Source: @ar_ab_32 / Instagram
AR-Ab may be regretting putting too much of his life down in the studio. On Thursday (Apri 16), the Philadelphia rapper was sentenced to 45 years in prison for his role in a drug ring, and his own words were used against him in court.
Reports the Philadelphia Inquirer:
A federal judge sentenced the 38-year-old rapper — whose legal name is Abdul West — to 45 years in prison, a staggering sentence for the tough-talking kingpin convicted in 2019 of turning the record label he founded, Original Block Hustlaz (OBH), into a large-scale North Philadelphia drug-trafficking organization implicated in at least one murder.
But while prosecutors alleged West had ordered the 2017 slaying of a drug-world rival, they did not charge him with that crime, and U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson repeatedly stressed Thursday that it wasn’t a consideration in his sentence.
AR-Ab was actually found guilty of running the drug ring back in 2019. Recently, he insisted that it wasn’t an interview with DJ Vlad that got him jammed up by the Feds as many speculated.
But throughout his trial prosecutors used his lyrics and social media posts against him, trying to pin hits on him. which he denies, and proposing his violent bars were a form of intimidation against his rivals.
Nevertheless, in court, AR-Ab, born Abdul West, insisted the Feds were misconstruing his lyrics.
“The court, the FBI agents, and the prosecutors don’t understand my culture,” AR-Ab reportedly said. “We don’t rap about flowers and rainbows. We’re gangsta rappers. We rap about where we grew up. So we rap about drug dealing. We rap about violence.”
AR-Ab reportedly plans to appeal.
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