Anybody perusing the Miami Herald yesterday might have seen the headline, "Gainesville nightclub shooting victims sue rapper" and for those that weren't checking up on South Florida, that rapper was Plies.

A lawsuit was filed against the rapper who's blown up behind the strength of his "goon" image, overtly sexual material and thousands of chest-naked pictures that teenager girls die for, but it doesn't take a lot of research to know that he is, at the very least, college educated (if not an alum).

Before dropping multiple albums based on his realness (Definition of Real and Da REAList) that sold fairly well, he was apparently a kick returner for the Miami (Ohio) football team around the same time Wally Sczerbiak (remember him?) had the school's basketball team getting national attention on the hardwood.

Back to the lawsuit, five victims of a nightclub shooting he was involved in 4 years ago are saying that he did the shootings purely to boost his street credibility for the sake of his album sales. The story says his entourage fired shots inside of a club and the guns were then found in his car.

Party foul? For sure. But did it work? I'd have to say so. Sure, his credibility is shot but how much is that credibility really affecting someone's music?

Take Rick Ross for example, it was exposed that he was actual a parole officer before his rap superstardom but that didn't take away from the fact that he's never put out a bad album, in fact, his last was one of the best of 2009.

Now the same can't be said for Plies dropping classic material, but at the end of the day I'd be lying if I hadn't rocked to "Plenty Money" when I got a little tipsy in college. Chances are this will be settle out of court and at the end of the day it'll just be a minor loss for a major win, we just have to hope one day someone's criminal record or bullets survived don't have an affect on us wanting to hear their music.

Read more about Plies' "REAL" past here and his current lawsuit here.