Rick Ross had the opportunity to be one of only 152 owners of the Virgil Abloh-designed Maybach, but he turned it down for one specific reason.
Sitting down with Complex to discuss the success of his third annual car show at his Fayetteville, Georgia home, Rozay was asked about the Abloh x Maybach collab and he made it very clear that if it’s not straight from the source, he doesn’t want it.
“I’m going to be totally honest with you, I personally wouldn’t want the Maybach – only because I personally didn’t get it from the big homie Virgil,” he began. “And me scrolling through my phone while I’m on the phone with you, it was funny you asked me that because I was just offered the Maybach not even four or five days ago.”
He continued: “And I turned it down just out of love for the old shit. That was something that would’ve meant a lot more to me coming from the homie and I would’ve paid for it or whatever. And I feel like whoever he autographs those for, they should most definitely appreciate that car and keep it, you know what I mean? That’s just the person I am.”
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The new car, which was unveiled at a car show last December, is a Mercedes-Maybach S-Class S680 model and was designed by Abloh before his November 2021 death in partnership with Gorden Wagener, Mercedes-Benz’s chief design officer.
According to Dezeen, only 152 units of the car were made available when they hit the market in April, and it’s been designed similarly to a Maybach in that it’s “a two-tone solar-powered car with a transparent hood that was also designed together with Abloh.”
“As Project Maybach was a show car, we had complete creative freedom, allowing us to collaboratively concept what the future of electric travel could look like,” Wagener told Dezeen. “Due to production requirements, we had to take a different approach to the design of the Mercedes-Maybach limited-edition S-Class.”
He continued: “Virgil was a creative that all of us here at Mercedes-Benz hugely admired. Between the innovations possible within the Mercedes-Benz teams and Virgil’s unique capacity as a cultural visionary, the opportunity was really to redefine what a fashion and automotive collaboration could look like.”
In March, Lil Baby got his hands on one of the luxury cars, but he’s not the first celebrity to do so. In 2022, Drake showed off a different Virgil Maybach SUV in his “Sticky” video in support of his Honestly, Nevermind LP.
Swizz Beatz also recently copped one of the $500,000 cars as a gift for his wife Alicia Keys – but she didn’t appear to be a big fan. “I don’t think she liked the goddam car,” Swizz told Angie Martinez in an interview last month.
While Alicia likes to drive and collect cars, he said the gift is “still at the dealership” most likely due to reactions on social media to the lavish gifts he’s given her in the past.
He continued: “I know she was already thinking like, ‘Are they gonna be on me if I bring the kids to school in this? Are people gonna know how I’m movin’?’ Like, [I’m sure] she start[ed] thinking like that way with it. She’s [was just] being very polite.”
A few weeks later, Keys ended the speculation when Swizz snapped a shot of her in the back seat of the custom car, beaming proudly and looking at the camera.
“Look who’s loving her gift now [laughing face emojis],” he wrote in the caption. “Blessings on this Sunday.”
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