On this episode of the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast, the boys are joined by a special guest, rapper Rick Ross, to talk about his life growing up in the streets of LA and how he went on to become one of the most famous drug dealers in the history of Los Angeles. They also talk about how he got his name, and why he thinks he s better than Pac and Biggie. Joe also talks about the time he was mistaken for someone else's kid, and how his name has been stolen by other rappers and drug dealers, including one of his good friend, William Roberts, who is a former corrections officer and former prison guard, and who now goes by the name "Rick Ross" and is a member of the infamous "Freeway Rich" drug dealing gang. Joe also gets into the origin story of his name and how it came about, and what it means to him, of who stole his name from him and why it s so common in the rap game. Joe and the boys talk about this and much more! Enjoy and spread the word to your friends and family about this episode to let them know that it s not only funny, but very funny and very funny! . This episode is sponsored by The Fleshlight. Click here to get 15% off your first pack of the Fleshlight, use code "ROGAN" at checkout and get 20% off the entire pack! Thanks to Onnit for sponsoring the show! Joe Rogans Podcast! XOXOODT, the guys at Onnit, the podcast, and we also make AlphaBrain, the nootropic brain supplement, Alpha Brain, the brain-enhancing vitamin supplement that helps improve your brain and brain health and cognitive ability! - check it out! by Onnit - find out more about AlphaBrain! and the other stuff they make for your brain, your brain is better than anyone else's in the world! Joes Podcast, you re gonna love it! The Joes podcast by day, by night, all day. by night. - all day, Joes all day all day! , by night! Joes and the Joes & ROGANX, the joes podcast by Joes, all joes and r , all day , Joes + R and Joes. , all night, by joes by joseph
00:04:36.000One thing I gotta get a guy is he's powerful.
00:04:38.000He done put some moves together now that he's getting courts...
00:04:42.000And everybody will do what he wants them to do.
00:04:44.000So whatever he's doing, he's damn good at it.
00:04:46.000I mean, you know, to have the judge to rule in his favor the other day was like really, really ironic to me.
00:04:53.000I could not believe that somebody could say that if somebody steals something from you, no matter how long it is that it takes you before you catch them and can bring them to the jurisdiction's attention, How could they say that the statute of limitations had ran out?
00:05:17.000I mean, if somebody steals something from you, I mean, it takes you 10 years to catch them with it, and you catch them with it, it has all the makings on it that is yours, how could you not be made to give it back?
00:06:17.000Well, it's once someone gets popular enough that they bypass the underground hardcore fans and they make it into the mainstream and then they become a part of pop culture.
00:08:10.000And he used to be a corrections officer, which is really fucked up, because to become a corrections officer, they gotta do a background check on you.
00:10:57.000He has to go to his boss and tell his boss on you.
00:11:00.000So he said that this guy was running around the cell, sneaking, trying to hear what they talking about.
00:11:04.000And if they shooting dice, he'd run up and tell his boss, "Hey, they're down there shooting dice, boss.
00:11:08.000Let's go get 'em." - Really? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:11:10.000That's the kind of guy they use him for.
00:11:12.000And then like when they do raids, you know, when they raid your cell, he would be the first one they push in, you know, the big fat guy, you know, 'cause everybody be kind of scared of the big fat guy.
00:11:22.000So they would all get behind him and shove him up in the cell so all this big blob of meat is coming at you, you know?
00:12:06.000But a lot of rappers, they come for a little while and then they go, I kind of think this is going to take wind out of his sail eventually.
00:12:13.000Well, I don't know, you know, when those people put, when labels put that money behind you and you become their money cow, you know, they have a sense of just shoving you down everybody's throat, you know, keeping you on the radio.
00:12:56.000Yeah, give him back his fucking name, bitch.
00:12:58.000If it makes me feel any better, he was on a TV show and he left his hat there and our friend Tom Segura stole his hat and he wears it every day.
00:13:13.000Yeah, Tommy was excited that I'm going to talk to you.
00:13:15.000He's a stand-up comedian, good friend of mine.
00:13:18.000Now your story is you were an aspiring tennis star and then you went on to make somewhere in the neighborhood roughly of like $600 million from selling crack in Los Angeles.
00:13:36.000What's really crazy is that this all has a connection, not just to Los Angeles, but to Ronald Reagan and Oliver North and the Contras in Nicaragua.
00:13:51.000There's crazy conspiracy theories of people always talking about, oh man, the CIA sells drugs, and then, you know, Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone, and we never landed on the moon.
00:14:00.000And when you talk about conspiracies, people go, what the fuck are you talking about, you crazy asshole?
00:14:04.000You really believe the CIA sold drugs?
