A new GQ profile has brought new details to light regarding the rise of Bobby Shmurda and the months leading up to the December 2014 arrest of him and his GS9 crew.
Shmurda's associates allege that NYPD regularly attended and waited outside his shows to harass him and his crew. An affiliated rapper named Ball Reckless recalls one occasion on which officers pointed their guns at Shmurda's entourage, pulled them out of their cars, and threw them to the ground. Donny Flores, one of his managers at a time, says that when he went to the local precinct to retrieve Shmurda after he'd been booked another time, he saw cops "dancing and singing" to "Hot Nigga." "One cop was like: 'Oh, my God, this is what my daughter is listening to?' I didn't know what was going on," Flores said. "Now I know. They targeted him."
Zack Eden, who wrote the GQ profile, questioned the strength of the case against Shmurda by the Office of New York's Special Narcotics Prosecutor who had emphasized GS9's drug trafficking to justify their arrest. "No undercover sting had interrupted a GS9 drug transaction," Eden wrote. "No illicit profits had been sought in forfeiture proceedings. The press release that accompanied the arrest in December 2014 mentioned 'proceeds' and 'narcotics packaging.' And yet, defense lawyers say, nothing—no narcotics inventory, no packaging, no cash—has yet been shared by prosecutors during pre-trial discovery."
Other revelations from the profile: Epic Records rented Shmurda a condo in Florida and wanted him to record in Los Angeles in an attempt to get him out of the street life, but he always found a way back to East Flatbush, Brooklyn.
"Bobby was like, 'I don't understand why you won't let me hang out with my friends,' " said Flores. "It was a constant battle. Constant."
I kept telling him: 'Yo, you need to get out the city. Change it up,' recalls Epic A&R Sha Money XL, who first discovered Shmurda. "And he fought me."
In addition to reports of Shmurda "coughing up green shit" at one point, the GQ profile shared Sha Money XL's account of the infamous GS9 arrest at Quad Records. "Some turned into Batman, some turned into Spider-Man, climbing the walls," Sha Money XL said. "Some tried to turn into Invisible Man and hid between walls."
NYPD searched the whole building; the last person they found was Shmurda's right-hand man Rowdy Rebel. They didn't track him down until 7 AM.
Shmurda is currently locked up in Rockland County, 40 miles north of New York City. His trial was recently postponed (again) until September. In the past week, two members of the GS9 crew have been sentenced to over 50 years in prison.
Read the full GQ profile here.
