American rapper A$AP Rocky will soon go to trial for shooting one of his former friends with whom he founded the hip-hop collective from which he takes his nickname, a judge in Los Angeles ruled on Monday.
The 35-year-old singer, who has two children with Rihanna, is charged with assault with a semi-automatic weapon. Real name Rakim Mayers, he has pleaded not guilty in this case, which dates back to November 2021.
Terell Ephron, one of the founding members of the A$AP collective, accuses the rapper of shooting him multiple times and slightly injuring his hand during a nighttime altercation on the streets of Hollywood.
At a preliminary hearing last week, Mr. Ephron, also known as A$AP Relli, explained that his friendship with A$AP Rocky ultimately 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 until their meeting outside a Hollywood hotel that November evening turned into gunfire.
The star pulled out a gun, slammed it against his chest and told him, “I’m going to kill you now,” before walking away, Mr. Ephron testified.
Enraged by the threat, the complainant followed the rapper and insulted him, after which he eventually turned around to shoot him, he said.
A$AP Rocky’s defense denies these allegations and asserts that Mr. Ephron, who has also filed a civil lawsuit, fabricated this incident – partially filmed on video surveillance cameras – to make money.
After two albums – “Long. Live. A$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 led to diplomatic tensions between Sweden and the United States following a dispute in Stockholm in 2019.
The Swedish justice system sentenced him to a suspended sentence and Donald Trump defended him during his pre-trial detention, accusing Stockholm in particular of disregarding the fate of African Americans.