In a recent radio interview on Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club , rapper Rick Ross called former drug kingpin Freeway Rick Ross a snitch. The two men have been at odds for a several years, stemming from a lawsuit filed in 2010. Rapper Rick Ross was born William Roberts, and took his stage name from the former drug dealer, who took him to court over it. The rapper won the lawsuit, according AllHipHop .
It goes on to say that during the interview William Roberts was asked about Freeway Ross’s “open invitation for them to collaborate on changing the images displayed about the African-American community in Hip Hop.” The rapper responded with, “There ain’t nothing to come together about.”
William Roberts then accused Freeway Rick of omitting information in his autobiographical book about “the 40 people he testified on and sent to prison for life.”
He concluded with, “We don’t do that where I’m from.”
According to HipHopDX , William Roberts “alleges that Freeway snitched on people in order to protect himself, but Freeway insists these claims are unfounded.”
Freeway Rick Ross responded with an exclusive statement to AllHipHop , saying, “Do your research. You can look up my public record. I hope we can come together to make a change for the better for Black America.”
The report goes on to say that Roberts failed to provide “clear evidence” to support the allegation. However, another source came forward and told AllHipHop that the snitching claims are false, and that Freeway Rick helped other defendants avoid imprisonment.
The source said, “My family got out of jail because of Freeway. They had drugs planted.”
Further, the source said that Freeway did not testify against 40 people, but that he “made the hard choice to go up on six officers so eighty-five or so of his guys, black men that had drugs planted on them, got out.”
The source added, “That isn’t snitching.”
In recent months, the rapper has been in the news for losing nearly 100 pounds by eating fruits like pears and exercising. He decided to make a change after experiencing two seizures in a day, according to the Inquisitr . His former weight was 300 pounds.
Ricky Donnell Ross earned the nickname “Freeway Rick” because of the hotel that he owned near the Harbor Freeway called the Freeway Motor Inn. The hotel served as a meeting place for drug dealers and couriers, according to Biography .
Time reports that Freeway Rick was once at the center of the Iran Contra Scandal. It goes on to say that the San Jose Mercury News published reporter Gary Webb’s book, Dark Alliance , that alleges that the CIA was responsible for supplying the drug lords of South Central Los Angeles, then the rest of the United States, with crack cocaine in the 1980s.
According to Time , Danilo Blandon and Norwin Meneses led a San Francisco drug ring who had “close ties to a CIA-sponsored Nicaraguan contra group known as the FDN, sold tons of coke to a notorious Los Angeles-based dealer named Freeway Rick Ross.” Millions of dollars were sent back to the “secret war against the leftist Sandinista regime,” according to the report.
In a recent interview on Infowars , Freeway Rick said that hip hop has taken over the world, and he called on the hip hop community to unite and make changes to affect the culture . He urged them to “fight this penitentiary culture that hip hop’s been spreading.”
He called for a change to the “hip hop to prison pipeline,” and to put an end to the “senseless war on drugs.”
Earlier this year, a movie based on Dark Alliance was released called Kill the Messenger . Jeremy Renner produced and starred in the movie. Renner plays Gary Webb.
Freeway Rick’s autobiography came out last June called Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography .
Is it fair to hope that rapper Rick Ross will someday drop his beef with Freeway Rick and stop the snitch allegations to unite for the betterment of the hip hop community? What do you think?
[Image via Rolling Out ]