Posted at 5:00 a.m.
A gun loaded into his vehicle, casings in the cup holder, round trips from Montreal to Ontario to pocket thousands of dollars through prostitution. Before being one of the rising stars of Quebec rap, rapper White-B had a life steeped in crime, reveal court documents obtained by The Press.
Handcuffed from head to toe, White-B steps out of the police van into a fortress-like prison. Flanked by correctional officers, he is escorted to his cell, stared at by his fellow prisoners. It is through this staging that the new Sentenced single rappers Lost & White-B from the popular collective 5sang14.
“I took pen time, I chose my life as a criminal,” White-B sings in this song released just Wednesday and which had already been seen 69,000 times on Sunday.
If reality beats fiction in this music video, it’s that White-B has been serving a cumulative four-year prison sentence for the past few weeks for possessing loaded guns in 2017 and 2019. Even though the judges denounced the scourge of gun violence in the country, the rapper got away with lenient prison sentences for his crimes.
Real name David Bouchard-Sasseville, the 27-year-old Montreal singer was first sentenced last February to two years in prison in Ontario, then to a similar sentence in Montreal in April.
It is therefore also in an Ontario jail that White-B was this spring, when the new hit of the popular Loud, Nothing lessin which the rapper makes a remarkable collaboration.
“Major raised in front of the police. It’s rap, but it’s art. The handcuffs replaced by gold”, sings White-B there. While there are no guns in this music video, guns and drugs were common in White-B’s early hits, which earned him millions of views with his 5Sang14 collective.
Although he remains behind bars for a long time, White-B continues to think big. “I have a successful career that brings me a lot of money. […] The next step was to go to France to grow my career,” boasted the artist, last April, summarizing his career to judge Manlio Del Negro.
The magistrate then sentenced him to two years less a day in prison for having possessed a loaded firearm in his apartment in August 2019. That day, the rapper had exhibited his pistol in broad daylight in front of a dazed worker in a alley in Montreal, simply because he blamed her for almost running over his Chihuahua. “That, do you think that’s a fake?” “, had launched White-B by showing his weapon, according to the evidence at the preliminary inquiry.
“A social problem, a problem for young people, a societal problem that has extremely serious effects. This is how the judge described the scourge of firearm violence in Montreal during the sentencing.
Pimping
This recklessness with loaded guns was nothing new for the rapper. Two years earlier, in August 2017, David Bouchard-Sasseville was not a figure known to the public. He was then a pimp in his spare time in the Greater Toronto Area, show Ontario court documents obtained by The Press.
While fleeing the police on the run in the parking lot of a motel, the apprentice rapper was caught with a pistol loaded with caliber. 22 (model HS38S) abandoned in a rented vehicle. The police, who wanted to arrest him for smoking cannabis, also found two casings in the vehicle.
“The proliferation of gun violence is of great concern to the courts and to the public. There was absolutely no valid reason for Mr. Bouchard-Sasseville to have a loaded prohibited weapon. Firearms are used only as weapons of intimidation and extreme violence, ”said Judge Jill Cameron in endorsing the lawyers’ suggestion, on February 11, at the Newmarket courthouse.
The musician with a career “already full of success”, in the words of the judge, was then sentenced to two years in prison for possessing a loaded prohibited firearm and receiving financial benefits from the provision of sexual services. A sentence which is in the “very low” range of sentences for firearms, said the judge, but which is explained by weaknesses in the evidence of the prosecution.
Before filling the MTelus in Montreal and being invited to the Francofolies and the Festival d’été de Québec, White-B lined his pockets with the fruits of prostitution.
In the spring of 2017, a woman who knew nothing about this environment contacted David Bouchard-Sasseville to take care of finding her clients and advertising her sexual services.
” [La victime] usually worked a week at a time. She and Mr. Bouchard-Sasseville traveled from Montreal to several places in Ontario where the accused found clients at the [victime]. This one performed sexual services in exchange for money, ”says the summary of the facts filed during the rapper’s conviction.
During these six one-week stays in Ontario, the victim earned $15,000, shared 50/50 with White-B. But this lucrative business ended when the rapper was arrested with a gun in the parking lot of a motel in Markham, a suburb of Toronto. The same motel where the victim engaged in prostitution.
In both cases, David Bouchard-Sasseville expressed remorse and apologized to the victims. “I grew up, I matured, I changed,” he said last April. Judge Del Negro then quoted him a proverb of circumstance: “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Consider this saying during your time in prison. »