Troy Ave has been on mute ever since the infamous Irving Plaza shooting that left his bodyguard Ronald “Banga” McPhatter dead.
The Brooklyn rapper opened up to All Hip Hop about his upcoming trial. “I go to court on September 13th,” explains Troy, referring to his involvement in the infamous shooting. “I just came back from court, so we gon’ see.” As he tells it, the matter is cut and dry. “The proof is in black and white paperwork, in the FBI paperwork. I don’t even have to argue anything, it’s there. They see that it’s not my gun, I never brought no gun in the club. DNA evidence proves that, so where’d I get it from?” He expressed his disbelief for having to speak on the subject in the first place, arguing that forensic evidence clearly proves the deadly weapon belonged to the assailant.
“If this were to happen somewhere else, I would have been a hero,” he states. “Because if you look at it, I saved mad people from getting shot. There’s three other victims, more people could have died. If I didn’t do what I did, fought the gun away and wrestled — it’s fight or flight. I chose to fight. I went head-on with a gunman and by the grace of God, took the gun out his hand. So why am I not looked at as a hero?”
He says the media spun the story and made it seem like he went to the venue with a hidden agenda, when he was already present as the guest performer for the night. But as the trial approaches on Friday the 13th, Troy Ave is standing his ground.
He still carries the scars of the infamous shooting and it’s no wonder he’s ready to put it behind him. “My leg be hurting from that whole Irving Plaza s**t,” he explains. “I can’t really run, jogging be hard. I can’t bust the dope dance moves in my videos like I used to. It’s all good though, I just adapted. I ain’t trippin’,” he said.
Elsewhere in the interview he also talked about his relationship with 50 Cent. “If it wasn’t for him, it wouldn’t be no me in this capacity,” reveals Troy Ave. “I saw him the other day and told him that. We had a lil wrestling fight in the hallway or whatever. I always say, Fif is one of the reasons I started rapping. I wouldn’t be having all this money and all that if it wasn’t for him. I might have been still selling drugs. I might have got caught up and went to jail, or been dead and that would’ve been the end.
