On October 20, 2024, at his birthday concert at the United Center, Englewood’s own Lil Durk was on top of the world. He was performing for a packed house and sharing the stage with other popular acts, including BossMan Dlow, JT, Sexyy Red, and Lil Baby. He was riding the positivity wave of being the first Chicago drill rapper to win a Grammy Award in 2024, for his collaboration with J. Cole on “All My Life.” He was teasing the 2025 release of Deep Thoughts, which would go on to set records for the rapper and stay in the Billboard Top 100 charts. And Durk was continuing his pledge to help end the longstanding problem of gang violence within drill music.
Durk’s evolution from disrespecting dead rivals in his music morphed into a maturity where he venerated the dead with a 2024 mural dedicated to both fallen friends and his late rivals. It was time to make peace, a concept that apparently had been on Durk’s mind for quite some time. Each action has an equal and opposite reaction, he seemed to be saying.
“You got to think about all that shit before you make a decision,” Durk said in a 2022 interview.
Our talk happened just after the rapper’s first-ever United Center performance in support of his album 7220 – a concert that took place after years of Chicago police recommending that venues cancel his, and other drill rappers, appearances. His storyline since then has been one of renewal. Durk became a devout Muslim and changed his name to Mustafa Abdul Malak. He started speaking on the institutional reasons why young Black men and boys have a hard time, and he began encouraging others to do the same amount of self-reflection. He became known as Chicago Drill’s most commercially successful rapper who also put in positive community work.
And then? The charges dropped, and he was arrested.
Law enforcement caught up with the rapper near Miami International Airport, where he and five others – all affiliates or members of his Only The Family (OTF) organization – were detained on October 24 and later charged by a federal grand jury with a 2022 murder-for-hire plot against Georgia rapper Quando Rondo. This plan allegedly led to the shooting death of Rondo’s cousin, Saviay’a “Lul Pab” Robinson, just outside a gas station near a popular Los Angeles mall. And Robinson’s death was allegedly connected to retaliation plans for the 2020 murder of OTF member King Von.
To be more specific, Durk was charged with the following: one count of conspiracy, one count of use of interstate facilities to commit murder-for-hire resulting in death, and one count of using, carrying, and discharging firearms and a machine gun and possession of such firearms in furtherance of a crime of violence resulting in death.
Durk pleaded not guilty to the charges. However, if convicted of these crimes, he could serve life in prison in California.
In speaking about the rapper born Durk Devontay Banks, his former manager Beleshia “Lyrical” Mcculley says Durk represents the heart and soul of Black Chicago. The charges don’t fit the profile, she said.
“Everybody seen his losses. Everybody has seen his wins,” said Mcculley. “And this last situation that’s happened, I think, especially coming off of the [birthday concert], when he was pushing peace? No one wants to see him in the position he’s in. Nobody. I can’t speak for everybody in Chicago, but most people want to see him win.”
The “L’s Anthem” rapper’s trial will begin on October 14, 2025 in Los Angeles, according to Jonathan Brayman, one of the lawyers on Durk’s legal team. Durk remains in custody in California. He was denied bond in December 2024.
This tit for tat gang violence retaliation storyline sounds like a movie but police say they have an interstate, true crime case. The FBI issued the following statement about Durk:
“The apprehension of Mr. Banks as he attempted to leave the United States is once again proof that the FBI and our extraordinary partners at the Los Angeles Police Department have a long reach,” said Akil Davis, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Los Angeles Field Office. “No excuse can justify this violent act and let me be clear: While you’re going about your life, thinking you ‘got away with it,’ the FBI is piecing together the facts that will serve as your undoing.”
Given the gravity of the charges, fans and friends alike were understandably shaken, and many now find the dotted line of murders tangentially linked to Durk as difficult to process.
Before the Birthday Bash concert, Durk held a four-hour community meeting with 30 boys in a mentoring group. Also at the meeting were his father, uncle and Vondale Singleton, founder of C.H.A.M.P.S. Male Mentoring Program. They were in clusters of five and six people, each in different rooms with the adults, reading over and discussing case studies about real-world issues facing young Black men and boys.
“He was telling those young brothers, ‘y’all have to think through everything. Just don’t think in the moment, think about what’s going to happen afterward,’” said Singleton, who has worked with Lil Durk’s non-profit foundation, Neighborhood Heroes.
At the end of the meeting, Lil Durk expressed regret to the boys about his involvement in past situations, Singleton said. Durk suggested that the group think long-term about their actions and how those actions can impact the future. Then he gave them tickets to the concert.
