ASAP Rocky was arrested in the Swedish capital of Stockholm this week on suspicion of aggravated assault after a street brawl, which was partly caught on camera and originally released by TMZ, prosecutors confirmed on Wednesday.
"One person was arrested for assault and three people were arrested for serious assault, and the artist is one of those three”, a Prosecution Authority spokeswoman said.
Swedish prosecutors have until Saturday to decide whether to formally detain the rapper.
The rapper has, however, shared footage showing that he did his best to calm things down just moments before he and members of his crew were embroiled in a fight with two men, whom he referred to as “drug addicts” who kept following them and harassed women in the streets.
“So few drug addicts are not my fans, we don’t know these guys and we didn’t want trouble, they followed us for 4 blocks, and they were slapping girls [sic] butts who passed. Give me a break”, he wrote on Instagram.
The video features Rocky – in a white hoodie and green shorts – and the crew asking two non-Swedish looking guys to stop following them, with ASAP’s massive bodyguard telling them to bug off, while the men ignore his demands. One of them eventually hit Rocky’s security guard, hurling headphone at the man’s head – and despite the aggression, the bodyguard walks away.
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The rapper then tried to make peace, put his hand gently on one of the men’s shoulders and told him calmly, “Listen, listen, we don’t want to fight ya’ll. We’re not trying to go to jail”, before turning to the camera and saying, “Look, just for the cameras, we don’t want no problems with these boys. They keep following us. Look at them. They keep following”.
At the end of the fresh video, a woman can be heard saying, “Tell them to stop following”, and then adds, “This guy touch you in some way? This other guy, he slapped my ass and my girlfriend’s ass”.
As is known now, Rocky’s inner peacemaker ran out of patience: the original video posted by TMZ showed him tossing one of the guys to the curb when his crew joined him a brutal beatdown. The man was reportedly left bloodied and knocked out on the ground.
— Wester (@Wester_R6) July 3, 2019
TMZ reported that an ambulance and police showed up shortly after the incident and took statements from witnesses.
