If it hasn’t been recorded already, it might be a minute before you hear from Fetty Wap musically again.
The rap artist-turned-style influencer pleaded guilty in a Long Island, N.Y., courtroom on federal drug distribution charges worth a maximum sentence of 40 years in the bing, although the minimum sentence is just five and the New York Times reports that his plea agreement was made on the basis of a guarantee not to serve more than 10 years and a day.
Prosecutors allege Fetty Wap, a Paterson, N.J., native whose real name is Willie Junior Maxwell II, was part of a drug ring that moved heroin, cocaine and Fentanyl (the rapper himself was only involved with coke, they said), importing the drugs then cutting them with other substances so they could sell them in higher quantities. He’s also accused of threatening another man with a gun during a Facetime conversation.
The Times broke down the rapper’s career, from nascent star to soon-to-be federal correctional inmate:
Fetty Wap’s self-titled debut album, released in 2015, made it to the top of the Billboard 200. Although collaborations followed with Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg and the Canadian rapper Drake, Mr. Maxwell was not able to match his earlier success.
Still, he found ways to stay in the public eye. It was announced in 2016 that Mr. Maxwell was collaborating on a video game in which users control cars that drag-race through urban streets. (The following year he was arrested and accused of drag-racing; a police camera was said to have recorded him weaving through traffic on the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn while reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour.)
During Fashion Week in 2017, Mr. Maxwell appeared on a runway inside the New York Public Library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue wearing a black shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones by the German designer Philipp Plein.
Last year, Mr. Maxwell was among six men, one of them a New Jersey corrections officer, accused of distributing more than 100 kilograms of drugs between roughly June 2019 and June 2020.
A sentencing date hasn’t been set.