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Earlier this month, Casey Gane-McCalla, a journalist, rapper, comedian and Facebook friend, declared on his FB status: "I am an Ivy league college educated journalist with no criminal background...still when I hear this song...I think I'm Big Meech."

The song that Gane-McCalla refers to is B.M.F, a single from Rick Ross's fourth album, Teflon Don which dropped Tuesday. The song's considered a heater. The summer's hip-hop anthem.

His admission came as I started to notice more and more black male friends and associates like Gane-McCalla embrace Rick Ross with fingers thrown in the air. These are: college graduates who own all of the rapper's albums, recite his lyrics passionately, and wear dress shirts and ties to work daily even though it's not required. These are: corporate ladder-climbers who admit that Ross is growing on them and wonder why I don't agree. These are: straight-laced brothers who turn up the radio and head nod hard to gangster stories attached to thumping beats. These are: Ivy-leaguers who, even just for the length of the song, feel like they're Big Meech.



Some context: Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory, cofounded the notorious, drug cartel BMF (Black Mafia Family). It's been estimated that the organization, led by he and his brother Terry "Southwest T" Flenory, pulled in more than $250 million during its reign.



Big Meech lived the lifestyle so many rappers claim and celebrate. Cases of champagne at the club. Host of luxury cars. He beamed money-green and really did blow money fast. Women swooned and brothers bowed. His crew was air-tight; zero tolerance for disrespect.



The hypermasculine dream. Until the inevitable fall in 2008, when Big Meech received a thirty-year prison sentence for running a criminal enterprise.



So why would black men, who possess the legitimized American dream credentials: good education, better job, nicer salary, property in their own name, sometimes feel, as Ross has termed, "meechy"?

Read the entire piece at TheLoop21.com.