Rihanna has made her first appearance at the Los Angeles trial of her partner, the rapper A$AP Rocky.
The singer-superstar on Wednesday morning sat out of view of the courtroom’s cameras, next to Rocky’s mother and sister in the downtown Los Angeles criminal courthouse. Security brought her into the courtroom surreptitiously to avoid crowds.
Rocky has been standing trial on two felony charges that he fired a handgun at a former friend, known by the name A$AP Relli, who testified on Wednesday about the moment Rocky allegedly fired a gun at him on a Hollywood street in 2021.
“I was hit. I was hit. Or I was grazed. I didn’t have a hole or nothing,” Relli told jurors.
Relli, born Terell Ephron, said he grabbed one of their mutual friends who was with Rocky after the first shot was fired and stood behind him for protection. He said he did not see Rocky fire the second shot, and Rocky ran away moments later.
The day before, Relli had described the first part of the confrontation, and was on the verge of describing the alleged shooting itself when court ended for the day.
He said he and Rocky, members of ASAP, a crew of creators at a New York high school, had been close but their relationship eroded after fame came for Rocky.
He said their relationship had been strained for years and getting worse in the previous days, but he was still “furious” when Rocky pulled a gun on him after a scuffle that began the moment the two met up near the W Hotel.
“I told him to use it. Because mentally I couldn’t believe it,” Relli testified, with his old friend staring at him intently from the defense table. “I physically could not believe there was a gun in my face. That was the breaking point for me.”
He said he had expected to argue but reconcile with his old friend, and the last thing he wanted to do was get into a fight that could ruin the modest music management business he had built.
“He’s famous,” Relli said. “I’m nobody.”
The testimony came on an abbreviated court day. The trial will only be in session for two hours in the morning because of a prosecutor’s previous commitment.
Rocky was raised in Harlem and his rap songs became a phenomenon on the streets of New York in 2011. He had his mainstream breakthrough when his first studio album went to No 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2013. The second one, in 2015, did the same.
He is expected to have his biggest career year as a multimedia star. This Sunday, he is nominated for a Grammy award for best music video for his song Tailor Swif, at the ceremony at the Crypto.com arena just two miles from the Los Angeles courthouse where his trial is being held.
He is also scheduled to headline the Rolling Loud music festival, to star opposite Denzel Washington in a film directed by Spike Lee, and to co-chair the Met Gala in May.
But the prospect of a conviction and the possibility of a maximum of 24 years in prison casts a shadow over all of it.
The Associated Press contributed
Source: theguardian.com
