Fans of Bobby Shmurda have been waiting for any new leads on the release of him and his GS9 crew from prison since they were arrested last December. The 20-year-old rapper hasn’t kept quiet though, as media outlets such as the New York Times and Billboard have ran interviews that gave readers insight on his current state and his frustrations with his label, Epic Records. After news broke that Bobby Shmurda and Rowdy Rebel’s trial date was June 25, New York Magazine has published their in-depth profile on the rising Brooklyn star that follows his journey from his early beginnings in East Flatbush to his meteoric rise with "Hot Ni**a" and why he believes he is innocent.
The story also unravels how Ackquille Pollard met his childhood friends and how they formed GS9. At the same time, we learn the intricacies of the charges they’re facing now, which go into detail about unsolved murder cases and rival gang beef in their borough that led to wiretapping. Outside of the street life, Pollard was focused on his budding rap career that eventually exploded with “Hot Ni**a” and the Shmoney Dance. “It’s all about me,” Pollard said about the song in an interview with Complex last year. “I’m telling you about my past, my life. Everything’s real. Stuff I’ve been through, stuff I’m dealing with now, stuff my friends and family been through. To express my feelings. Like a journal, really.”
Later in the story, the writer breaks down how Shmurda assembled a management team among all the heat he was getting from NYPD. “His mother consulted with Debo Wilson, a longtime boyfriend of her sister’s who runs a small Miami label called Hard Tymes,” he wrote. “Wilson put together a management team for his nephew, including Jerry Bagley, a manager and event promoter who orchestrated all of Pollard’s media appearances.” Shmurda said he didn’t want to sign with a major label at first, but changed his mind because he felt getting recognition for being on a label’s roster would give him credibility as an artist. “He took meetings with Rick Ross, Atlantic Records, RCA, and 300,” Kolker wrote before Shmurda signed to Epic in July for $1.5 million.
Fast forward to Shmurda’s current situation, the story reveals that Epic hasn’t put up the $200,000 bond before his trial date. “It is quite off to me why they aren’t helping him,” Shmurda’s lawyer Kenneth Montgomery said. “But I guarantee once he’s out, they’ll be all over him, trying to make more money from him.”
Shmurda thinks “he’s innocent,” and goes on to say that Epic doesn’t understand him. “Epic is telling me it’s not because of them, it’s ’cause of Sony,” he said. “But I don’t know. I felt like if I’d have signed with Rick Ross or signed to 50 Cent, they’d have come and got me. They’d understand me more.”
Read New York Magazine’s full profile on Shmurda here.
