Former drug lord Ricky Donnell Ross, better known as Freeway Ricky Ross, has suggested that the rapper Rick Ross conveniently "disappears" whenever there's potential they might run into each other.
Freeway—who was sentenced to life in prison in the '90s for running an extensive drug empire but was later released in 2009 after he was resentenced—sat down for an interview on The Joe Rogan Experience, during which he addressed how Ross has allegedly avoided him.
"Have you ever seen anybody confront Rick Ross about you?" Rogan asked him at the 1:21:00-mark of the podcast, as seen above. "Not in person, no", Freeway replied. "Anytime I'm around he disappears."
Rogan expressed his shock that more people don't seem to take issue with Rick Ross using Freeway as an inspiration for his performing name, especially now that he's a free man. "These guys, they kind of... Like we talked about, when you got some money, they don't care if you beating women or making them lick tampons, you know everybody fucks with you, right?" Freeway said. "He was on top of the world at one time."
Rogan chimed in to point out that Rick Ross was briefly a corrections officer before pursuing a rap career, and Freeway said that everyone "forgot" about that when he started making serious money. "You got gangsters doing records with him," he added. "People who say, 'Oh, I hate snitches!' and all this, but they doing records with a police officer who put handcuffs... I got letters from guys that was in jail with him when he was a corrections officer, and they told me what a shitty guy he was."
One of the examples Freeway gave of Rick Ross being "shitty" as a corrections officer included him allegedly taking dice and money from guys playing dice in prison, and confiscating extra soup given to some of the inmates. "They say that's the kind of cop he was," he said. "Then when I hear that he's the biggest gangsta rapper on the planet... It's crazy."
Freeway explained that he thinks it's "crazy" that Rick Ross seemingly took his name and never asked him about it. "How would you take my name and not have the decency to ask me?" he said. "You should have asked." He added that the rapper has never "paid homage" to him, either. "He won't even admit that he stole the name," Freeway said. "He tells people that he invented the name. Like, how the fuck do you invent this name?"
In 2010, Freeway filed a lawsuit against the rapper, but he lost the case. "The judge got to make a technical decision... When did the public first become known of him using my name?" he said when asked how he lost that case. "She picked a little radio station outside of Miami that played his record for the first time... So that was a date that the public first became [aware] that he was using the name."
Rogan asked if there was a statute of limitations in this case, which he confirmed. "You get two years," he added. "I was 5 days late."
Freewat said that Rick Ross' legal team spent $1.5 million on the lawsuit, but they never sought to offer Freeway money. At the time, his mother was being evicted from her home, so he would've accepted anything that would have helped her keep her home.
"I didn't care about the name like that, I just felt that it was so disrespectful that he didn't come out and ask me, or he didn't show any consideration or pay any homage to the fact that he actually took my name," he said. "But yeah, I probably would have took $250,000. If they said $300,000, I would have been tickled pink, because I felt that I didn't need much money to get started."
Because of the outcome of the lawsuit, Freeway said he still owes Rick Ross' legal team $1 million.
"I got a $1 million judgment," he said. We appealed it, but once you lose to the appeals court you're not going to the Supreme Court or anything like that."
During the case, they took Rick Ross' deposition and Freeway said he refused to shake his hand. "Shakes my lawyer's hands and everybody, and I stood up to shake his hand, 'cause I don't have no hard feelings... He rolls his eyes at me and walks away," he continued.
Freeway said that Rick Ross claimed he got his name because someone called him "Big Boss" when he was playing football in high school, but another person misheard the nickname as "Rick Ross." Rogan called that "the dumbest fucking story I've ever heard in my life."
Earlier this year, The Game referenced the inspiration for Rick Ross' name on a diss track directed at the rapper titled "Freeway's Revenge."
