Ludacris, rapper and Fast & Furious universe upender, was at the center of a heartwarming news nugget last week when it emerged that he’d spontaneously purchased $375 worth of groceries for the woman behind him in line at a Whole Foods in Atlanta. Therra Gwyn Jaramillo, the woman in question, wrote about the incident on Facebook, and a local news affiliate picked the story up. Luda was minding his own business, likely buying a slew of organic nut butters and preserves, when some of his purchases got mixed up with Jaramillo’s on the conveyor belt. “I might as well get it,” he told Jaramillo, who’d inadvertently picked up more food than she could afford on her gift card. And then he wandered off into the distance as a hero.
Jonah Engel Bromwich at the New York Times decided to probe this a little further this morning. A man of Ludacris’s stature might well have a personal shopper, or at least an online grocery delivery service he can trust. Instead, he was in line like the rest of us schmucks. “Why,” Bromwich asked, “is the musician and actor seen so frequently at Whole Foods?”
Videos by VICE
That question is never really answered in the Times piece, but, after an extensive Twitter search, a pattern does emerge: Ludacris buys other people groceries quite often. “All in all, we found well over 100 posts of Ludacris going to grocery stores, about once a month, going back years and years,” Bromwich writes. “Whole Foods was a frequent destination, though he had also been seen at Sprouts Fresh Market, Publix and Costco.”
According to the rapper’s manager, Chaka Zulu, “Luda does these things all the time. But he doesn’t want to do interviews to highlight it. It’s just his heart.”
It’s precisely this sort of kind-heartedness that stopped me from buying into those Law & Order: SVU episodes in which Ludacris plays cold-hearted murderer.
Buy Alex Robert Ross some groceries on Twitter.
