Why I'm glad Rick Ross was a C.O.

I work with two guys who are involved with hip-hop on both a local and national level. Sometime recently I overheard talk of "I can't believe Rick Ross was a C.O., man!" I don't listen to a lot of newer rap because honestly a lot of it is the same garbage about keepin' gangsta and having lots of cars, and this guy is of that pedigree. From what I know he has taken his name from an actual convicted felon and raps about being a drug trafficker.

So now we come to the present, where he gets "accused" of working for a Florida prison facility as a corrections officer. I honestly hope it brings him down. Why? Because the world doesn't need anymore anti-heroes. There are enough bad-boy heroes in TV and movies and books and comics and music and real life that it's such a poor image of what a real hero is. And no...I'm not going to go cliche and talk about public servants or armed forces, because let's just assume that they are heroes. I am trying to say that whether in fiction or reality, we have been given a picture of heroes needing to bend the rules and be a little bad to be good. The Rick Ross situation is the far end of the spectrum, whereas he's good because he is a criminal. His drug dealing and usage makes him respectable.

All this has significance to me not just because Ed Cole wrote a chapter about it (I think it may have been Maximized Manhood...if not it was in Courage), but because you have tons of people looking up to thugs like this. And when you combine that with rampant fatherless in our country in general, but specifically in low-income areas, it makes a mess of a picture of what a man should be.

Maybe someday rap will go back to being street poetry and not CSI stories set to a beat.


Joshua