00:14:08.000Not only did they sell drugs, Michael Rupert exposed it when the CIA director tried to come to Watts and have this big meaning to try to prove...
00:15:27.000So what they decided to do was sell weapons to Iran, convert that money back to Nicaragua to these guys, and these guys could take that money and go and buy drugs.
00:15:36.000That way it wouldn't leave a paper trail back to the U.S. And that's basically what they did.
00:15:42.000And that's what got exposed with the Oliver North trial, and that's when Ronald Reagan had to get on TV and said he couldn't remember.
00:18:25.000If it's not your kid that's illiterate, if it's not your kid that's growing up without a father, if it's not your kid who's growing up in poverty, doesn't know where the next meal is, You don't give a fuck.
00:18:33.000But meanwhile, you give a fuck about what's happening in another part of the world, you know, freedom in Afghanistan and all this nutty shit that went on in Iraq.
00:18:40.000Our real war is with our own people that we have to live with, our own national community.
00:18:46.000And our national community has six bots, and these six bots are the ghettos.
00:19:04.000We as human beings concentrate on some shit that's going on in another part of the world that's not even connected to us and we don't concentrate on people that we're gonna fucking come in contact with.
00:19:28.000Just imagine, you know, in a few years, your kid is walking down the street and he run into one of these kids that didn't get it, you know?
00:21:03.000He goes, this is all I ever wanted in life.
00:21:05.000My hall, my vines, a white woman like you.
00:21:08.000and you know my hall like that's what they used to call their car my vines was his clothes you know it's like the nicknames were hilarious the ones that didn't stick i haven't watched that since like 82 or something man wow but when i bought my first vcr man that was the first one i had i threw it right up in there whoop Wow.
00:21:28.000Okay, so you go over your friend's house.
00:21:41.000Because that, to me, is a massive mystery that someone figured out how to take cocaine and turn it into a more addictive, easier distributor.
00:21:47.000It was already guys cooking it when I started, right?
00:22:35.000So what I did is once I learned how to cook it from these guys, because I kept watching them do it over and over and over again, and they keep charging me to cook three grams, they might charge you $175.
00:23:12.000But once I learned how to do it, what I did is I just started showing all my little friends how to do it.
00:23:16.000You know, so that became like a job for them.
00:23:18.000They could just cook and make, you know, what other guys were charging $175, they could charge $125 and, you know, and just sold the market up.
00:23:26.000But it's weird that Coke is expensive, but crack is not.
00:25:45.000The police would never catch me with that.
00:25:47.000You know, I'm talking about something so small, you could barely see it.
00:25:51.000You know, I could put it in my fingernails.
00:25:52.000And he telling me that's worth $50, and I just spent my last dollar on gas, and now he telling me that this little thing is worth $50, so I can make my money back.
00:26:07.000So, you know, I go and I'm going around trying to figure out was it really Coke, you know, so I'm going to everybody and asking and asking and nobody really knew what it was.
00:26:18.00079, end of 79, beginning of 80. Now, in the 80s, for people who don't know, I was living in Boston at the time, and I remember when crack hit, and it was like a wave of crime just took over.
00:29:24.000I mean, a person should be allowed to do whatever it is with their life as long as they don't hurt anybody else or infringe on your rights that they want to do.
00:29:39.0001920. So you're 1920, you get started in it, and then how do you go about going from that to everything branching out to you being the biggest, most famous guy?
00:29:51.000It was, I guess you would say, like an evolution, you know, learning process.
00:29:56.000You know, the first time I learned, that first piece of cocaine I got, I got beat out of it.
00:30:00.000Another one of my big homies beat me out of it, you know, told me let him test it, let him smoke it, and you know, it wasn't big as a match head, so he cut it in half, and he smoked a piece of it, and he was like, oh, that's the way they used to do, you know, when they smoke it, and smack their lips, and tastes all right.
00:30:18.000I need another piece, though, to make sure it's good.
00:30:21.000You don't want to go out there selling nothing ain't right.
00:30:24.000Chipped it again, and the whole thing was gone.
00:30:26.000There was a little teeny-weeny piece left, and he's like, man, I'm gonna go and smoke that, too, and then I'll just pay you Friday.
00:31:07.000I want to re-up, but I don't have the $50.
00:31:09.000But what happened is that guy who beat me out to $50, And he taught me another lesson.
00:31:16.000He come right back that day with somebody that won $100.
00:31:20.000See, like with people who use, if they owe you, then they'll come and they'll bring somebody else with them and say, oh man, this ain't my money, this is his money.
00:32:06.000I started off just getting it from him and then I've been talking about going to Venice Skill Center to do upholstery and me and this teacher there that taught the class had become really, really good friends.
