Tommy Hill Is Back & He Aint No Snitch

Former Philadelphia rap star Tommy Hill wants his reputation back.
Not the drug-dealing, street hustler, associate of mobsters and kingpins rep. But the street-smart, stand-up for yourself, never turn against a friend rep.
"I'm not a rat," Hill, whose given name is John Wilson, said over lunch one day earlier this month during a visit to Philadelphia.
Once a major player in the local rap music scene and now a convicted felon, Hill, 34, is looking to reestablish roots in his North Philadelphia community and clear up any misunderstanding about who he is and what he's done.
Those misunderstandings, the street-savvy former leader of the rap group RAM Squad knows, can be fatal.
"I need to let the city know that I'm not a creep," he said. "When you cooperate with the government, your life changes. I need to have a piece of my life back."
Hill, who grew up in the Richard Allen Homes public housing project, is a product of the tough streets of North Philadelphia.
His mother was killed when he was 13. His father has been in jail for most of his life. In the mid-1990s, he and a group of friends formed RAM Squad, using an acronym for "Richard Allen Mob."
They called it a rap group. The feds called it a drug gang. In fact, time would show, it was both.
Through the late 1990s, Tommy Hill was a "playa," with one foot in the drug underworld and the other in the city's rap scene.
He dealt with record executives and promoters, and he came in contact with kingpins and mobsters, like jailed Philadelphia crime boss Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino, controversial West Philadelphia Imam Shamsud-din Ali, and North Philadelphia drug trafficker Kaboni Savage.
Now, he says, he's put the drug life behind him, but he wants to get back into the Philadelphia music scene.
He knows it's a risky proposition. (Several law enforcement sources, who asked not to be identified, agree. Hill would be better off not coming back to the city, they say.)
Which is why, during a visit from his home near Atlanta, Hill agreed to talk about his past while touting his future.
His comments offer a seldom-heard, street-level analysis of life on the corner.
Hill makes a distinction between being a witness in one drug case - which he was - and being a "snitch," a "rat," or an "informant." He was never, he says, someone who set up friends for drug busts, never someone who secretly recorded conversations, never a "confidential informant" for the police or the FBI.
Investigators are not sure those who operate in the drug world, which frequently overlaps with the rap scene here and in other cities, would make that distinction.
Despite rumors on the street and reports in the media, Hill said he never testified about Merlino, Ali, or Savage.
Now, four years after being released from prison on a drug-dealing charge, Tommy Hill wants to come home.
But in a move that says as much about the city's music business as it does about the drug underworld, he knows he has to "set the record straight" in order to survive.