Bad Rap: The Surreal Saga of Bobby Shmurda
The government’s case against Bobby Shmurda, now heading to trial, raises all kinds of nagging questions, but none more troubling than this: Does the justice system fundamentally misunderstand the world of rap?
GQ / MAY 2016
Chewy wanted some weed. This was before the viral music video, before the record deal, before the world fame under the stage name Bobby Shmurda, and before the indictment that has waylaid his rap career, possibly forever.
On the evening of November 5, 2013, he was still just Chewy, his childhood nickname, when he climbed the stairs of his apartment building. He was headed up to his friend Pluto's place. Pluto was the local marijuana vendor in this part of Brownsville, Brooklyn, which, together with adjacent neighborhoods in the far eastern end of the borough—East New York, East Flatbush, Canarsie, where the subways end—is regularly described by the police and the media as one of the most violent precincts in New York City. When Chewy reached the landing of Pluto's apartment, he felt something cold and hard touch the back of his head. Then someone grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. A pair of eyes stared back through the sight hole of a ski mask. The gun in the man's hand was a large-caliber revolver. He was with a partner, similarly disguised and similarly armed. "Where the hell Pluto live?" And then Pluto's door suddenly opened—there was Pluto—and Chewy watched as one of the gunmen wheeled in surprise and fired.
"They shot him right in front of my face," Chewy recalls now. "When they shot him, I turned my head to the wall, like: I don't know nothin', I ain't see nothin'. They grabbed me into the house. And then they had the gun to my mouth. They were like: 'Where the drugs at?' I'm like, 'Listen, I never been here before. I just came for some weed. I don't know nothin' about nothin'.' 'Stop fuckin' lyin'! You wanna die, too?' I'm like, 'I do not wanna die, but I don't know where no drugs are.' It was like a fucked-up predicament." The men ransacked the apartment and found the weed. They instructed Chewy and two others who were there to get onto the floor. "They said if we move they gonna kill us right there." When the men left, Chewy and the others ran to the kitchen, where they found Pluto dead.….