Rick Ross vs. Trick Daddy

See, this is why I love and hate Hiphop at the same time.

Actually this isn't even Hiphop, this is just two rappers -- not Hiphoppers -- battling for no good reason at all.

Trick Daddy has been on a campaign of late smearing Rick Ross's good name (phonetically pronounced "Rause," rhyming with the word "house") by claiming Ross was a corrections officer in Florida before hitting it big as a top-selling rapper.

That's a far cry from the cocaine dealing kingpin that Ross has successfully marketed himself as, even going so far as making such hyperbolic boasts of being friendly with Pablo Escobar.

(Never mind that he stole his rap moniker from an actual drug trafficker from L.A.)

Trick backed up his claim with one single snapshot photo (top photo to the left) of who he claims is a young, beardless Ross, who is seen in the photo wearing what appears to be a brown uniform consistent with those who work in law enforcement.

Now to the normal person, working as a corrections officer is a good, steady, if not some times violent, job. You get health benefits, a decent salary, you pay your taxes and life goes on. In this day and age of people losing their jobs left and right, working as a corrections officer might even seem kind of inviting.

But in the hyper-unrealistic world of rap, it is a strike against one's masculinity and overall humanity to be labeled as a former corrections department employee, which basically puts you along side the very folks who sentenced the inmates you preside over.

It also makes you a snitch -- guilty for associating with people who enforce the laws of the land.

And in rap, snitching is an absolute no-no, even if you technically didn't do any snitching or testifying at all.

(On a side note, going by the above rules, isn't Trick Daddy also a snitch for providing private information like this? Isn't he snitching on Ross? I digress...)

So of course Ross had to defend his honor and responded the only way rappers know how to respond to certain claims -- on YouTube. Ross also added that it is his face in the photo but that it was superimposed onto the body of somebody wearing a corrections uniform.



Personally, not only do I think it is Ross in the photo, but I also think he was probably working that job as a way to support himself while he was looking for a record deal. To me there's no shame in that, but that doesn't sell records.

So Ross grew a heavy beard, got a bunch of tattoos, practiced his menacing posturing in the mirror at home, and made up the improbable but typical story of moving kilos of cocaine before (although he still raps about it like he continues to sell drugs) he was able to sell "legal dope" and move units in album sales. Amazingly, this ploy has a 99.9% success rate, as long as you're a rapper.

If you ask me the top photo looks way more like Akinyele than Ross, but I can't deny the resemblance.