Rapper Rick Ross – who stole his name from “Freeway” Rick Ross, the real Rick Ross, a former drug kingpin from Los Angeles – was featured in the most recent issue of GQ, where he boasted about his lavish lifestyle, “street cred,” and other things.

The obscenely obese former correctional officer, who can be heard on any popular rap radio station capitalizing on the crack-cooking lifestyle of real gangsters – “I think I’m Big Meech / Larry Hoover / Whippin’ work / hallelujah” – told GQ, “I have my homies bringing me the best food,” which, unlike the lyrics in his songs, I believe.

As an artist who comes from an economically privileged background, I understand wanting to live and create vicariously through those around me, but I still can’t seem to concede that capitalizing on a certain lifestyle one claims to be his/her own is an acceptable thing to do.  It would be similar to me tweeting “Just got busted with $1.2 million in cash and 20 kilos of heroin in my basement” after learning that someone in my neighborhood got caught with $1.2 million in cash and 20 kilograms of heroin in his basement.  People would be like “Homie, what? No you didn’t…” That is what I think when I hear Rick Ross.

Though I’ll also admit I may “simply” be writing this article as a means of releasing some sort of generalized anxiety, a cathartic “bitching” of sorts, I still feel like the world would be a better place if people stopped fronting and got real once in a while.  Ross – who also goes by “Ricky Rozay” and whose twitter name is “Teflon Don,” another real name rip-off – told GQ, “…When you listen to my music, you hear me boasting of the most lavish shit […] But I saw the underworld of Miami Vice. A dude we grew up with was on America’s Most Wanted. An $80 million drug ring came from my neighborhood. The reason street motherfuckers cool with me is if you don’t come from that life, you can’t get away with portraying that life.”  Refer to aforementioned tweet simile.

The more I read and re-read the things I’ve written above, the more I see the inconsistencies, simplicity, and childishness of what I’ve written, but I still can’t shake this burning feeling in my gut that Rick Ross was, well, A COP, which, to me, represents just about the closest thing to whatever’s the opposite of what I enjoy and find valuable in rap music.  So Ross very well may be “the biggest boss that [we’ve] seen thus far,” but I’ve always hated bosses and I’d rather listen to, well, just about anyone talk, sing, lie, anything, to me, than him.