A man who has been falsely accused of being involved in the murder of the rapper PNB Rock has given an interview in order to clear his name.
Emmanul Danquah, aka South Side Chief, is a Minneapolis-based videographer and media personality who was involved in two arguments on Instagram Live with PNB Rock last year.
The rapper, real name Rakim Allen, was shot while dining in South Los Angeles at the Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles restaurant earlier this month. He died from his injuries the following day, aged 30.
Although the arguments and the murder are not related in any way, and Danquah is not a suspect, in the days after Allen was shot they were recirculated online across YouTube and social media, sometimes with titles implying or outright claiming that Danquah was the killer.
“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Danquah said during an interview on the Drea O Show. “I wasn’t there, I didn’t make an ‘OG phone call’ or anything.”
Danquah recalled how he and Allen had argued over the rapper’s use of a photo from a Black Lives Matter protest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder that he himself had previously used for a shirt design. Eventually, it led to a confrontation on Instagram Live.
At one point, Danquah threatened to take Allen’s chain off his neck. At the end of the confrontation, after PNB Rock called him a “bitch” and left the call, Danquah said, “I’mma make you eat that.” Some online have made false links between the comments and the fact that jewellery was stolen during the fatal shooting.
In the interview Danquah specified that he has not been contacted by the police over the incident. He said that he and Allen were on good terms in the days preceding his death, and that they had been planning a potential exhibition boxing match against one another.
“He was a real one,” Danquah said. “He was gonna give me an opportunity to change both of our lives with this fight that we were promoting.”
He added that he had learnt to “think twice [about] what you wanna put online, cause you never know how it can come back and bite you.”
PNB Rock was best known for his single ‘Selfish’ released in 2016. The track peaked at 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. He featured on YFN Lucci‘s 2017 song ‘Everyday We Lit’, landing at at Number 33 on the same chart, and on Ed Sheeran‘s 2019 single ‘Cross Me’ alongside Chance The Rapper.
Artists including Nicki Minaj, Offset, Denzel Curry and KSI were among those paying tribute to the rapper following news of his death.