Rapper A$AP Rocky’s lawyers will make their case at his felony trial over 2 assault charges

LOS ANGELES — LOS ANGELES (AP) — A$AP Rocky ‘s lawyers will make their case and try to establish a counternarrative Friday at his trial in Los Angeles, where the hip-hop star and fashion mogul is charged with firing a gun at a former friend on a Hollywood street in 2021.

They plan to call to the stand rapper A$AP Twelvyy, who, like both the defendant and the man he’s charged with shooting, was a member of the A$AP Mob, a group of young artists and creators that formed at a New York high school nearly 20 years ago.

Twelvyy was one of two members of the crew who accompanied Rocky to a meetup with A$AP Relli, with whom he had a long-simmering beef that came to a head, he said, when Rocky fired a gun at him.

Twelvyy is expected to testify that Rocky fired a starter pistol that only shoots blanks, which he carries as a prop for security. The defense contends that the phony gun answers many questions about the case, including why Relli only had grazed knuckles and no other injuries.

The potentially confusing set of “A$AP” names have become familiar to people in the courtroom, and most likely the jury, through the approximately three days of Relli’s testimony, which makes up the bulk of prosecutors’ case, rested on Thursday.

Rocky has pleaded not guilty to two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm, and if convicted on both, he can legally get up to 24 years in prison.

Rihanna, the superstar singer who is Rocky’s longtime partner and the mother of their toddler sons, slipped into the courtroom Thursday afternoon and sat in Rocky’s section after several days of absence. She had her hair up and wore glasses with a tan trenchcoat on a rainy day in LA.

The defense has not said whether Rocky will take the considerable risk of going on the stand himself, which he is not legally required to do. He already opted to take a significant risk by turning down the prosecution’s pre-trial offer of a recommended sentence of just 180 days in jail and other relatively minor penalties in exchange for a guilty plea on one count.

Raised in Harlem, the Grammy nominee had his mainstream breakthrough when his first studio album went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2013.

But his role as a fashion maven has almost eclipsed his music. He is set to be a celebrity co-host on fashion’s biggest night, the Met Gala, in May.

The suits he wears in the courtroom and the overcoats he wears outside it have become fodder for discussion and inspired a New York Times story on his style.

A publicist for Yves Saint Laurent sent a news release, of the kind usually reserved for red carpets, saying that one day in court he was wearing an “Yves jacket in wool chine,” a “shirt in silk crepe de chine” and “high-waisted pants in wool chine.”

His fashion sense even came up in phone recordings played in court, in which a person purported to be Relli declares that Rocky was “not a true gangster” and that “this is the case of Dior.”

The defense has already brought one witness it was allowed to call early, an internet branding consultant who worked with both Rocky and Relli. He recorded phone calls, purportedly with Relli saying his main intention was to get millions from Rocky, and the criminal case didn’t matter.

Relli said in his testimony that the recordings were fake.

But prosecutor John Lewin established that everything Relli said in them was consistent with his testimony.