Stories from an Atlanta Limo Driver

If you're ever with a Limo driver, I recommend asking them to tell you about some of the celebrities they've driven around. I was with one guy, and I just had to suggest the topic and he went on a crazy roll, including the following:

-Expressing skepticism of the claim that Kobe Bryant was a rapist, based on his firsthand experience of the sheer number of groupie women who follow around basketballers, and the gold-digging nature of a lot of them. Apparently it's common practice for these guys to pay off all the groupie women they sleep with - partly to make sure it doesn't get in the papers, partly to make (potentially false) accusations afterwards of rape more difficult ("So why did you take his money afterwards if he raped you? Are you a prostitute?" etc.). I take no stand on any of the above, just reporting what he told me.

-As part of the above, when there were enough groupie women around, some of the guys would say 'okay, one of you go with the driver too', to which he would apparently have to turn them down, noting 'I'm an old man, I've got God in my life. But if you'd caught me 20 years ago...'

-Among rappers, Usher and 50 Cent are apparently d***heads (no, really!), while Lil John and Sean Paul are good guys. P Diddy is okay, but his entourage is full of tools (stop, that surely can't be right!). Apparently it's common for no-name losers in the entourage to act much more entitled than the stars themselves, which I'd totally believe.

-Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley apparently act in real life just like you'd expect from TV - "both really cool guys".

-Apparently, he was in a limo with Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, where Bobby Brown was talking to some business associate and Whitney went crazy and started attacking Brown and screaming - in other words, while the rumors that Bobby beat her up are true, she was also apparently nuts and not an easy woman to be around.

-Chris Brown and Rhianna both apparently seemed quite normal right before he beat the hell out of her. Go figure.

Interesting times - it's like the Taxi-cab confessionals, but with famous people.