Hip-hop pioneer Melle Mel was arrested Monday on suspicion of domestic violence in downtown Los Angeles the place he had attended the 2023 Bet Awards.
Los Angeles Law enforcement Department officers took Melle Mel, whose genuine identify is Melvin Glover, into custody at 7:45 a.m. in the 900 block of Wilshire Boulevard exactly where the InterContinental resort is situated, according to L.A. County Jail data.
Glover, 62, was booked on a felony domestic violence charge, an LAPD spokesperson advised The Times, and produced later on that afternoon soon after putting up $50,000 bail. Glover’s arraignment is scheduled for July 17.
The costs stem from a described argument at the InterContinental between Glover and an actress and dancer he experienced reportedly earlier dated.
In a Rolling Stone report posted Wednesday, Glover acknowledged he had argued with the lady, but denied hitting her. The rapper and a agent did not straight away react Thursday to requests for remark from The Situations.
The lady, Jori Jordon, also spoke publicly about the incident — submitting a sequence of films to her public Facebook account.
In a Fb Reside from her medical center place Tuesday, she stated that she fulfilled Glover when she was 22 and the two had beforehand dated. She described the connection as abusive and called him “a bully,” nevertheless she mentioned he had hardly ever bodily attacked her right before.
Jordon said Glover invited her up to his space at the InterContinental early Monday early morning. The pair just experienced attended the Bet Awards jointly at Microsoft Theater, as nicely as an following-celebration.
Though within the lodge space, Jordon claimed she turned down Glover’s present for some drinks. She claimed she was sitting on the bed, looking to engage in new music, when Glover strike her in the facial area.
“I’m just sitting down there, I’m chillin’, next point you know, this gentleman goes, ‘whack,’ with 4 rings on his finger, and hits me on my eye,” Jordon said, adding that she was even now recovering from cornea surgical procedure and formerly had stitches. “And he popped one particular of my stitches, so there is a gap in my eye.”
Jordon reported Glover dared her to simply call regulation enforcement, which she did. In a separate video taken from inside of the resort space and posted to Facebook Tuesday, LAPD officers can be noticed putting Glover in handcuffs. “Mel, I never want you to go to jail. He selected this,” Jordon could be listened to indicating by way of tears.
Glover told Rolling Stone he has regarded Jordon for far more than 20 yrs, and they beforehand lived with each other. He stated she contacts him when he is in L.A. and claimed she asked to meet him at the hotel.
At a person point, Glover stated he requested Jordon to depart, but she refused. Soon after an argument, during which Glover said he attempted to escort her out of the home, he acknowledged “something did take place to her eye.”
“But I did not punch her,” he advised Rolling Stone. “With me tussling with her and seeking to get her absent from me, to get her out of the home, anything happened.”
Glover claimed Jordon asked if he could just take her to the hospital, but he as a substitute informed her to contact the law enforcement, hoping she would go away. Once officers arrived, Glover claimed Jordon advised them he had assaulted her.
“She claimed I punched her in the eye,” he explained. “She also reported she experienced eye medical procedures a month ago. Had I punched her in the eye, specially with rings on, she would have experienced a reduce eye. It would have been way even worse.”
A member of groundbreaking hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Glover is regarded as one particular of the genre’s first artists. Undertaking as Melle Mel, he is very best identified for rapping the group’s 1982 track “The Information.” The team wrote the track for the duration of the Reagan administration, the financial and drug insurance policies of which critics say exacerbated troubles of poverty and incarceration in Black neighborhoods.
Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five grew to become the first rap group inducted into the Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame in 2007. Glover ongoing performing as a solo act through the 1990s.
Glover carried out elements of “The Message” at the 2023 Grammy Awards as a element of the show’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. He is scheduled to surface at a further anniversary party in New York on Aug. 11.
That concert celebrates the day in 1973 when Clive “DJ Kool Herc” Campbell led a again-to-school get together inside a recreation home at an condominium setting up in the Bronx, an occasion widely credited with supporting beginning the style.
A further founding member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5 — Glover’s more mature brother, Nathaniel, known by his rapper name, Kidd Creole — was sentenced to 16 a long time in jail previous yr for stabbing and killing a homeless guy in New York in 2017.
