Medhane by Gabriel Rivera
Medhane has issued a response after posts on social media accusing the Brooklyn rapper of sexual assault began to circulate across the internet.
The accusations and Medhane's response were captured in a Reddit thread in r/hiphopheads. One post on Instagram accused Medhane of "forcing himself onto women + [being] manipulative" and a second post said "multiple people... have experienced sexual assault and manipulation from him." Other posts contain screenshots of text messages purportedly between Medhane and D.C. rapper Mavi, where Medhane asks Mavi for help diffusing an unnamed situation. Each of the accusations were shared by Instagram user @badwisdomfromtito.
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In a two-part statement, Medhane denied the assault, saying that he only "spoke poorly" of his accuser. "I did not rape anybody," Medhane said, and described what he calls "a consensual sexual relationship that went bad."
Read his full statement below:
Associates of Medhane have distanced themselves since the allegations got wider attention online. In a statement posted Tuesday afternoon on Instagram Stories, Mavi claimed that he had acted as a mediator between Medhane and his accuser, and alleged that Medhane's statement was insufficient based on the requests of his accuser: "Her wish was for him to apologize to her publicly and complete a transformative justice program she wanted organized by her Black femme friends."
Mavi apologized for "selfishly wanting to wash my hands of a situation I had been deeply affected by." He wrote: "with the release of his statement this morning, i realize that he never had any intention of fulfilling her request and see that my public silence has only enabled him to continue to deflect the actual allegations of sexual violence."
On Sunday, MIKE, another musical collaborator of Medhane's, posted an Instagram Story addressing the situation. "I don’t want to push people who may have been hurt by these people away," he wrote, "and I don’t want to be associated with these people and allow more abusers into whatever communities I am apart of... This is where I stand in life and want to let people know if they stand for something different than I, then I rather not be in any type of proximity to them, especially if they don’t have any concern in holding themselves accountable or realizing they did something wrong."
The FADER has reached out to Medhane's representative for comment.
