After art imitating life for so long it seems the boot may now be on the other foot. Anthony Gonzalez, former manager of The Clipse, has just been charged with running a massively large coke operation in Virginia. He sold a little weed here and there too, but as Jadakiss said on Ja Rule's New York, "that coke will get you a long time." A very long time. How some rappers manage to talk, sometimes very explicitly, about selling cocaine without having to take one of those up-North trips is one of the biggest conundrums in hip hop music. Of course, some of them are snitches, and a lot of them are fronting. But they can't all be informers, otherwise there'd be no-one for the snitches to actually snitch on; and they can't all be fakes. A lot of cocaine is consumed in North America - even Hillary Clinton acknowledged that recently following the terrible social unrest in Mexico. So some of them have got to be real life top shotters, even if the last time they actually touched something illegal was during Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign. Do they rely on past convictions (most likely for small amounts of that raw) to help them get away with it? Then when the bwoy dem start sniffing around they can say "Yo, I'm just talking about that past ish Mr. Officer. This is just entertainment Mr. Officer. Wee ooh wee ooh wee." Do they have really good laywers who can argue their case well and, if necessary, grease the palms of those that need to be greased? Who knows? Of course Pusha T and Malice are unavailable for comment and are unlikely to be for a long time. I think (and hope) that they'll be okay. They're good brothers and great rappers. Plenty of good folks find themselves involved in shenanigans for all sorts of reasons. Remember the shades of grey, people. I'm not saying that's the case with The Clipse 'cos I don't know anything about their situation: I'm just saying that's how life is. Their second album, Hell Hath No Fury, may not have done big numbers, but their classic debut Lord Willin' is just short of platinum. Plus, Pusha T was on tour with Kelis when Kaleidoscope dropped so you know they've been getting that show money for damn near a decade now. And they're down with The Neptunes, who have got that big, big extra-long paper. Who knows? They may even, on the low, provide muscle for Pharrell and Chad, who are too good at making music to bother with all that thug sh*t.  Most importantly of all, Gonzalez is being widely described as their "former" manager. Exactly when they cut ties with him, officially or not, may be crucial to their whole defence - should they need to defend themselves. With their third album looming, the bigger question is will the publicity help or hurt them? This one looks interesting.

As expected, Rick Ross landed at Number One with his third album. Deeper than Rap sold 158,000 copies (just over 20,000 more than Jadakiss) to top the Billboard charts. Whatever you think of Rawse - and opinions range right across the board - you can't deny his success right now. But will he be able to parlay his current buzz into a fourth Number One album? Not if 50 Cent has anything to do with it. Curtis has wisely been keeping quiet in the run up to Deeper than Rap's release. Why give him the kind of publicity that a worldwide superstar like 50 Cent can easily attract? That would be insanely counter-productive. However, now the album is out and about expect 50 to step up his campaign ridiculously. For an example of how this will be done look no further than the forthcoming tell-all from Tiallondra Kemp, the mother of Ross' son. Tia's Diary: Deeper than Rap is set to drop towards the end of May. While she'll undoubtedly have some embarrassing stories about her former significant other, it's difficult to see what revelation can be worse than him being a correctional officer. But let's wait and see. Fif' is nothing if not smart and he must have something really special up his sleeve to keep quiet for this long. It may not even take the release of the book to stop him in his tracks. That new video of him in St. Martin may do the trick. While debating whether or not using the term "monkey" for 50 Cent constitutes self-hatred, Ross calls Eminem a "hungkey", meaning of course "honky." It's a real shame that he had to go there. Nothing achieves racial unity in a f***ed-up, unfair world quite like hip hop culture. How will the three-headed monster respond to this? It's quite possible that Dre is making a beat and 50 and Em are writing lyrics right now.