00:32:19.000We played tennis together and I just stopped going around him because I spent all my time selling coke.
00:32:26.000And one day I go down, you know, just to see him, because this was my man, and I hadn't seen him, and I said, man, how you doing?
00:34:57.000You feeling like, you know, finally God had recognized you.
00:35:02.000You know, all this time you had been ignored by God and now all of a sudden, you know, all the things that you had prayed for and hoped would happen in your life had just taken place.
00:37:03.000You know my mom, she used to take, because I had a couple of properties in my name, and so my mom, I used to let her go and collect all the rents of my Section 8 checks.
00:37:13.000And she used to just throw them in the bank, because I'd pay the mortgages and stuff out of my dope money.
00:37:20.000The banker used to say, tell your son to come in and meet us.
00:37:29.000So did you come up with a bunch of businesses to sort of mask your money?
00:37:32.000Yeah, I had a custom time, wheel shop, car wash, shoe store, beauty salon, junkyard, motel, bought an old theater, and I had apartment buildings all over the place.
00:38:28.000Like one time I had a building that I bought and they told me that the note was going to be three thousand a month and the note turned out to be sixty two hundred a month so it cost me like thirty two hundred a month because i couldn't read the contract wow so i mean it's costly when you don't know how to read that's incredible that you accomplish so much without learning how to read that's that's amazing well you know what what i felt is that i had developed a sense of people I could feel good
00:38:58.000people and bad people just sensing who to deal with and who not to deal with.
00:39:04.000You make some mistakes, but overall I think that You know, I did alright with some of them.
00:39:10.000So as long as you were making them money, everybody was making money, everybody was happy.
00:40:26.000They said, who is this guy in South Central making all this money that everybody in South?
00:40:30.000Because what I found out is when I finally got arrested is that not the people who wasn't really telling on me, right, to get me in trouble.
00:42:48.000But what else I found out, though, is that, see, my guys have become so big in their own rights, is if they mention your name one time to their little workers...
00:43:00.000And then their workers run out, oh man, the homie Rick took care of us.
00:43:05.000And these guys' words were so powerful that they would only have to mention you one time.
00:43:11.000You know, they like, I guess you would call them almost like evangelists.
00:43:14.000And that you keep having these type of guys mention your name, then the next thing you know your name is everything.
00:43:21.000This is all what you surmised once you got into prison, really sat down with all the time in the world.
00:45:16.000My spot was like two or three miles from my house.
00:45:21.000So what I would do is I would go to the spot, work, and every time I'd get like $2,000, I'd run to the house and put it up and run back to the track because you don't want to be standing out on the track with too much money because the police come over, man, where you get $3,000?
00:45:32.000What you doing standing out with all this money?
00:46:26.000So he's from a different vantage point.
00:46:28.000They don't even see him as a part of you.
00:46:30.000They don't even see him as like the police.
00:46:32.000If the police come and raid, they're going to grab us standing out on the block and they're not going to bother him because he's up in somebody's yard.
00:48:14.000You buy fifty dollars worth, you can make fifty more.
00:48:18.000Now, if you would go there and you start buying those fifties and you get up to spending two thousand, then the people at that house would take you to another house where you would have to come there and spend two thousand.
00:48:29.000Then if you got up to buying ten thousand, then you would get to go to another house.
00:48:33.000And then we would have A lot of these $50 houses, they would be just all over the place.
00:48:39.000And then it would just be a few $2,000 spots.
00:48:43.000And then it would be even less $10,000 spots.
00:49:55.000They started asking you where you're getting money from?
00:49:57.000The Freeway Task Force, man, they started to go crazy.
00:50:00.000First, they started to raid spots that we didn't even sell drugs at.
00:50:05.000You know, they started raiding my girlfriend's houses and planting drugs on them, you know, because I didn't keep drugs at my girlfriend's house because I stayed there, you know.
00:50:14.000But those were the easiest spots to figure out, you know, where that were connected to me, you know, where people came over because they would let their friends come over.
00:50:22.000Like my work spots, you didn't come to my work spot unless you sold drugs.
00:50:26.000Wasn't no need for you coming over there.
00:50:28.000Don't even, you know, don't even ask where that's at.
00:51:09.000So we jump out, go by, holler at them, you know, see who winning the crap game.
00:51:12.000And when we get ready to leave, the whole crap game come with me, you know, like it's 10, 11 o'clock at night.
00:51:18.000So they all want to walk me out to the car and make sure everything is good.
00:51:21.000So I jump in the car and pull off, and I look in the rearview mirror, and it's a car following me with no lights on.
