When Bobby Shmurda, the charismatic star of the surprise 2014 hit “Hot N—a,” emerged from the back of a New York County Supreme Court room in January, the 20-year-old looked sad and serious. Shmurda sat very still at the defense table, showing none of the viral persona that was responsible for 102 million YouTube views, a $2 million record deal and the international “Shmoney Dance” craze. Today he was just another young man before the judge, one of 13 reputed members of the East Flatbush, Brooklyn, alleged gang GS9 (“God’s Sons”) to have his case called.
“When I see the judge and the DA, I just see a bunch of people trying to take my life away for being blessed,” says Shmurda, who talked with Billboard from the Manhattan Detention Complex, where he has been held since December. “When I look at them, it looks like a bunch of haters.”
Four months ago, Shmurda was racing around a Midtown soundstage, sunglasses and gold chains glinting, as he performed “Hot Boy” (the “Hot N—a” radio edit) on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. With him were lifelong GS9 friends, beaming, and two female dancers in “Shmoney Team” crop tops. The same month, “Hot Boy” reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Everything felt like the best moment of my life,” Shmurda says. “Everything.”
But as Shmurda’s wildest dreams were coming true, the New York Police Department was closing in on him. At about 4 a.m. on Dec. 17, nine days after the rap artist appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote his Shmurda She Wrote EP, cops stormed Times Square’s Quad Studios, where Shmurda was recording (and where 2Pac was shot in 1994). Police also executed search warrants in East Flatbush. In total, they rounded up 15 GS9 members, including Shmurda’s older brother, Javase, 22. Officials claim they seized 10 weapons in the sweep, along with a small amount of crack.
The following day, in a joint press conference, the NYPD and Special Narcotics Prosecutor’s Office delivered an indictment based on a yearlong investigation that accused GS9 members of 69 counts (later upped to 101), including conspiracy, second-degree murder (for a 2013 bodega shooting), attempted murder (for a 2014 shooting that struck an innocent bystander) and reckless endangerment (for June gunfire outside a Brooklyn barbershop). Also during the press conference, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton alleged that GS9 stood for “G-Stone Crips” adding, “This gang … gloated about murder, shooting and drug-dealing in YouTube videos and viral dance moves.”
Bobby Shmurda Speaks From Jail: ‘People Are Trying to Take My Life Away for Being Blessed’ (Exclusive)
Further, the accusation alleged that “the driving force behind the GS9 gang and organizing figure within this particular conspiracy” was one Ackquille Pollard, aka Bobby Shmurda. (“He ‘murdered’ every track he did,” his mother says about her son’s stage name.) Prosecutors charged Shmurda with conspiracy to commit murder and assault, weapons possession, reckless endangerment and criminal use of drug paraphernalia. While the prosecution has not identified a GS9 hierarchy, it says his “status” made others defer to him. “That shit is bullshit,” insists Shmurda. Asked about the charges, he says, “Bullshit.” He offers, “I come from a bad neighborhood. They’re upset that somebody my age made it out and is making so much money.”
At the arraignment, a district attorney painted a vivid picture of an apartment door opening last June to reveal the then-19-year-old sitting on the couch in a “known trap location” (a place where the DA says GS9 allegedly stored weapons), showing a loaded automatic pistol to one of his co-defendants, the air rife with pot smoke. The defense, meanwhile, says Shmurda is an easy scapegoat because he’s famous. “They’re looking to make an example of this kid and put a feather in their cap,” says Shmurda’s attorney Kenneth Montgomery. “It’s all a big show for NYPD and prosecutors.”
Shmurda’s roller-coaster rise and fall has given the rap star’s rags-to-riches narrative a 2015 twist: Social media made him famous overnight, but it made him famous for a life he says he was trying to escape. Viral success gave him what he called a “big ticket” out of the hood, but also evidently helped increase the scrutiny of law enforcement. Today, he languishes in jail, unable to make bail — bail set at $2 million, the same amount as his Epic contract.
Working the register last month at Brooklyn’s M&L Seafood Boutique, the takeout fish joint she opened in June, Shmurda’s mother and manager, Leslie Pollard, 40, has curly, red-tinted hair and an aura of fearlessness. Her son’s friends describe Shmurda as a mama’s boy. (“He calls his mom all the time,” one grumbled. “He hasn’t called me once.”) Pollard insists that her youngest is being targeted because he has made a name for himself. “They’re saying that because this group of young men hangs together, and things happen, that they’re all ‘conspiring’ to do these things,” she says. “It’s not a gang situation: These are kids who grew up together from 3 and 4 years old.”
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As Reported By: Ada Calhoun Billboard
