ALL STAR 2011 - Ozone Magazine

AFTER AN APPEALS COURT OVERTURNEDHIS LIFE SENTENCE, INFAMOUS DRUGKINGPIN 'FREEWAY' RICKY ROSS HOPES TOREDEEM HIMSELF BY TEACHING THE YOUTHTHE HARD LESSONS HE'S LEARNED ANDSHOWING THEM A BETTER PATH.For anyone who isn’t familiar with “Freeway”Ricky Ross, what’s your claim to fame?I’m from L.A. I’m known as a drug dealer. I becameone of the biggest drug dealers in SouthCentral. I was the guy that most of the guyswho got big got their first drugs from. I wasthe one they modeled themselves after; guyslike Harry O, Bo Bennett, Young Tommy, Pat,the list goes on and on. A lot of [well-knowndrug dealers] basically modeled their drugdealing pattern after me or copied my format.Some of them got bigger than I was. (laughs)When you see what the drug game hasevolved into today, do you approve or disapprove?I mean, I can’t knock anyone for what theydo, because I did so much wrong myself. It’dbe like Satan throwing rocks at somebody fordoing something wrong; he can’t do that. So Ican’t knock the game. It has evolved into whatit was supposed to come to. But I do feel thatmy job now is to try to figure out other thingsfor these young guys to do now. I’m trying toshow them that there’s a different route and adifferent path, and I believe I can do that.A lot of people say the street game isn’twhat it used to be. They say there’s no honoramongst thieves anymore.There really never was. It was just that fakemake-believe stuff. This was the way it wassupposed to go. Really, when you look backat the game, the guys who were at the topalways played like that.So that’s a myth? Because I hear that often.Yeah, that’s a myth. I totally agree that that’s amyth. Everybody that got busted, somebodytold on them. From the beginning, somebodyhad to be a snitch. The Feds have been usingsnitches since the beginning of time. It’salways been there and it’ll always be there. Ifyou’re in the game and you don’t think yourbest friend is gonna tell on you, you’re crazy.When I look back, the same guys that helpedme get into this game are the same guys thattold on me. The same guys that’ll tell you,“Don’t snitch!” will turn around and snitch onyou. It’s a dirty business. The drug businessis dirty. And a lot of [new drug dealers] don’tknow that. When they go into the drug business,they don’t know the ins and outs. Theygo into it with a one-track mind. They onlyknow one aspect of the game. Me, myself, Iwent into the game like that. I went in blindsided.I only saw the fame and the fortune; Ididn’t see the whole thing. Nobody explainedit to me.Did you feel like dealing drugs was your onlycareer option?When I was young I was dumb. I was illiterate.I couldn’t read. I had never read a book andnever written anything, so the only thing Iknew was what I saw in my general area. WhenI go and talk to the kids - especially in juvenilehall - I explain that when I was coming up, myoptions were robbery, pimpin’, selling dope,stealing cars, and burglary. Those were thethings I thought I had to pick from. I neverthought about opening a magazine. I neverthought about owning a record company. Myoptions were so limited, and that was becauseof my [limited] knowledge.Previously, we published a letter to our readersthat you wrote while you were incarcerated.It sounded like you were renouncingwhat you’d done before and were trying tocorrect the wrongs.Absolutely. What I did was wrong, and not onlywas it wrong, but I feel like it was a total wasteof my talents. I’m very talented. My personalopinion is that there’s no man living on thisplanet that is as smart as I am.Did that realization come to you over theyears, or was it one moment that made youregret the path you’d taken?It started to come in time, after I started toread books. It first started in the courtroom,when I found myself debating the law withthese Harvard and Yale graduates.You defended yourself? Why?My lawyer told me, “Anytime somebody elsewants you home more than you want yourselfhome, you’re in trouble.” I took that to heart. Itook that to mean, “You should learn the lawfor yourself.”So you made the decision to defend yourself,and it wasn’t just from a financial standpoint?From a legal standpoint. So now you take aguy who believed he was dumb and illiterateand could never read or write, and you puthim in a courtroom and the judge and thelawyers are taking what he says seriously. Theydisagreed with what I was saying, but whenwe went to the appeals court, I proved themall wrong. That’s a confidence booster.72 // OZONE MAG