Did Rawse just play himself again?

Just the other day, I did a post on how Rick Ross was playing himself by not owning up to the fact that he used to be a cop. Then XXL revealed the cover of next month's issue, in which he does own up to the fact that he used to be a cop.

Talk about a corporate synergy fail. And at a time when my overlords here at XXL seemed to have mastered the art, coming up with our own commercials for the new Charles Hamilton album. What's next, is someone from Charles Hamilton's label gonna help us write our articles?

Um, never mind.

Anyhoo, even though I said myself that Rick Ross ought to come clean about his prison guard past, I'm not sure he's going about it the best way possible.

If I were Rick Ross, I would have just copped to it in the first place, back when the Smoking Gun turned up that picture of him stuffed inside that tight-ass polyester cop uniform. Everyone knew it was him - they had his governement name on the application, and the address was the same address as the one on the inside cover of his first album.

He should have just been like, "Yeah, I used to be a cop. I used to deal drugs inside of prison, just like Oz, or that season of The Wire when D'Angelo became a crackhead - a sort of proto-Dukie, if you will. That's also how I met my connect, who introduced me to Manuel Noriega, who owes me a hundred favors."

It may have even had the effect of lending a bit of credence to his claims of being a drug kingpin, for the kind of people who were dumb enough to believe him in the first place. "Rick Ross said he got started dealing drugs back when he was working in a prison, and see, it says right here he used to work in a prison."

What difference does it make whether or not a rapper used to be a cop, as long we know for a fact that he was crooked? Shit, a crooked cop is arguably even worse (and hence better, for hip-hop purposes) than a normal criminal.

Denzel Washington in Training Day > [your favorite rapper]

Instead, Rick Ross chose to deny that he ever worked as a prison guard, even once all of that evidence was revealed. Which basically just gave guys 50 Cent ample opportunity to tease him for once being a cop.

Even in the new issue of XXL, it isn't clear to me the extent to which he's owning up about his past. In the sensational headline on this site, they've got him saying, "Yeah, it was me in those pictures." But on the cover, if you notice, they've got him talking about how he never had a credibility problem, and he still doesn't.

Oh, really?

Because to me it looks like he's in full-on damage control mode - Fiddy Cent pwned him about as bad as anyone could possibly be pwned, on the Internets, and now he's trying to save face by copping a plea with regard to his once being a cop. If that's not a credibility problem, I'd like to know what is.

Then there's the fact that it's in XXL, i.e. the house that Fiddy Cent built, so I'm sure everyone's just gonna view it as Fiddy finally forcing Rawse to admit that he used to be a cop.

I doubt the TIs would allow Rawse to be pictured on the cover of XXL in a way that wasn't completely flattering. Hence the bit with him touting his lack of credibility problems. But that's just the magazine. And who reads magazines these days anyway, other than people in prison, who already know Rick Ross used to be a prison guard. They probably used to fling poo at him, back in the '90s.

Meanwhile the website (i.e. this site), which is less concerned with flattering Rick Ross than it is with "going viral" (like Jay-Z's herpes), just published the quote with Rawse admitting that was him in those pictures. And that's probably the only thing most people will ever read. What's worse, it was run underneath a picture of the cover with a caption reading "The Truth Hurts."

Again, talk about corporate synergy fail.

I checked Fiddy's site the same day the Rawse cover was revealed, and of course the headline there read something along the lines of, "Rawse finally admits he used to be a cop." So much for damage control. Rawse probably saw it and thought to himself, Shit! I thought the whole purpose of me posing for the cover of XXL was to make myself look better.

Next time, he might want to see about getting the same deal Charles Hamilton got.