namely

just realized that my esteemed editor decided to excise this question from my story. it happens to be my favorite:

Rick Ross isn’t your birth name, and Freeway Ricky Ross is the name of a famous cocaine kingpin. Why would you create a character that already exists as a person in real life? Why wouldn’t you come out under your own name or something else?

The reason was, back then, there wasn’t a basis for it. It was one of those things when I was really in the streets . . . I would have been about 19 at the time, and it wasn’t even a thought of it being a big deal because, yo, I heard the name and then later I was in the studio and I said it, and I said it just like a boss, and then I said ‘boss’ after it. I looked at myself as a young boss at the time, so I just started using the moniker every now and then. And it just grew on me, and everybody just started calling me Ross. And then, when I had a record that blew, details on the real dude surfaced, you feel me?

Has that created any problems for you?

Nope, no problems.