Sophia Michaels
Rising Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke was arrested Friday on federal charges of transporting a stolen vehicle, the New York Times reports. The rapper was arrested at John F. Kennedy airport in New York City upon returning from Paris Fashion Week.
Pop Smoke, real name Bashar Jackson, is accused of transporting a stolen black Rolls-Royce that he reportedly borrowed for a music video shoot in California. The car, worth about $375,000, was allegedly moved across the country to New York on a flatbed truck.
Last November, Jackson posted a photo of himself with the stolen car on social media, and while the photo has been removed from Instagram, as of publication, it’s still up on Facebook. A month ago, investigators reportedly tracked the car to Jackson’s parents’ house in the Canarsie area of Brooklyn, and found the license plate on the Rolls had been changed and the windows had been tinted. The car has since been returned to its owner.
A representative for Pop Smoke did not immediately return Rolling Stone‘s request for comment.
In the last year, Pop Smoke has become one of the most buzzed about rappers out of New York, releasing his debut mixtape, Welcome to the Woo last Summer. More recently he collaborated with Travis Scott and his group Jackboys on their song, “Gatti.”
But Pop Smoke’s rise has been rattled by other run-ins with the law. Most notably, Jackson was one of five rappers forced off the bill at Rolling Loud’s New York City stop last October after the festival organizers received a letter from the New York Police Department claiming he and the other performers were “associated with recent acts of violence citywide” and presented “public safety concerns.”
Pop Smoke, in particular, had recently been released from a diversion program stemming from a weapons charge that has since been dismissed.
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