Ok, this is the part where you learn the difference.
Rick wasn't a drug dealer before his father pulled him into a money making deal with the FBI. Remember, he was a PAID INFORMANT. In other words, the FBI and DEA crafted his whole persona all the way down to his "legitimate" fake ID's that showed him as being 21. Before getting money via the FBI, he was just a regular ass kid from the block. His JOB was to get close to drug dealers and dirty cops. He was, and likely still is, the youngest cat ever to have been paid by the Feds as an informant. He started doin dirt thanks to the Feds, he wasn't out there like that prior to that. So any deal that he made, all drugs sold, all of that shit where done so not as a street cat where "Stop Snitchin" applies, but as a FED.
If Rick had caught a case and decided to roll on his crew and everyone that he got work from that's clearly snitchin. But that ain't how this went down.
If you ever get into the intricacies of his case, you'll find that "Stop Snitching" is something only said, but rarely ever lived, just like an episode of "First 48". Once they got hemmed up by the Feds EVERYBODY turned on everybody, all the way up to the Chief of Police William Hart.