The rapper’s kids and their mom, Rihanna, regarded on as a three-week trial highlighted a feud with an previous good friend.
Donald Trump’s former lawyer and Rihanna. Erika Jayne’s son and Johnny Depp’s former attorneys. A world type image from Harlem and his pre-fame mates.
This was the combination in a Los Angeles courtroom as A$AP Rocky, the rapper and trend fixture, confronted costs of allegedly firing pictures at an previous good friend throughout a November 2021 confrontation. After about three weeks of testimony and fewer than a day of deliberations, a jury discovered Rocky not responsible on two counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
In the early 2010s, Rocky rose to success because the face of the A$AP Mob hip-hop collective. The trial stemmed from an allegation from one other of its members: A$AP Relli, who accused Rocky of firing pictures that grazed his knuckles throughout an argument. Their quarrel, he testified, was associated to Rocky’s promise to cowl the prices of flying the physique of a mutual good friend who had not too long ago died residence to New York.
Rocky and Relli met in highschool, and the 2 stayed related, although Relli by no means reached something approaching the cultural peak of his extra well-known crewmate. The trial, within the forged of characters it drew, came about on the outskirts of fame. Relli was represented by Ben Chew and Camille Vasquez, the attorneys who represented Depp throughout his 2022 defamation trial in opposition to ex-wife Amber Heard. Sitting subsequent to Rocky on the protection desk was Joe Tacopina, a lawyer whose superstar purchasers have included Trump, whom he represented within the civil case that E. Jean Carroll introduced in opposition to him. The first witness to testify was a police officer who responded to the alleged taking pictures and whose mom, as many tabloids famous, is Jayne, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills participant and Tom Girardi ex.
And then there was Rihanna, in addition to the 2 younger kids whom she shares with Rocky, who have been intermittent presences on the proceedings. The couple’s relationship has at all times been a topic of shut consideration, even because the highlight on Rocky himself has dimmed in parallel together with his music profession petering out. He is presently scheduled to co-chair the Met Gala in May and headline the A-list hip-hop competition Rolling Loud in March; Saint Laurent issued press releases concerning the outfits he wore throughout the trial.
“Was it a real gun, or was it a fake gun?” Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec requested jurors throughout his closing assertion. “Nothing else is in dispute.”
The info of the case have been, in that sense, pretty slender. Rocky’s protection rested on the declare that he’d been carrying a prop gun with him for cover and had fired blanks. (Video surveillance of the altercation was in the end unclear.) But Przelomiec additionally waved on the dynamic between the 2 males.
“The defendant and certainly his significant other are powerful individuals within the entertainment industry,” he stated. “And they certainly have enough power to cancel small players like [Relli]…if that’s what they want to do.”
Tacopina argued that Relli was mendacity in pursuit of cash from his wealthier and extra well-known good friend.
“This is a man whose tongue is a stranger to the truth,” he stated throughout his closing assertion. “The important facts he gave you turned out to be lies.”
Prior to the trial starting, Rocky, going through as much as 24 years in jail if convicted on all costs, turned down a proposal from the prosecution. Under the proposed plea deal, he would have served 180 days in jail and spent three years on probation, with a seven-year suspended sentence. Instead, the trajectory of his relationship with Relli unfolded in entrance of a jury.
“I know u hate me,” Rocky texted Relli shortly after the altercation, as displayed on the trial. “I hate u too.”