is starting the new year off with a victory. After a long fought battle to keep his stage name, a court has finally ruled that Rick Ross (real name William Leonard Roberts) can maintain the moniker and image, Drug kingpin “Freeway” Rick Ross sued the rapper for appropriating his name and likeness back in 2010, long after the “Rick Ross” name and franchise rose to popularity. The trial was dismissed on First Amendment grounds, saying the rapper’s persona is protected because the expression is “transformative.”
“Freeway” Rick Ross was a 1980s drug kingpin who rose to infamy for his massive loads of cocaine he trafficked all over the east coast. The judge explained that Rick Ross the rapper gets to maintain the moniker because the sum of his music career is not rooted in those “raw materials.”
“We recognize that Roberts’ work — his music and persona as a rap musician — relies to some extent on plaintiff’s name and persona,” “Roberts chose to use the name ‘Rick Ross.’ He raps about trafficking in cocaine and brags about his wealth. These were ‘raw materials’ from which Roberts’ music career was synthesized. But these are not the ‘very sum and substance’ of Roberts’ work.”
“Roberts created a celebrity identity, using the name Rick Ross, of a cocaine kingpin turned rapper,” says the ruling. “He was not simply an impostor seeking to profit solely off the name and reputation of Rick Ross. Rather, he made music out of fictional tales of dealing drugs and other exploits—some of which related to plaintiff. Using the name and certain details of an infamous criminal’s life as basic elements, he created original artistic works.”
Free to maintain the name for which we know him best, Rick Ross has celebrated with the release of a freestyle over ’s “Bound 2.” Listen below.
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Ru Johnson is an arts and culture music writer living in Denver. You can follow her on
