read?**
I’ma give you 5 books you must read. Everybody knows these books helped me find myself. After these I really didn’t need to read another book, but I kept going anyway ‘cause I got addicted to reading. I fell in love with it. _Think And Grow Rich_ by Napoleon Hill, _Richest Man In Babylon_ by George Classy, and _As a Man Thinketh_ by James Allen. We should be teaching those in school. Those books taught me how to do everything: control my temper, how to relax and accept things for what they are, to deal with reality. Wonderful books. Creating a mastermind group, same thing. That’s what I’m trying to do right now in the weed business. Putting all my people around me to advise me and assist me in whatever manner I may need. The other ones are my two books. _Freeway Ricky Ross: Autobiography_ and _21 Keys to Success._
**First thing that comes to mind: money.**
Lots of it. \[laughs\]
