Rapper Papoose May Be Partly Responsible for String of Prison Stabbings

Papoose, the stroppy Brooklyn rapper who has avoided fame about as hard as he’s courted legal trouble, is thought to be partly at fault for a spate of prison assaults in the wake of a 2006 performance at Rikers Island.  The warden at Rikers, who allegedly told an inmate Papoose was his favorite rapper, invited him to play a 2 hour concert at the prison.  According to a Papoose rival,

The Rikers concert “was like throwing a match on gasoline — boom!” Dough Boy said in a jailhouse interview.

Thirteen assaults in the prison population went down in the year after the concert.  Why?  

Dough Boy and Papoose were friends at one point, but like so many friendships, theirs ended in multiple stabbings.  The backstory to the assaults in the penitentiary is that the two worked together on a recording project, but Dough Boy accused Papoose of dealing him low in the studio.  (I can’t find any sources that are specific here, only that Dough Boy was “shorted” or “marginalized.)  Anyway, Dough Boy retaliated by shooting at Papoose’s posse and stealing a $40,000 chain from one of the rapper’s relatives.  Then

The Papoose concert spurred loud gang chants, jail sources said.

“I heard he gave a shout-out to me at the end,” said Dough Boy, who had been barred from the show by jail officials aware of their feud.

In response to the onstage taunt, Dough Boy said he instructed his friends to “get at ‘em.”

That meant attack, Dough Boy said in at upstate Great Meadow prison, where he’s serving 12 years for armed robbery and assault.

Really, it sounds like the problem here is that Dough Boy is an extremely sensitive man who seems not to take an insult very well, as at least eight slashings at the Rikers prison appear to be linked to the getting at ‘em.  There were more assaults there this year than at any other New York City prison.

The warden was reprimanded for “failing to get the required approvals for the concert,” and Papoose, meanwhile, repaid the warden by attempting to sneak a key into the prison so that he could spring his wife, Remy Ma, from her confinement, in 2008.  During their prison-hosted wedding ceremony.  Whatever you want to say about the prison violence, this a man who knows how to treat a woman right.

He also made this song, which is one of the most impressive rap songs I’ve ever heard.

Source: NY Post via LiveSteez.