Writer Ben Westhoff Played Tennis with Freeway Rick Ross

I think you're right about the racism in terms of like the attitude about crack versus cocaine and that could clearly be demonstrated by sentencing. People were sentenced, the mandatory minimums for crack use were so much higher. When people got caught with crack or selling crack, I mean they went to jail for a long fucking time whereas people got caught with cocaine, they didn't go to jail for as long and the treatment, the sentence is much smaller and Dr. Carl Hart, you know, he's great as well. I've had him on here and he was explaining, he's like, look, there is no difference. He's like, it is cocaine. This is cocaine. If you want to break it down to the drug effect on the body, they are the same thing and one of them sends you away for a long time, one of them doesn't. Yeah. I wrote a book about West Coast hip hop called Original Gangsters. I interviewed Freeway, Ricky Ross, has he been on here? Yeah, couple times. Yeah. So he- The original Rick Ross. The original Rick Ross. The real Rick Ross. Yeah, the real Rick Ross, exactly. And his sort of the innovation of their era was called Ready Rock and so before people preferred to smoke cocaine even before crack was invented- Freebase. Right, exactly. That was what Richard Pryor got in trouble with. Yeah, exactly. So the innovation was to make it so you didn't have to freebase. It was Ready to Smoke, so they called it Ready Rock and Eazy E's first record label, his record label was called Ruthless, but they were going to call it Rockhouse Records for that reason. And so he was a crack dealer before he got in the music industry. Yeah. The Rick Ross story, the real Rick Ross story I should say, the Freeway Ricky, which they used to call him, was making millions and millions of dollars, did not have any idea that he was involved in that whole Oliver Lawrence- The Lawrence conscious scandal, yeah. Yeah, which is incredible. Yeah. They were using the cocaine money to fund the war with the consciousness and the Nistas. Yeah, Rick Ross is, I wrote about him and so I ended up actually playing tennis with him because I- He's a really good tennis player. Yeah, I already was a big high school tennis player too, so I was like, let's do this. And he's got some years on me. I don't know how old he, I think he's maybe late 50s, but he was holding his own. We played in a South Central tennis court somewhere and he took some games off me, definitely. Well, his story is incredible because they sent him away on the three strikes rule for life and then while he was in jail, he learned how to read, then he learned how to understand the law and he started, literally taught himself to be a lawyer and then realized, like no, the way they used the law was incorrect and unlawful. Three strikes means you get arrested for larceny. You get out, you get arrested for larceny. You get out, you get arrested for larceny. They did it in one swoop, so they gave him two charges at the same time and then put him in for three strikes and he was able to successfully prove that that was wrong. That's why he's out right now. Wow. He's so smart. One of the things he taught me that, you know, you always used to hear about crack babies all the time and the 80s like cover of Newsweek, crack babies. He was like, you know, crack babies aren't real. That's not a real thing. He said that his, I believe, I hope I'm not speaking out of school, I think like his wife like maybe smoked crack while his son was in utero and never had any problems. And he's like, yeah, look around, do your research. Crack babies is not a real thing. It's crazy because I remember hearing that as well, like crack babies were the thing where we're all worried about in the 80s. Oh my God, wait till the year 2000. All these crack babies are 20 years old. Yeah. That was the same. Where are they now? Yeah. Where are they now? Maybe they're mumble rappers. Maybe that's what's going on. Maybe that's it. I shouldn't laugh at that. You did though, because you understand real rap music. Oh man, I'm just worried that I'm becoming like that. You wrote about real hip hop. I'm not the old man, right? I know. It's just so lame to be like the kids these days. I'm definitely that. That's who I am.