An unreleased music video filmed by Grammy-winning rapper Lil Durk was shown to jurors at his Los Angeles murder-for-hire trial Wednesday, with prosecutors claiming it was evidence of a revenge motive and defense lawyer Brian Steel dismissing it as creative speech by a “grief-stricken” poet. The lawyer known for defending high-profile clients including Young Thug and Sean Combs called Banks the “type of genius” who paints “pictures with words” through his music. Lil Durk, born Durk Banks, filmed the video in January 2021.
In it, he appears as himself, reading news coverage of the 2020 shooting death of his close friend and musical protégé King Von in Atlanta. Banks, styled with his then-signature blond dreadlocks, was shown on screens in the courtroom chasing and shooting an actor whom prosecutors say was portraying rival rapper Quando Rondo. In opening statements Monday, prosecutors said Banks blamed Quando Rondo for King Von’s shooting death because the two men were involved in a fistfight outside a hookah lounge on Nov. 6, 2020, seconds before an associate of Quando Rondo’s fatally shot King Von.
They said Banks was so “consumed with revenge” that a year-and-a-half after filming the “Redman” video, Banks allegedly hired a group of hitmen to stalk and kill Quando Rondo, born Tyquian Bowman, in Los Angeles. According to prosecutors, Banks paid for the plane tickets, hotel rooms, ski masks, cars, and guns that were used when the men followed Bowman around L.A. on Aug. 19, 2022, and eventually opened fire on his vehicle at a gas station near the Beverly Center mall. Bowman survived, but his cousin Saviay’a Robinson, known as Lul Pab, was fatally struck.
Prosecutors say one of the weapons used in the shooting was a semiautomatic firearm modified to function as a machine gun. Banks, 33, has pleaded not guilty. One of his lawyers said in her opening statement that the “All My Life” rapper “had nothing to do with” the killing and never offered or paid a bounty.
On Wednesday, Steel used his cross-examination of FBI Special Agent Jarron Farmby to challenge prosecutors’ decision to cite the unreleased “Redman” video as an overt act in the federal indictment charging Banks with conspiracy, stalking resulting in death, and murder for hire. With Banks watching from the defense table, Steel asked Farmby whether investigators had contacted the video’s producer or videographer about how it was conceived. Farmby said he had not been involved in that part of the investigation.
Asked whether anyone had contacted Banks’s record label about the video’s artistic concept, Farmby said he was not aware of such outreach. He asked whether people mourning a profound loss that “severs their entire being” might become so “grief-stricken” that they say or do things they would not do after having more time to process the loss. Farmby said that was “possible.” The lawyer also used his line of questioning to suggest prosecutors weren’t giving jurors the whole picture about how Banks processed the tragedy.
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