Rick Ross either needs to produce some evidence that he used to be a huge coke dealer (and I don't mean huge in the sense that he has to grow a neck beard to cover his multiple chins), or he needs to man up and admit that he's a fucking fraud.

Yeah, we know it's probably the latter, but I'm thinking it might not be too late for him to convince us that it's the former. Allow me to explain.

We now know for a fact, thanks to the Smoking Gun, that Rick Ross aka William Leonard Roberts (what kind of black person name is that?) worked as a prison guard for about 18 months back around the time I was starting high school.

Actually, I thought this had been common knowledge. I first heard Rick Ross used to work as a prison guard back around the time "Hustlin'" was blowing up. And I'm pretty sure I read it in the world's most accurate encyclopedia once when I was working on a review of either his first or his second album.

I listen to so much shitty rap music, it can be hard to keep up.

I'm far from a Rick Ross fanatic, though I do think he gets a bad rap from the likes of the late, great Noz - probably because doesn't sound all that southern to me. I'd rather listen to Port of Miami than any number of southern rap albums, but I'd rather listen to the shit they play at Starbucks than Port of Miami.

I'm not gonna lie - I've gone into Starbucks just to see what was playing on the muzak that week. I find that sort of thing good to have in the background while I'm reading. But what can I say? I'm a reader. At least I didn't used to be a cop.

But you'd have to think: If I've been well aware of the fact that Rick Ross used to work as a prison guard, certainly the kind of people who would actually like Rick Ross would be aware of that shit, the digital divide notwithstanding.

Which makes me wonder what the hell Rick Ross was thinking the other day when he had the sheer balls to go on the Internets talking about how he never used to be a CO, and those pictures of him cloaked in several yards of polyester had been doctored by haX0rs - perhaps the same racists who took out SOHH.

It's obvious to me Rick Ross hasn't spent very much time on the Internets, despite the fact that I'm sure he can afford broadband, what with all of that money he made cocaine trafficking. If he's too busy going around getting women to have sex with him despite the fact that he looks like he does (I'll admit, I'm a little bit jealous), perhaps he should consider getting the new 3G iPhone.

It reminds me of something that happened to Bill Clinton earlier this year, back when there was still a possibility that Hillary Clinton could win the Democratic nomination. (Yikes!) Poor ol' Bubba went on the radio down in South Carolina talking mad greasy race shit about Obama. Then, the next day, when a reporter asked Clinton about it, he denied it up and down, despite the fact that the shit had been all over the Internets.

It obviously hadn't occurred to him that you can record an interview from off the radio, encode it to a digital file, upload it to the Internets, and have millions of people hear it in a mere matter of hours. And for what it's worth, you couldn't back in 1992, when Bill Clinton first ran. It makes you wonder what kind of shit he used to pull that we never heard about.

Similarly, Rick Ross must have figured there was no way people could do things like consult a database of public records to see if there was any record of him having worked for the Department of Corrections down in Florida, or find someone who took pictures of his dumb ass at his prison guard school graduation, or find any number of people who could attest to what he was up to for a full 18 months back in the mid '90s.

Though again, for what it's worth, Rick Ross might have been cool, if it wasn't for the motherfucking Smoking Gun. It's not like any of these hip-hop publications were gonna check to see if he was an actual drug dealer. The label might get pissed and pull its advertising. Media Take Out at least turned up the photo of him at his graduation (probably stolen from some other site), but you know how a lot of these gossip sites are better at receiving photographs than they are at providing the Internets with anything of any real value.

The crazy thing about it is, I consulted MTV News just now, and Rick Ross is still going with the story that he never used to be a prison guard. The fuck? He also dropped a couple of new freestyles that hardly seem to address the issue. One of them takes a bit of a shot at going on the Internets and reading blogs, which, if you notice, is quickly becoming the equivalent of reading a book in the black community. If only there was a way I could hide my money (all $300 worth) inside my computer.

If I was Rick Ross, I'd just be like, "Fine, you got me. I used to be a prison guard back in the day. What can I say? I was 19. And $22,000 is a lot of money for a 19 year-old black dude. I had all of the shiny new white tennis shoes, and I used to get mad pussy from chicks who hang out at skating rinks." Then he could have explained that, after he was a prison guard, when he was 21 or whatever, he became a heavy (meaning successful) coke dealer.

The fact that there's yet to be such an explanation suggests to me that he never was a drug dealer, at any point. In fact, the real revelation in all of this could be what he did after he left the Department of Corrections. He probably got fired for being too fat and had to go work at a Church's Chicken. Admit it, most Church's Chickens you've ever been to had one nigga in the back that kinda looked like Rick Ross.

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