Lil Durk continues to go through a lot of legal hurdles in his murder-for-hire trial, such as recent accusations from prosecutors that he placed a $1 million hit on Quando Rondo. Not only that, but federal attorneys are also fighting to keep his music as evidence in the trial, which his defense lawyers strongly argued against.
According to an exclusive AllHipHop report, the government compared the Chicago artist's Only The Family (OTF) collective to Liberia's Anti-Terrorism Unit (ATU) in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Nicknamed the "Demon Forces," its commander was Chuckie Taylor, the son of the country's former president Charles Taylor Sr. A federal court in Florida sentenced Taylor Jr. to 97 years in United States federal prison after convicting him of violent torture and abuses in Liberia from 1999 to 2003.
But how is this relevant to Lil Durk's case? Federal prosecutors brought up Chuckie Taylor's case because when U.S. agents arrested him in Miami over a fake passport, they found notes of rap lyrics referencing ATU. These reportedly include "Take this for free / Six feet is where you gonna be / ATU n***as on the scene / Body bag is all you see" and "More sweat in my training means less blood in my life / So with the shots from guns, keep it dead and precise / Bull-doze ambushes in the midst of a fight / Try to cut my supply / You’ll be losing your life."
The judge in Taylor's case ruled that the lyrics were very relevant to his trial. Prosecutors referenced the lyrics in court, and a conviction followed.
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With this precedent in mind, prosecutors' allegations against Lil Durk, in their view, make certain lyrics and videos of his highly crucial to the case. They believe similar "music admissions" to Chuckie Taylor's case, whom also faced accusations of directing and orchestrating violence, are present in Durk's material.
Some lines that prosecutors highlighted reportedly include the following: "Popping traffic, we in Cali’ ride through Beverly Hills with choppers, bounty hunter / For the n***as who can carry, I’ll buy them 50K in guns," "Don’t respond to s**t with Von / I’m like, ‘F**k it, you trippin’, go get your gun’ / They droppin’ locations, I’m getting’ it done / F**k tweetin’, we slidin’, the feds are comin’," and a line about being "the type to hop on a flight with a warrant," allegedly mirroring the story of his October 2024 arrest.
Lil Durk's murder-for-hire trial begins on April 21, 2026. Prosecutors accused him of placing a hit on Quando Rondo and organizing an attack that sought to eliminate Rondo and took the life of Lul Pab in Los Angeles in 2022. Rondo survived the attack. Durk denies the charges against him and hopes the judge will rule in his favor regarding his lyrics, which his lawyers defended as artistic expression rooted in typical and unspecific genre subject matter.
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