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Ex-drug dealer Ricky 'Freeway' Ross claims rapper Rick Ross stole his identity and that the music industry is de-sensitizing black Americans in order to send them to jail.
It's long been contested whether rapper Rick Ross (real name William Leonard Roberts II) is genuine when it comes to his "gangster" claims after a picture emerged of him dressed as a correctional facilities officer. Following on from the incident, it has now been claimed that Rick Ross as we know him is more character than reality.
Cue Ricky 'Freeway' Ross - the true gangster from which the Ross character is built and ex drug dealer partly responsible for the 80s crack epidemic. He has already tried to sue Ross for plagiarism, but now Freeway believes there are much more sinister forces at work behind the famous rapper; namely the gains that the American prison system can make from desensitizing America's black youth to violence and facilitating their entry into the prison system.
"The private prisons a lot of laws passed in this country so they can build up the union," says Freeway in his interview with Vice. "It's a strength in numbers gang. The more people that commit crime, the more police officers they get to hire and the bigger the union gets. [Roberts] would be the first one that you start to look at because he was part of the union. This goes to the heights of the music industry."
In America, the prison industry amasses huge amounts of revenue from incarcerating prisoners, through the loss of rights and free labour. One in every 107 adults in America is currently behind bars.
Check out 'fake' rapper Rick Ross in the video below
"I look at what makes sense,” he continues. "If something doesn't make sense to me then I question what’s really going on. When you look at the justice system here in America, is it working? We got 2.2 million people in prison. After you think about it you see that it's absolutely working the way the people who put it in place wanted it to work."
He added: "They wanted to lock people up. They don't want it where people are not going to jail because then they make less money."
