The charges against Pollard included two counts of illegally possessing a firearm and a misdemeanor count of reckless endangerment. "The fact is, the law in this kind of thing is a very blunt instrument," Kennedy tells me. No undercover sting had interrupted a GS9 drug transaction. He signed a deal with Epic Records after his song "Hot Nigga" peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2014. © 2020 Condé Nast. He arrived late to sessions, Sha Money says: "He didn't work, so it was almost like a waste. Krista Schlueter/The New York Times/ Redux. [17][18] Freestyles over the instrumental were made by a number of rappers after its release, including Juicy J,[19] French Montana,[20] Lil' Kim,[21] Gunplay,[22] and T.I.

Even after he'd made it big, he aggressively sought to build street cred by surrounding himself with real hustlers—until he was shot to death on the Las Vegas Strip, his pursuit of authenticity was his downfall. On December 24, 2014, New York City Police arrested Shmurda, and he was charged with conspiracy to murder, weapons possession, and reckless endangerment. ", As we worked through the chronology of his life so far, he came to the tale of Pluto's murder. The “Hot N*gga” rapper’s mother shared a sweet message for her son in celebration of his 26th birthday. In recent years, the cases brought by the SNP have targeted sophisticated drug operations with millions of dollars in revenue and kilos of inventory.*. They chose two of Pollard's favorite tracks, "Hot Nigga" and "Shmoney Dance," and paid a local kid $300 to shoot them. “Ackquille Pollard’s Board of Parole interview is currently scheduled for the week of September 14,” a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) said. had a keen interest in GS9, Wilson says he grew ever more frustrated. You wanna die, too?' he said. Complex reports … At Rockland, he was being held in "protective custody," away from the general population, and could only come out of his cell for 75 minutes each day. They could see Pollard inside, a firearm in one hand and a joint in the other. One former N.Y.C. To compound the problem, groups identified as criminal gangs by the cops often include aspiring rappers.

"Everything I rap about, it's just entertainment," he told me. It was like a fucked-up predicament." But in the end, Wilson, Sha Money, and others say Pollard felt an unshakable loyalty to the kids he grew up with. Wilson expected maybe four or five of Pollard's friends to show up. [34], James Essig, head of the NYPD unit that made the arrests, said Shmurda's songs and videos were "almost like a real-life document of what they were doing on the street. Ball says he found Pollard holed up at the Times Square Holiday Inn, and he was not alone. So far, the main evidence of drug sales appears to be the recorded phone calls and the snippets of dialogue about dealing "crills" and "twork. The police then took all four people in the apartment into custody. I just came for some weed. [25] The song's official remix—featuring guest vocals from Fabolous, Chris Brown, Jadakiss, Rowdy Rebel, Busta Rhymes, and Yo Gotti—was released on September 4, 2014.

Rapper Shmurda, né Ackquille Jean Pollard, 26, met with the parole board last week, with TMZ reporting … "They were a band of brothers," Sha Money says. They were frequently in trouble. He spoke of the "movies" he had written, including one based on the story of his life. On the evening of November 5, 2013, he was still just Chewy, his childhood nickname, when he climbed the stairs of his apartment building. "That's impossible," Sha Money said. "I told them: 'Hey, you got to stay away. "—" denotes a recording that did not chart or was not released in that territory. They instructed Chewy and two others who were there to get onto the floor. On February 8, Chewy wanted some weed. "Some turned into Batman, some turned into Spider-Man, climbing the walls," Sha Money recalls now. "It was like he was kidnapped by Crips," Ball says.