Rapper Rick Ross was reportedly hospitalized in Alabama Friday evening after suffering two medical scares in six hours that required planes to be diverted. The first scare came Friday afternoon as Ross was on a Delta Air Lines flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Memphis, Tennessee, where Ross was scheduled to appear at a University of Memphis basketball event that night. The plane returned to Florida after Ross suffered an unspecified medical problem. He was treated at a Fort Lauderdale hospital, and he even tweeted “Memphis here I come” afterward. But after Ross hopped a Memphis-bound private jet, it made an unscheduled landing in Birmingham, Alabama, because the 34-year-old singer experienced another medical problem, Memphis basketball coach Josh Pastner told a crowd at the Friday night event where Ross was to appear. “On his way to Memphis,” Pastner said, “he had to make another emergency landing, in Birmingham. He got really sick again, and they had to rush him to the emergency room.” WMC-TV in Memphis reported that Ross suffered a second medical seizure and had been hospitalized. The news station said the University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital would not comment on his condition. A hospital spokeswoman told The Associated Press that no one by Ross's name or his real name, William Leonard Roberts II, was listed as a patient. Birmingham airport spokeswoman Toni Bast confirmed to The Associated Press that a private plane traveling from Fort Lauderdale to Memphis made an unscheduled landing in Birmingham at around 5:30 p.m. because of a medical emergency, but she could not provide any further details. Calls to Ross' publicist from the AP were not returned Friday. Ross was scheduled to perform Friday night at the University of Memphis basketball team's midnight opening practice event, “Memphis Madness.”
