The Rolling Loud festival is underway this weekend at Citi Field in Queens, but without three local drill rappers who were removed from the festival.
The three rappers were Brooklyn’s 22Gz, and the Bronx’s Sha Ek and Ron Suno. The New York Times reported on Thursday that they were removed at the request of the NYPD.
Dawn Florio, a lawyer who represents drill rappers, and Stanley “Noodles” Davis, the manager of Sha Ek, joined NY1’s Dean Meminger Saturday to discuss how some drill rappers were not allowed to join this weekend’s festival.
“We're not even enemies of each other,” he said. “It made no sense. And we got no explanation. It's just ‘sorry, it can't happen.’”
NYPD officials and concert organizers would not comment.
Florio said that she’s not surprised some rappers were asked not to perform and called it “disturbing.” According to Florio, this comes from the NYPD’s Enterprise Operation Unit, which “spies on the rappers and they report back to the NYPD and to the mayor.”
“It's not with these particular rappers,” she said. “It's just with gun violence in general and we always hear about, you know, rappers getting into problems, but we don't hear about just the gun violence every day, the regular people that are victims of crime and regular people who commit murders.”
Florio said Sha Ek doesn’t have a criminal record, isn’t gang affiliated and is “a good kid.”
“The message is basically that the mayor needs to meet these rappers one on one, know what they're about and then he can make his decision based upon, you know, who they are,” Florio said. “But people kill people. Rap music and drill music do not kill people.”
The lawyer representing the rappers said at least seven drill rappers were prevented from performing.
The lawyer said they are weighing options to potentionally sue the city and the NYPD.