American rapper A$AP Rocky will soon be tried for shooting one of his former friends, with whom he founded the hip-hop collective from which he takes his nickname, a Los Angeles judge decided on Monday.
The 35-year-old singer, who has two children with Rihanna, is being prosecuted for assault with a semi-automatic weapon. Real name Rakim Mayers, he pleads not guilty in this case, which dates back to November 2021.
Terell Ephron, one of the founding members of the A$AP collective, accuses the rapper of having shot him several times during a nighttime altercation in the streets of Hollywood, slightly injuring him in the hand.
At a preliminary hearing last week, Mr. Ephron, aka A$AP Relli, explained that his friendship with A$AP Rocky eventually crumbled because he felt the rapper had “gone 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, Mr. Ephron testified.
Furious at having been threatened, the complainant followed the rapper, insulting him, who finally turned around to shoot him, according to him.
A$AP Rocky’s defense rejects these accusations and assures that Mr. Ephron, who also filed civil proceedings, invented this incident – partially filmed by video surveillance cameras – to try to obtain money.
After two albums – “Long. Live. A$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 that 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 defended him during his pre-trial detention, accusing Stockholm in particular of disregarding the fate of African-Americans.