Speaking of keys that hang, America's second-best-selling hip hop album release of the week is Asher Roth's Asleep in the Bread Aisle. It sold 61,000 copies, which is less than half what the Bawse did. Once again we wade into uncertain racial waters. Did that Twitter joke about "nappy headed hoes" wreck his chances of obtaining an above-average first week look? From where we're standing, the answer is a big fat "Nah". While it was an obvious play on the Don Imus incident, the wildly inconsistent response is what made it look fishy. If you ask me - and nobody did, but I'll tell you anyway - it looks like a publicity stunt gone very horribly, disastrously wrong. And the response from his PR team - or whoever it was who advised him to apologise, then delete the original post and the apologies before gagging Roth on the subject - makes FEMA look well-organised. To be real, I think the numbers reflect the quality of the album. Occasionally, he fulfills the vast promise seen on The Greenhouse Effect mixtape, but only occasionally. The album is far from wack - very, very far from wack. And Asher has skills, nobody can deny that. But it ain't that amazing either. Would he really be getting all this attention if he wasn't a nerdy white kid? I wouldn't be surprised to find that white rappers more comfortable with life on the gully side are slightly put out too. I'm thinking guys like Ill Bill, Shawn Wiggs and, yes, Eminem. J-Love is a DJ but would you mess with him? I wouldn't. He seems like he could quite easily bust someone up. This is clearly just as much about class as it is about race. Then again, out of all the rappers that were on XXL's '09 freshmen cover, how many of them are gonna receive the same promotional push and press coverage as your boy from Morrisville, PA? How many of them even have release dates? I'm sick of this doo-doo. Don't laugh - it ain't funny. Word to Chris Tucker. But none of that is Asher's fault - he's just a kid that loves hip hop - yet he will benefit from the situation. It's 2009 and black musicians are still going through the same shit they did in the 1950s. With all that and now Rick Ross' latest vid, I'm dangerously close to a "can't we all get along" kinda flex. And I'm not even one to preach like that.

So the big dog had to be muzzled. Last week, I mistakenly thought that if one person could get away with having a go at the juggeranuts of this rap game it would be Funkmaster Flex. He's been the biggest DJ in the game ever since Nuttin' But Flavor (remember that?) in '95. But everybody, it seems, has to answer to somebody somewhere. Following his tirade last week, HOT97 released a statement that effectively said, "Flex may have been talking sideways about you, but don't worry, we got you Jimmy. We're gonna promote the hell out of Relapse and Before I Self-Destruct. And if Dre drops Detox, you know we're gonna be all over it like a rash too. Now, about that advertising..." The esteemed individual and hip hop elder statesman Davey D made a good point about the whole hoo-haa. What if Flex refused to play rappers who don't spit socially conscious lyrics? What if he refused to play rappers who are repeatedly disrespectful to women? What if Oprah made them comments instead of Don Imus? My bad, but I been playing the hell out of that Jada joint. It's worth thinking about though, ain't it?

Really sad to hear the news about Nas and Kelis filing for divorce.  Although it wasn't the most obvious of hook-ups back when they first got together, anyone that saw them together soon realised they were for real (Nasir once told a HIPHOP.COM scribe how she has him doing the Hoovering round their house - what an image!).  But I guess, as with so many celebrity couples, it's not the biggest surprise to hear that after four years of wedlock and a handful of on-record and in-video collabos, they've decided to call it quits. Let's just hope it's all amicable and doesn't get messy.

Anyway, let's end on a high point. Over the years, those of us who love this ish but don't live in the You Ess of Ayy have gotten used to being short-changed or ignored by the Ameri-centric hip hop industry. But we've also given it up for the artists who've remembered there's a world beyond America's borders (and it doesn't just have Mexico and the Caribbean in it). Public Enemy and The Roots are probably the first two names that spring to mind when you think about rap artists who took their music around the world and back again, and we've seen strong showings recently from the likes of Ice Cube and De La Soul. But too many people must have missed that memo, and too many stars of hip hop seem content to kick it back home and let the rest of the world come to them. So maximum respect to Tony Starks, who's gonna be clocking up those air miles on a world tour that's worthy of the name. Yeah, Ghostface could've gone to Africa. And we're sure that the good people of Port Stanley in the Falklands would love to have a visit from the Wallaby Champ. Maybe next time. Still, we thought this itinerary deserved special mention so here's where the Wu Gambino can be found over the coming weeks and months - check locally for venue details.

Ghostface World tour:

UK:
May: 6 The Scala, London
May 7 Glasgow
May 9 Bristol
May 10 Manchester
FRANCE:
May 13 Nantes
May 14 Paris
NETHERLANDS:
May 16 Rotterdam
May 17 Amsterdam
BELGIUM:
May 18 Brussels
GERMANY:
May 20 Koln
SWITZERLAND:
May 21 Basel
May 22 Zurich
GERMANY:
May 23 Leipzig
SWITZERLAND:
May 24 Vevey
May 26 Lund
FINLAND:
May 27 Helsinki
NORWAY:
May 28 Oslo
SWEDEN:
May 29 Stockholm
SPAIN:
May 30 Barcelona
May 31 Madrid
GREECE:
June: 3 Athens
CZECH REPUBLIC:
June 4 Prague
GERMANY:
June 5 Berlin
RUSSIA:
June 10 St Petersburg
June 11 Moscow
CHINA:
June 13 Shanghai
June 14 Beijing
AUSTRALIA:
June 23 Adelaide
June 24 Sydney
June 25/26 Melbourne
June 27 Perth
June 28 Brisbane

If you missed last week's news, catch up HERE.