Chicago rapper Lil Durk released a song referencing the ill-fated plot he allegedly planned to target rap rival Quando Rondo in a brazen shooting in Los Angeles, federal prosecutors said this week while stacking more felony charges against him.
Lil Durk, real name Durk Banks, was initially charged with a murder-for-hire conspiracy in a criminal complaint filed Oct. 24 — the same day an indictment was unsealed charging five others in the 2022 attack that killed the cousin of Quando Rondo, whose real name is Tyquian Bowman.
Banks was arrested in Florida that day as he attempted to take a private jet to Italy — one of three international flights he’d booked. He remains held without bail at the federal detention center in Miami until he is transferred to Los Angeles for arraignment.
Banks is now charged with additional conspiracy and gun charges in a superseding indictment filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. He faces up to life in prison.
The superseding indictment notes Banks released a song that “sought to commercialize” the shooting that targeted Bowman and fatally wounded his cousin, Saviay’a Robinson.
In the song, released months after the shooting, Banks referenced a news report in which Bowman was heard screaming after seeing Robinson’s dead body, the feds say. “No, no!” Bowman said in the clip.
“Told me they got an addy, go,” Banks rapped, referring to an address. “Told me they got location, go. Green light, go, go, go. Look on the news and you see your son. You’re screaming, ‘no, no.’”
The indictment notes that Banks’ record label, Only the Family, doubled as a violent criminal organization whose members engaged in “murder and assault at the direction of defendant Banks and to maintain their status in OTF.”
“Banks would place bounties on individuals that he and other OTF members wants to kill, including [Bowman],” prosecutors said. “As part of the bounty, co-conspirators known and unknown … would pay anyone who took part in the killing of [Bowman] and/or reward individuals with lucrative music opportunities with OTF.”
Also charged are: Kavon “Cuz” or “Vonnie” Grant; Deandre “DeDe” Wilson; Keith “Flacka” Jones; David “Browneyez” Lindsey; and Asa “Boogie” Houston. All five were arrested in Chicago.
The defendants learned Bowman was staying at a hotel in Los Angeles on Aug. 18, 2022, according to the feds. An unnamed accomplice used credit cards associated with OTF to book flights and a hotel room, despite Banks insisting he didn’t want a paper trail leading back to him.
“Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit me,” Banks wrote in a text message to the accomplice that day.
Wilson, Jones, Lindsey, Houston and an unnamed co-conspirator flew from Chicago to Los Angeles, prosecutors said. Banks and Grant traveled there separately on a private jet “to help coordinate the murder.”
On Aug. 19, 2022, Wilson, Jones, Lindsey, Houston, Grant and the co-conspirator “used two vehicles to track, stalk, and attempt to kill [Bowman] by gunfire — including with a fully automatic firearm — resulting in the death of [Robinson].”
Banks later used “coded language” to make clear “that he would pay a bounty or monetary award” to those involved in the shooting, prosecutors said.
The plot was hatched in retaliation for the killing of King Von, a Chicago rapper who was Banks’ protege. King Von, real name Dayvon Bennett, was shot and killed outside an Atlanta hookah lounge during an altercation with Bowman and his crew on Nov. 6, 2020.
An associate of Bowman’s was charged with murder, but the case was later dropped.
Bennett died while he and Banks were facing charges in connection to another shooting in Atlanta in 2019. The charges against Banks were later dismissed.
Bennett’s death came just months after his bitter rival FBG Duck was gunned down in a daytime shooting in the Gold Coast. Bennett had allegedly placed a bounty on FBG Duck, real name Carlton Weekly, federal prosecutors said.
Six reputed gang members were convicted in the killing in January.
Ralph Turpin, who allegedly alerted the other defendants to Duck’s location, had talked to someone on a phone number associated with Banks’ brother at the time of the shooting, prosecutors said. Banks’ brother, Dontay “D Thang” Banks, was later shot and killed outside a strip club in Harvey in June 2021.
Although Banks wasn’t directly implicated in Weekly’s killing, an FBI agent indicated he was on the agency’s radar. In questioning the agent about who was targeted in the murder investigation, a defense attorney suggested Banks wasn’t important.
The agent shot back: “Did I say he wasn’t important?”