New York, NY – Grammy-nominated rapper Remy Ma was sentenced to eight years in prison today by a Manhattan
Supreme Court judge for shooting her friend Makeda Barnes-Joseph after the two
argued over money after leaving a party.

She was sentenced to five years on the weapons charges and
three on convergence. The sentences are to run concurrently for a total of
eight years. “I’m not a thug,” Remy Ma told the judge. “I’m not a hardcore
anything, I have feelings. I’m a wife, mother, daughter, big sister.”

In March a judge found Remy Ma guilty on multiple counts of
assault and weapons possession. She also had been charged with witness
tampering and gang intimidation but a judge later threw the charges out.
Supporters of the rapper (real name, Remy Smith) were present in the court room
adorned in red and white T-shirts bearing the words “Free Remy” across the
front. After the verdict was announced a number of family and friends of the
rapper exited the court room in tears.

Papoose, the
rapper’s fiancés, held a stoic look on his face he left the court room. The day
before he was involved in an incident at Rikers Island while he visited Remy
Ma. The pair were scheduled to marry but prison officials denied Papoose after
they thought an item of his was a skeleton key. Papoose later got into an
argument with court officers and had to be escorted out. “Fuck jail,” he yelled
as his friends pulled him away. “Fuck jail, lock me up. I don’t care, y’all
just want money. She didn’t’ do nothing.”

Initially Smith vehemently denied the shooting. The rapper
claimed she did not have a gun, nor did she fire the shots that struck
Barnes-Joseph in the stomach. Barnes-Joseph was hospitalized for her injuries
and media swarmed Remy Ma’s New Jersey home questioning the rapper. In July of
last year, she shouted her innocence to reporters from the second-floor window
of her house. “I didn’t shoot my friend,” she said.

In March of this year, however, her attorney, Ivan Fisher,
finally admitted the rapper’s role in the shooting during the case’s closing
arguments. Fisher called the action a mistake. According to the Associated
Press, Fisher, at the time, explained the gun went off after the two women were
struggling over the weapon and the firearm accidentally discharged.

An assistant district attorney in the case, Michael
McIntosh, pressed that the rapper took every premeditated step to carry out her
plan, from loading the weapon to entering the victim’s car brandishing the gun.
“She took every step you had to take to shoot somebody,” McIntosh said during
closing arguments.