The rapper’s children and their mother, Rihanna, looked on as a three-week trial highlighted a feud with an old friend.
Donald Trump’s former lawyer and Rihanna. Erika Jayne’s son and Johnny Depp’s former lawyers. A global style symbol from Harlem and his pre-fame friends.
This was the mix in a Los Angeles courtroom as A$AP Rocky, the rapper and fashion fixture, faced charges of allegedly firing shots at an old friend during a November 2021 confrontation. After about three weeks of testimony and less than a day of deliberations, a jury found Rocky not guilty on two counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.
In the early 2010s, Rocky rose to success as the face of the A$AP Mob hip-hop collective. The trial stemmed from an allegation from another of its members: A$AP Relli, who accused Rocky of firing shots that grazed his knuckles during an argument. Their quarrel, he testified, was related to Rocky’s promise to cover the costs of flying the body of a mutual friend who had recently died home to New York.
Rocky and Relli met in high school, and the two stayed connected, though Relli never reached anything approaching the cultural height of his more famous crewmate. The trial, in the cast of characters it drew, took place at the outskirts of fame. Relli was represented by Ben Chew and Camille Vasquez, the attorneys who represented Depp during his 2022 defamation trial against ex-wife Amber Heard. Sitting next to Rocky at the defense table was Joe Tacopina, a lawyer whose celebrity clients have included Trump, whom he represented in the civil case that E. Jean Carroll brought against him. The first witness to testify was a police officer who responded to the alleged shooting and whose mother, as many tabloids noted, is Jayne, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills player and Tom Girardi ex.
And then there was Rihanna, as well as the two young children whom she shares with Rocky, who were intermittent presences at the proceedings. The couple’s relationship has always been a subject of close attention, even as the spotlight on Rocky himself has dimmed in parallel with his music career tapering off. He is currently scheduled to co-chair the Met Gala in May and headline the A-list hip-hop festival Rolling Loud in March; Saint Laurent issued press releases about the outfits he wore during the trial.
“Was it a real gun, or was it a fake gun?” Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec asked jurors during his closing statement. “Nothing else is in dispute.”
The facts of the case were, in that sense, fairly narrow. Rocky’s defense rested on the claim that he’d been carrying a prop gun with him for protection and had fired blanks. (Video surveillance of the altercation was ultimately unclear.) But Przelomiec also waved at the dynamic between the two men.
“The defendant and certainly his significant other are powerful individuals within the entertainment industry,” he said. “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 lying in pursuit of money from his wealthier and more famous friend.
“This is a man whose tongue is a stranger to the truth,” he said during his closing statement. “The important facts he gave you turned out to be lies.”
Prior to the trial beginning, Rocky, facing up to 24 years in prison if convicted on all charges, turned down an offer from the prosecution. Under the proposed plea deal, he would have served 180 days in prison and spent three years on probation, with a seven-year suspended sentence. Instead, the trajectory of his relationship with Relli unfolded in front of a jury.
“I know u hate me,” Rocky texted Relli shortly after the altercation, as displayed at the trial. “I hate u too.”
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