YNW Melly, also known as Jamell Demons, first found success on SoundCloud, with emotive
tracks about his troubling personal life.
His talents have impressed rap veterans, but Melly also has a dark side, and he's been
accused of some pretty awful things.
On February 13, 2019, YNW Melly was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree
mudder.
The arrest stems from two associates, Anthony Williams, aka "YNW Sakchaser" and Christopher
Thomas Jr, aka "YNW Juvy."
The two men were slain in October 2018 in what initially appeared to be a drive-by.
However, police in Miramar, Florida reportedly say that Melly shot the pair and staged the
scene to resemble a drive-by with accomplice Cortlen Henry, aka "YNW Bortlen."
Henry is alleged to have driven the pair to a hospital for treatment, but by the time
they arrived, Williams and Thomas were apparently already gone.
Police say they have evidence of Melly's involvement in the slaying, including a shell casing found
inside the vehicle, cell phone records, and surveillance video - but the rapper has maintained
his innocence.
"I mudder the beat.
I am not no human mudderer."
Before turning himself in to authorities, Melly wrote in an Instagram post, "[...] unfortunately
a lot of rumors and lies are being said but no worries god is with me and my brother @ynw.bortlen."
While Melly has maintained his innocence in the allegedly staged drive-by, he might have
been involved in another unsolved homicide.
After he was arrested for his friends, it was reported that the rapper is suspected
in the salying of a sheriff deputy.
According to a report by Vero News, both Melly and Bortlen are suspected of being a part
of a group who accidentally shot deputy Garry Chambliss while exchanging gunfire with a
passing car.
While it's not currently known if either rapper fired the fatal shot, police have been clear
that they believe the two incarcerated rappers could shed some light on the unsolved case.
Either way, it's a serious complication for the local Florida artists, and a major setback
for what once looked like a rapidly-rising career in entertainment.
Jamell Demons, who was born in 1999, hails from Gifford, Florida, a small town north
of Miami that The Fader has described as, quote, an "unlikely location to birth a national
star."
According to the rapper himself,
"Ain't nobody ever made it out of there.
We had one NFL player made it out, but he brought his ass right back."
"Ain't nobody make it out of here.
They dreams, they stop them b------ in high school."
Melly didn't let his city define him, though.
According to XXL, he started recording music in the eighth grade with a microphone loaned
to him by a friend, and continued to make music over the years until some criminal acts
caught up to him.
In 2015, a then-16-year-old Melly was arrested for shooting at a group of people in Vero
Beach, Florida while he was a freshman in high school.
The motive of the shooting is unclear, but the rapper was charged with three counts of
aggravated assault with a weapon and one count of discharging a firearm in public.
While serving time for the shootout in Vero Beach, YNW Melly penned his now-famous single
"Mudder On My Mind," a piano-assisted ballad that has since gone gold and landed on the
Billboard Hot 100.
"I literally woke up in the jail cell and I was like, 'Wake up in the morning, I got
mudder on my mind."
However, he almost gave up on the song just as quickly as he came up with it, because
jail isn't the most supportive place for an aspiring artist.
Apparently, his surroundings got the best of him.
He later told Billboard,
"When I went to jail, I lost faith for a little bit.
I didn't know what I wanted to be."
His peers apparently saw a star, however, and they urged Melly to continue with his
rap career, a path which went remarkably well - for a little while.
Though Melly has said he always knew that he would be a star some day, becoming a rapper
wasn't exactly his childhood dream.
In fact, he preferred to be a singer, similar to some of the world's biggest pop stars.
He said in an interview with XXL,
"I wanted to be Chris Brown and Michael Jackson."
He apparently loved the way Jackson could control a crowd and the way he carried himself
but Melly had one issue preventing him from being like Mike: He couldn't sing.
So he started to train his voice by practicing along to their records.
He told Billboard, quote, "It took me a year to learn."
According to his XXL interview, it wasn't until he discovered Lil Wayne that his career
choice was sealed.
Once he realized he could be like Weezy, Melly said,
"That's when I was like OK, I'm Chris Brown, Michael Jackson and Lil Wayne?
Oh yeah."
Kanye West apparently fell in love with YNW Melly's musical style after hearing his track
"Blue Balenciagas" while visiting Paris.
He then had a representative contact the rising star in hopes of scoring a collaboration.
Melly at first believed the attempt to contact him was some kind of prank.
"I ain't believe it at first because it went through his A&R at first.
I ain't believe it.
And then my brother, my manager, he told me 'Nah, bruh, for real.'"
After being flown out to LA, Melly showed Kanye some of the songs that he'd been working
on, and when he heard the unfinished song "Mixed Personalities", knew he had to jump
on the track then and there.
On top of providing his own rhymes on the song, West also helped with the track's production,
and even made the on-the-spot decision to name a pair of shoes after Melly.
Considering West's fame and genius for production, it's not surprising that the track made its
way to Top 10 of the Billboard chart.
What remains to be seen is if Melly will ever be able to reach those heights again, or if
he's doomed to be locked up for a long time for the crimes he's been accused of.
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