His hard-bitten lyrics boasting of drug-world dominance have earned gangsta rapper AR-ab a legion of dedicated followers on his native North Philadelphia streets and respect of hip-hop heavyweights across the nation like Drake and producer Swizz Beatz.
But on Thursday, the truth behind the 38-year-old rappers tough-talking kingpin persona landed him behind bars for what could be the rest of his life.
A federal judge sentenced AR-ab — whose legal name is Abdul West — to 45 years in federal prison for turning the record label he founded, Original Block Hustlaz (OBH), into a large-scale drug-trafficking organization that flooded his community with narcotics and led to at least one murder.
A jury convicted West in 2019 on multiple counts of conspiracy and drug trafficking. And though prosecutors alleged West had ordered the 2017 slaying of a drug world rival, U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson stressed repeatedly during a hearing in federal court that the punishment he imposed was not based on that crime — with which prosecutors opted not to charge West — nor on West’s rap lyrics.
And ultimately, he rejected prosecutors’ recommendation to give West a life sentence.
“You could have been a hero instead of a criminal,” the judge told the rapper. “But you became a drug dealer. That’s why you’re here today that’s why you’re being punished.”
West, who sat with his arms crossed next to his lawyer through most of the proceedings, exuded truculence when it came time for him to address the court.
“The court, the FBI agents, the prosecutors don’t understand my culture,” he insisted. “We don’t rap about flowers and rainbows. We’re gangsta rappers. We rap about what we grew up in. So we rap about drug dealing and we rap about violence.”
Throughout his two-week trial in 2019, West’s music and social media presence were repeatedly put under a microscope, raising questions about just how much a genre defined by hypermasculine boasting of street-honed toughness can be taken at its word.
But prosecutors argued his lyrics and social media persona were more than just marketing: They amounted to a confession to crimes.
Jurors were shown several of West’s videos and dozens of Instagram posts as FBI agents pointed to direct links to crimes that he or members of his crew had committed. That evidence was buttressed by a trove of more traditional evidence investigators amassed over two years, including wire recordings, pole camera video, cellphone location data, and text messages pulled from the defendants’ phones.
Prosecutors interpreted
his lyrics in one video to be an admission that West ordered the 2017 murder of drug world rival Robert Johnson, who was shot multiple times on the 4000 block of Benner Street in Wissinoming. A member of West’s entourage, Dontez “Taz” Stewart, has been charged with the slaying.
“I’ll have da whole city scared,” West’s song says. “Stand near home / I call Taz and tell him / Bring dat n — ‘s head to me.”
Investigators discovered the lyrics for that track, written four days after Johnson’s death, in a note in West’s phone. He maintained that it was a coincidence. Prosecutors balked.
In another video released after FBI agents raided an OBH stash house at the One Water Street Apartments in Old City last year, West complained that the feds “took 10 of ‘em” — a reference to 10 kilograms of cocaine seized at the scene.
“Quarter million loss, got a broke heart,” he rapped. “And they snatched my dog, that’s the worst part. / One rat destroy everything you work for. / I pray to God that he don’t tell them who he work for.”
“This wasn’t a case against gangsta rap,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Everett R. Witherell said in court Thursday. “Mr. West made it clear not just in his lyrics but in his social media that people should be afraid of him and his willingness to resort to violence.”
West had made little effort to hide the truth behind his lyrics as his career took off from his battle rapping days in the early 2000s to his more recent beefs with other rappers,
like his Philadelphia contemporary Meek Mill.
In
a 2015 interview, West spoke plainly about growing up on a “crack block” in North Philly and inheriting his drug-dealing territory from a friend who got out of the trade.
“You’ve got people who know how to rap good but don’t live that life, and you got people that live that life but don’t know how to rap good,” he said. “I live that life, and I rap good.”
Dozens of witnesses at trial described West’s sizable narcotics-trafficking operation. Based in the same neighborhoods of North Philly where West grew up, it drew its supply of crack cocaine, heroin, and meth from California, and stored it in upscale Center City apartments that he believed would be less likely to draw law enforcement scrutiny.
One of them, the Edgewater Apartments at 2323 Race St., belonged to Johnson before West allegedly had him killed.
Ed Meehan, West’s lawyer, said Thursday his client was an unfortunate product sof his environment.
“He was able to achieve great success in the music industry,” he said. “But he was not able to outrun the problems that he grew up with.”
And now, the future of the record label he founded in 2002 is in doubt. By far the most popular rapper at his label, AR-Ab is likely to be incarcerated well into his 80s.
Its second most renowned artist — Charles “Dark Lo” Salley, who was not indicted with the others — pleaded guilty last month to threatening a witness at West’s trial, a charge that carries a maximum prison term of 20 years.
And many of the other 20 to 30 local rappers West signed to his label have been arrested and sent to prison — either as codefendants in his federal case or for other related crimes of their own.
But before West was led from the courtroom Thursday in handcuffs, the judge stressed again that it was he who was responsible for his crimes.
“You’re antisocial conduct is just reprehensible,” said Baylson. “You had a fair trial, and today is the day you receive just punishment.”
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Philly rap star AR-Ab sentenced to 45 years for running a drug ring implicated in murder
