Why were Lil Wayne and Ja Rule arrested on the same night in New York City?
Lil Wayne and Ja Rule found themselves at the heart of bleak coincidence in 2007, during a summer’s night in New York City.
Both men, each a world-famous rapper with their own legion of fans, were arrested in unrelated, but very similar circumstances. Their stories weren’t exactly the same, but there were undeniable parallels.
Both Wayne and Ja, who had only recently released the song ‘Uh-Ohhh!’ together for Ja’s mixtape The Mirror, were both individually stopped by police after one of Wayne’s gigs had taken place in Manhattan. Ja had joined him on stage at one point, but that was very much the high point of that night. Things got worse for both of them from there.
Wayne had drawn the attention of the cops onto himself after the gig by smoking weed, whereas Ja, an hour earlier, had done so by speeding in his car. But it was the subsequent searches that further exacerbated their respective situations.
Both men, in addition to their initial offences, were also discovered to have been armed. They were both arrested and charged, as were people accompanying each of them.
The legal sagas that followed took a long time to conclude. It was years later, in 2010, that Ja finally learned the outcome of his offence. Having pleaded guilty to attempted possession of a weapon, he was sentenced to two years in prison.
He was later ordered to surrender himself over to the authorities for the following June, in 2011. He did as he was told and served the first part of his sentence on Rikers Island, before being moved to a facility in Upstate New York.
Wayne, meanwhile, initially pleaded not guilty to his charges, but he changed that plea in 2009. By pleading guilty to “attempted” gun possession in the second degree, Wayne avoided a sentence of three and a half years in jail. But he nonetheless received a one-year sentence in 2010 instead.
Wayne served his sentence on Rikers Island, where, at one point, he was discovered to be in possession of contraband, including an MP3 player, a charger, and headphones. He was forced to enter solitary confinement for a spell, before, eventually, being released from jail after eight months served.