American rapper A$AP Rocky pleaded not guilty before a Los Angeles judge on Monday in the case in which he is suspected of shooting one of his former friends with whom he founded the hip-hop collective , which inspired his stage name.
• Also read: Rapper A$AP Rocky faces trial for the shooting death of his former friend
• Also read: A$AP Rocky sued Terell Ephron for defamation in his gun case
Born Rakim Mayers, the 35-year-old singer who has two children with Rihanna is charged with assault with a semi-automatic weapon in this case.
At the end of the trial, “the facts will come to light and show that he is truly innocent and a victim in this case,” assured his lawyer Joe Tacopina as he left court.
The case dates back to November 2021.
Terell Ephron, one of the founding members of the A$AP collective, accuses the rapper of shooting him multiple times and slightly injuring his hand during a nighttime altercation on the streets of Hollywood.
Mr. Ephron, also known as A$AP Relli, explained in November that his friendship with A$AP Rocky eventually fell apart because he felt the rapper had “gone crazy.”
He accuses him of forgetting the other members of the collective that they founded in 2008 while they were in high school in New York and that brought him fame.
According to him, the star spoke of doing business with them without ever keeping his promises to his youth partners, some of whom fell into poverty and drugs.
This fueled tensions between the two men, especially after the death of a member of the collective in the fall of 2021. Until that November evening, when their meeting outside a Hollywood hotel degenerated into gun battles.
According to Mr Ephron, the star pulled out a gun, hit him in the chest and told him: “I'm going to kill you now” before walking away.
Enraged by the threat, the complainant followed the rapper and insulted him, after which the rapper eventually turned around to shoot him.
A$AP Rocky's defense asserts that Mr. Ephron, who also filed a civil lawsuit, fabricated this incident – partially filmed on video surveillance cameras – in order to get money.
After two albums – “Long. Live. A$AP” and “At. Long. Last. A$AP” – which catapulted him to stardom in the first half of the 2010s – the rapper has produced little music in recent years.
In 2019 he was given a suspended sentence after a fight in Sweden. An affair that led to diplomatic tensions between Stockholm and Washington and prompted former President Donald Trump to intervene.