00:51:27.000So, we're going to high-speed chase, you know, chase for a few minutes through the hood, trying to lose them, and then I look up, cars all around us coming, lights popping on, you know what I'm saying?
00:52:40.000They had me on a million dollar bail, 1251, where all the property and everything had to be inspected and make sure it wasn't drug proceeds and all that.
00:52:48.000Man, it was crazy going through all that.
00:52:51.000But while I was in jail, the cops come down to my cell to interrogate me.
00:53:19.000So during this time that they're interviewing me, they're recording everything.
00:53:23.000and at the end of the the interrogation they tell me you better not tell your lawyer what happened if we find out that you told him we're gonna uh we're gonna take care of you so i don't even tell my lawyer so we get to court the next time we go to court and uh they got the guy on the witness stand he's testifying i said man you know that guy came down there and seen me like two weeks ago and so he thinking that i ain't gonna tell my lawyer never right So my lawyer sprang it on him,
00:53:53.000like, man, you was at the county jail a couple weeks ago?
00:53:55.000And he was like, yeah, because, you know, he signed in, so he knew he had to say yeah.
00:54:52.000Oh man, we had them beating people, playing drugs.
00:54:56.000150 people got released from prison behind those cops doing what they did.
00:54:59.000What a lot of people don't realize is how deep corruption is in some police forces, especially in Los Angeles at a certain point in time, especially like the Rampart District.
00:55:08.000Like, people don't even know the story behind...
00:55:10.000That was a criminal gang that was running...
00:55:13.000Now, do you know Rampart was a fall off from the Freeway Task Force?
00:59:06.000I've heard it's possible to shoot yourself in the head twice, but that's also the dude who was the whistleblower for Enron, shot himself in the head twice.
00:59:39.000Well, I guess if you had any strength left, if you shot yourself in the head and you realized you were still alive and you had any strength left, you would probably shoot yourself in the head.
00:59:46.000You know, you'd be like, what the fuck?
00:59:48.000I'm gonna just bleed out here in the car?
00:59:54.000So do you think Gary Webb was murdered?
00:59:56.000I mean, his book, Dark Alliance, essentially what happened is it started out a bunch of articles written for the San Jose Mercury News and it was later published as a book.
01:00:03.000And in a three-part series, he investigated the Nicaraguan linked to the CIA-backed Contras who had allegedly...
01:00:10.000It's like he exposed the whole thing and brought the Reagan administration into light and exposed them for essentially being drug dealers.
01:00:24.000You know, they used to take your property before you were found guilty of a drug crime.
01:00:29.000And Gary made them stop that and said, hey, at least you got to take this guy to trial, find out he was selling drugs before you take his property.
01:00:35.000Because before, they would take your property, sell it, and then you get kicked out of prison and you never got convicted.
01:00:40.000And they'd be like, oh, well, your car is gone.
01:00:42.000Well, what's hilarious is if you look at how the Patriot Act has been used, you know, how many times the Patriot Act has actually been used for terrorism, it's a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction because the Patriot Act classifies drug selling Yeah.
01:01:11.000I mean, it's crazy the way I saw a thing on CNN the other night, and they were talking about how California has built so many prisons and absolutely no colleges in the past 10 years.
01:01:51.000It's 100% slavery, especially when you have certain government organizations that lobby to keep certain things illegal, like drug selling, like nonviolent crimes, like nonviolent drug offenses.
01:02:00.000When you're telling someone that they don't have control over their own consciousness and because they don't agree with you as to what they can and can't do, you're going to lock them in a cage and profit from it.
01:04:13.000Because I had already heard about Barry Seals and Barry Seals and his connection with the CIA and selling drugs.
01:04:20.000But I didn't know of any one person like you who could be directly connected to the dude that was connected to Nicaragua, that was connected to Oliver North and the whole chain of events.
01:05:21.000Well, what they did is they charged me under the three-strike law.
01:05:24.000And what they were saying is that since I had got convicted in all these different states, that those added up to three strikes.
01:05:33.000But what they didn't see in the law is that in order to get struck out, you have to go to prison, get out, then commit another crime, Go to prison, get out, and then commit the third one.
01:06:36.000So, if you are unrehabilitatable, if you've gone through two separate times and you're still out doing the same shit, alright, well this dude's a career criminal, this is his third offense, done.
01:09:40.000It's like a desperation, you know, and you say, man, it gotta be one loophole in these books because you know that if you can show them in the book where they made a mistake or where the book says that they should have did this when they did that, then you know you got action.
01:09:57.000So you're getting headaches just from thinking and reading too much?
01:12:11.000But they saying, oh, well, they lost their...
