NY Rapper Bobby Shmurda Facing Gun, Drug Charges
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) -- An up-and-coming rapper who performs under the name Bobby Shmurda will face gun and drug trafficking charges when an arraignment is unsealed in court.
Ackquille Pollard was taken into custody shortly after he left a recording studio near Radio City Music Hall in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. His indictment will be made public Thursday.
The arrest stems from an investigation into a series of gang-related shootings and drug trafficking in the city.
NY Rapper Bobby Shmurda Facing Gun, Drug Charges
Pollard, 20, is named with other defendants in the indictment, said Kati Cornell, a spokeswoman for the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor. She declined to detail the charges.
Chad Marshal, another aspiring hip-hop artist known as Rowdy Rebel, was arrested inside the recording studio where police also recovered handguns, authorities said.
The Brooklyn-born Pollard is best known for the hit song "Hot Boy" and for a music video that popularized a dance move called the "Shmoney dance."
A "Hot Boy" video posted on YouTube in August has been viewed tens of millions of times, and Pollard, who recently signed a deal with Epic Records, performed the song for a national television audience this month on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live."
"My music is straight facts," Pollard recently told New York Magazine. "There are a lot of gangsters in my 'hood.'"
Pollard's criminal history includes two arrests for gun and drug possession, authorities said.
His attorney, Howard Greenberg, said his client was innocent and had been falsely accused.
"Does this make sense, that he would resort to committing crimes when he has the world in the palm of his hands, when he can't go anywhere in the Western world and not be identified?" he said. "It's ridiculous."
The name of Marshal's attorney wasn't immediately available.
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