On Thursday, FBI agents arrested Fetty Wap on federal drug charges at the Rolling Loud music festival in Queens. The rapper, born William Junior Maxwell II, was scheduled to perform at Citi Field on Thursday night, but authorities took him into custody before his set. Prosecutors claim that Maxwell, along with five others, operated a drug trafficking ring in Long Island and New Jersey. He is scheduled to be arraigned in a Long Island federal court on Friday afternoon.
Maxwell rose to national fame beginning in 2014 with a string of hit singles, including his breakout song, “Trap Queen,” which the FBI emphasized in a statement on Friday. “The fact that we arrested a chart-topping rap artist and a corrections officer as part of the conspiracy,” Michael Driscoll, an assistant director-in-charge in the FBI, said, “illustrates just how vile the drug trade has become.”
In an indictment unsealed on Friday, Eastern District of New York prosecutors claimed that Maxwell and his codefendants distributed narcotics between approximately June 2019 and June 2020. In the years since Maxwell’s career first took off, he has faced a series of legal issues, and his early musical success appeared difficult to replicate. The Eastern District said that the six defendants face a maximum of life imprisonment if convicted.
Maxwell’s most recent album, The Butterfly Effect, was released earlier this month and dedicated to his daughter, who died at four years old in June. “We pray that this is all a big misunderstanding,” Maxwell’s lawyer, Navarro Gray, said in a statement. “He sees the judge today. We’re hoping he gets released so we can clear things up expeditiously.”
Rolling Loud, a touring music festival founded in 2015, has become one of the foremost live stages for hip-hop in recent years. It has also become a recurring target for law enforcement: In 2019, the festival removed five New York rappers from its Citi Field lineup at the request of the New York Police Department.
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