01:12:15.000Because, you know, Clinton signed a bill where you're 2255, you got one year after you're convicted to come up with newly discovered evidence.
01:12:23.000Like right now, say if you go to prison unjustly and you do all your appeals and everything, one year, you got one year to prove yourself innocent.
01:12:47.000They got guys in there that found newly discovered evidence that they can't even submit it for anybody to hear it.
01:12:53.000So when you went to jail for this and when you finally in prison, was this the first time you had ever been in prison other than the one time you got arrested and you stayed in there for a while?
01:13:51.000But before they get like that, they need somebody, a place that they can go and they could talk to Joe Rogan or Rick Ross or Magic Johnson or Oprah Winfrey or some of these other people who could teach them how to make money other ways.
01:14:07.000You know, because in the ghetto, you know the first business you see in the ghetto, you know what the first business is?
01:15:04.000So I'm confused on your timeline here, because when you were 20 years old, that's when you started, and then when you were 28, you got arrested.
01:18:37.000So when he got out, when I got with him, you know, we called the lawyer and told the lawyer, hey, man, it was $40,000 at that house, but wasn't no drug.
01:18:44.000So he called, and they said, man, wasn't no money at that house.
01:19:02.000Well, not only that, they can change the laws.
01:19:04.000I mean, we see what the fuck is going on now with this country.
01:19:06.000It's like every week they come up with some new, even more restrictive, even more Orwellian law that gets through that allows them to tap your phones with no wire, with no warrants, rather.
01:19:17.000You know, listening in on your phone calls, tap your fucking GPS systems, they can follow everywhere you go, and they can do all this shit without warrants now.
01:19:26.000I mean, and they do it supposedly under the guise of terrorism, but it's really under the guise of making it easier for them to prosecute you for whatever the fuck they want to, because there's a goddamn business in locking people up in cages.
01:20:30.000If she can't read that, she can't read.
01:20:32.000So then the prosecutor went through his whole thing, but then I went to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and they agreed with me totally, you know, said that if they did it the way they were saying do it, that they would lock up everybody would be career criminals on their first arrest.
01:20:47.000Yeah, literally, everybody would be in life.
01:23:02.000I've seen guys get stabbed, you know, while I'm taking a shower, you know, you hear this loud noise, like, just keep bumping up against the wall.
01:23:09.000Boom, boom, boom, really violently, you know, and you know this is somebody's body, you know, like, why would somebody be hitting the wall this hard, you know?
01:23:17.000And, uh, So I wrap my towel up and I look my head out at the shower and I see this guy and this guy stabbing him.
01:23:24.000And so to get off the knife, he's just throwing his back and head and everything up against the wall trying to get away from the knife.
01:24:02.000So if you have more than 20 years, you're going to go to a USP. Now, if you go to an FCI and you've got 20 years, but you keep getting into trouble, fights, and You know, something, maybe you stab somebody, then they're going to send you to a USP because they're like, okay, you go up here, these guys can handle stabbings.
01:24:41.000And then they have guys from all over the country.
01:24:43.000Say for you in Washington, D.C. and you've been getting in trouble in Washington, D.C. Then they ship you down to California to keep you out of trouble.
01:24:52.000You know, some of those guys from D.C. are really, really violent.
01:24:55.000And what they do is they take all the baddest guys from all over the country and they put them in USPS. So you may have a thing where guys are fighting over territory, like the TV. You know, like the DC guys or the Philadelphia guys might say, man, we want to watch this program tonight.
01:25:12.000The Philadelphia 76ers are playing, so we want to watch Philadelphia 76ers tonight because you're always watching the Lakers.
01:25:34.000The only time I really would put myself in Harm's way is when football season, you know, I played flag football with the guys, I played basketball with them, but I always had a mentality to defuse anything that ever happened.
01:25:52.000I wouldn't fight, you know, if If somebody filed me hard on the basketball court, it was my fault because I put myself on the basketball court.
01:26:01.000If I filed somebody hard on the basketball court, it was my fault because I filed him hard.
01:26:06.000So I would always apologize to guys when I filed them hard.
01:26:10.000But that's just the type of person I am.
01:26:11.000When I play basketball, I don't mean to hurt anybody, but sometimes I do.
01:34:20.000I mean, I think that it sounds logical.
01:34:23.000If someone explained to him how much better his own life would be if he helped other people's lives and it makes you actually feel better, yeah, he'd probably try it.
01:34:32.000But it's hard to sink that into people's heads.
01:34:47.000It's not like there's only a certain amount of gold out there and you're telling people where the gold's at and they're like, damn, that could have been my fucking gold.
01:34:54.000No, I mean, someone else's success has nothing to do with you.