A$AP Rocky may be full of positivity after the recent release of his new album “Don’t Be Dumb,” but he’s finally reflecting on a negative part of his life—specifically his time behind bars in Sweden in 2019. And what he has to say just might surprise you.
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If you’ll remember, in July 2019, the “Helicopter” rapper was in Stockholm on tour with his entourage. While out and about one night, he and some associates were being followed by two unknown men. Rocky partially recorded the incident and could be heard trying to get the men away from him.
Some kind of way, Rocky and the men then found themselves in a fight which resulted in the rapper and his friends being brought in for questioning and subsequently charged with assault. For the next four weeks, the “L$D” rapper spent his time in jail while waiting on his day in court.
His arrest made international news with more than a handful of his peers, celebrities and more speaking out for his freedom. The discourse even found its way to then-President Donald Trump’s front door and he stepped in to call for his freedom on social media and even got in contact with the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, who said he could “personally vouch” for Rocky’s bail, per PEOPLE.
In a new interview with Ebro Darden on “The Ebro Show,” Rocky detailed what his time locked up was like and just how “crazy” his situation was.
Describing how small his cell and how bad the conditions were was, Rocky explained: “[There was] no bathroom, just a sink and a mirror and bed with a desk. A little cot, right? When you need to go to the bathroom, you gotta ask permission. You ring your bell, sometimes they’ll leave you in the bathroom for like, an hour in the dark because the light turns off after five minutes, right?”
“So if you took a shower, they ain’t have no towels. You gotta make your own makeshift towels, like it wasn’t—don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t Rikers [Island, the notorious NYC prison historically known for violence and inhumane conditions]. But it was inconvenient, it wasn’t sweet,” Rocky said.
Rocky’s description lines up with that of the his manager Chace Infinite’s words back then, who said that the rapper’s life inside jail was “horrific” and likened the conditions as ” inhumane” and “unsanitary.”
The “F*ckin Problems” rapper went on to explain to Ebro how inmates were only allowed 30 minutes of fresh air and sunshine a day and that most other men there spent a majority of their time working out, smoking or talking. That’s when, he said, that the people there were the ones to translate the news to him on the TV and help make sense of the Swedish judicial system and what was going on with his case. Eventually, he found out that Trump was talking about helping to get him out and he was taken aback by how big of a deal he had become.
Saying how he saw what he was going through make it on Al Jazeera news, Rocky said: “I was honored, but then I was so low but seeing all my peers—different rappers, different singers, entertainers. Different people: Black, white, Latin, everybody. Indian, Asian–all agreeing like, ‘yo that ain’t right. Free that man. Free him!’ Honestly, Ebro, that sh*t uplifted my spirit so crazy that even when I got out, I was still on a high from that. Like ‘damn, that’s love.”
Rocky was released after one month and was quick to thank everybody who played a part in getting him out. However, some of Trump’s friends felt he could’ve been a little bit more grateful to him and asserted that Rocky never told the President “thank you.” In 2021, the rapper addressed that criticism, saying in a documentary that he was fearful that the President might jeopardize his chances at freedom and then tried to switch the narrative upon his release.
“They tried to strong-arm a lot and in reality, I had no problem saying ‘thank you’ to the man, especially if he helped me, but that was the narrative they were pushing—that he got me out. He didn’t free me. If anything, he made it a little worse,” Rocky said.
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