the law

Rowdy Rebel Released From Prison

Rowdy Rebel. Photo: Johnny Nunez/WireImage

Brooklyn rapper Rowdy Rebel was released from New York state prison on Tuesday, according to the official website listing inmate information. The rapper, whose legal name is Chad Marshall, 29, will be on parole until 2025, meaning he has to stay out of serious trouble to avoid another lockup.

Marshall, along with famed “Hot Nigga” rapper Bobby Shmurda and Nicholas “Flea Montana” McCoy, pleaded guilty in September 2016 to conspiracy in the fourth degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. Marshall was sentenced in November of that year to six-to-seven years in prison; he served about four years (not including any time served before going upstate).

Prosecutors said that the three were part of an East Flatbush gang called GS9. As part of this conspiracy, GS9 members “were engaged in a protracted turf battle with multiple rivals,” including Brooklyn’s Most Wanted (BMW), from January 2013 to October 2014. Twenty-one people were charged in the indictment, and Marshall ultimately copped to “possessing and conspiring to possess two guns.”

New York City’s special narcotics prosecutor previously said in a press release that Marshall had a loaded 9mm pistol near Quad Recording Studios, near Times Square, on December 17, 2014. Prosecutors said that ballistics evidence tied this gun to a July 27, 2014, incident in Brooklyn during which GS9 members opened fire on an unnamed rival.

Bobby Shmurda, whose legal name is Ackquille Pollard, has been behind bars for about six years and was denied parole in mid-September. The state corrections department previously told Vulture that Pollard was “given a hold until the maximum expiration of his sentence on December 11, 2021.”

Vulture was the first to obtain a transcript of Pollard’s September 15 parole interview, where he discussed the weapons-possession charge. Pollard claimed he had the weapon illegally “for protection, because I was wearing jewelry and doing a bunch of shows and stuff, and I didn’t want to get robbed. Instead of getting security, [I was] just being young and stupid.”

Pollard, now 26, also told the parole board that he would get security after prison. His earliest release date is December 11, 2021, and he is not expected to appear before the parole board or be released until then.

Update, January 12: New details on Marshall’s postprison plans have emerged. In a transcript of his August 11 parole-board interview, obtained by Vulture through a public-records request, Marshall revealed that he wanted to leave New York because “I feel like there is nothing there for me anymore. It’s just people that don’t like me. If I go back to New York, I am going back to what you just read about before all the music.”

One of the parole-board commissioners asked, “What are your thoughts about your future? Like what would you like to do once you get settled?” Marshall replied, “I am a rapper, a rap artist. I am a signed artist to [redacted].”

The commissioner asked whether that had “gotten you anywhere financially. I mean, before you came in?” Marshall said, “Yeah, I signed a $1.5 million-dollar deal, took a $225,000 advance. Just my past caught up to me.”

There was also a discussion of whether Marshall could interact with Pollard after his release from lockup. (Although Pollard’s name does not appear in this document, details surrounding the redactions point to him.) A parole-board member asked Marshall whether “it’s strictly you with the music.”

“Right now, it’s me and my co-defendant, [redacted],”Marshall said.

“Stop right there,” the parole-board member said. “You just got to make sure you watch yourself with, you know — if you guys want to hook up again, you got to be on the same page with your parole officer, do you follow me?”

Marshall was also asked about a disciplinary infraction for allegedly having synthetic marijuana in his cell. He denied it. “Come on, I am not doing no synthetic marijuana and be running around here throwing up on myself,” he said.

Rowdy Rebel Released From Prison