Rapper A$AP Rocky, companion of Rihanna, will be tried for shooting a former friend

American rapper A$AP Rocky will soon be tried for shooting one of his former friends, with whom he founded the hip-hop collective from which he takes his nickname, a Los Angeles judge decided on Monday.

American rapper A$AP Rocky, 35, who has two children with singer Rihanna, is being prosecuted for assault with a semi-automatic weapon. Real name Rakim Mayers, he pleads not guilty in this case, which dates back to November 2021. Terrell Ephron, one of the founding members of the A$AP collective, accuses the rapper of having shot him several times during an altercation night in the streets of Hollywood, slightly injuring his hand.

Resentments from his youth partners

During a preliminary hearing last week, Terrell Ephron, aka A$AP Relli, explained that his friendship with A$AP Rocky eventually crumbled because he felt the rapper had “took the melon“. He accuses him of having forgotten the other members of the collective that they founded in New York in 2008 when they were in high school and which allowed him to achieve fame.

According to him, the star talked about doing business with them without ever keeping his promises to his youth partners, some of whom descended into poverty and drugs. This fueled tensions between the two men, until that November evening, when their meeting in front of a Hollywood hotel degenerated into gunfire. The star pulled out a gun and slammed it against his chest, telling him “I’m going to kill you now”, before walking away, Terrell Ephron testified. Furious at having been threatened, the complainant followed the rapper, insulting him, who finally turned around to shoot him, according to him.

Already in another matter

A$AP Rocky’s defense rejects these accusations and assures that Terrell Ephron, who also filed a civil suit, invented this incident – ​​partially filmed by video surveillance cameras – to try to obtain money. After two albums – Long. Live. A$AP And At.Long. Last. A$AP – which catapulted him to stardom in the early 2010s, the rapper has produced little music in recent years.

He was at the center of a case which caused diplomatic tensions between Sweden and the United States, after a fight in Stockholm in 2019. Swedish justice gave him a suspended prison sentence and Donald Trump took his defense during his pre-trial detention, notably accusing Stockholm of disregarding the fate of African-Americans.