‘“Think about down the road and how that’s going to impact everything,’” Singleton recalls Durk telling the youth. “I [could] tell he was holding a lot. That was the week the federal charges came out.”
Up to that point, Durk was heavily involved in community work and was revamping his platform to help improve the lives of Black kids in Chicago. He also was working with Chicago CRED, a gun violence reduction program co-founded by former U.S. Secretary of Education and former CEO of Chicago Public Schools Arne Duncan.
After learning of the 2024 arrest, Singleton reached out to Kevin Freeman, executive director of Neighborhood Heroes. He was afraid that everything they had worked for, metaphorically, might burn to the ground.
“I was like ‘Kev, man. Tell me this is not gon’ be how this ends,’” said Singleton. “And of course we’re keeping the faith. We’re waiting on trial. But at the end of the day, it was like, ‘we can’t have nothing!’ We get here [to this level of success] and it felt like it was intentionally planned to snatch this after it was built up at that moment.”
Durk’s pre-trial detention immediately put a monkey wrench into Singleton’s plans for the non profits to continue their annual college tours and other forms of community work and partnerships.
Beyond that, the fallout extended to Lil Durk’s connections with City of Chicago leadership and neighboring suburbs. Durk donated $150,000 to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s campaign one month after the mayor clinched his 2023 election bid. Durk also received the keys to two suburban cities. Immediately after the federal charges were brought down, those city keys were yanked back, and critics demanded that Johnson return the donation. Johnson responded with “[Lil Durk] has not been convicted of anything. It is not my position to determine the outcome of someone’s life.”
Representatives of Johnson and the City of Chicago declined to comment.
Longtime friend and collaborator Hypno Carlito was also in disbelief at the charges. Carlito says the accusations were a sharp contrast to the close confidante he started his career with nearly 11 years ago. Carlito released his song “Where Smurk Go” a few days after the arrest was announced.
“When I look and see Durk fighting federal charges…for what?! Y’all trippin! This ain’t the same nigga I know,” said Carlito. “This dude that I know is supposed to be a comedian. He’s a good kid.”
By Carlito’s account, Durk had also slowed contact with nearly “90%” of the people who once could easily contact him.
“Right before he went to jail, he wasn’t even talking to nobody,” says Carlito, who is known for writing Nick Cannon’s Oscar-nominated song “Pray 4 My City.” “Durk would purposefully call me every day and talk to me all night. [He’d say] ‘Man, I can’t sleep, you want to listen to some music, want to play the game?’ And we’re doing this every day for the past year and a half, two years.”
This account directly negates what is popularly discussed on social media, he adds.
“What it looked like on the internet?” explained Carlito, “It wasn’t that in real life.”
Since his breakout in 2011, Chicago has witnessed Lil Durk’s rise from rock bottom, to being one of the hottest breakout rappers, to being at the bottom again, to slowly becoming one of the most beloved rappers from the City of Big Shoulders. His music resonates with a large swath of Black (and white) Chicago. The message inside of songs such as “Backdoor” (i.e. to be mindful of a violent betrayal, from his sixth album, The Voice) can be applied to everything from toxic friendships to working in corporate America, while “All My Life” – that aforementioned mainstream, Grammy-winning hit – is a classic underdog story of overcoming the odds.
Even while in custody, Durk’s success in music continues. Deep Thoughts debuted at #2 on the Billboard Rap charts and at #3 on the Billboard 200, becoming the third highest streamed album of 2025. The album is Durk’s seventh Top 10 debut. He also earned a whopping 53 certifications from the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), which was not only the most earned by any rapper in 2025, but it qualified him for inclusion into RIAA’s top 50 artists of all time. RIAA reports that Durk has sold 52.2 million units (and counting.)
Despite his accomplishments, Durk’s longtime DJ, Maurice “DJ Reese” Davis, says the rapper’s absence from the city is already being felt.
“It’s a void there,” said Davis. “It’s not ever gonna be another Durk. You can kind of feel it. It’s not much going on with the music scene. You got a few artists that’s doing good, but not like Smurk.”
Young Chop, one of the pioneering producers of Chicago drill who worked extensively with Chief Keef and Lil Durk at the beginning of their careers, describes Durk as supportive. Durk helped Chop as Chop went through mental health struggles when both rappers lived in Atlanta. He fondly recalls the two visiting each other’s homes, either to work on music or just to hang out and eat.
“That’s one thing about him, he’s definitely loyal,” said Chop. “If you f-ck with him, he f-ck with you.”
When asked at what point he knew Durk meant something to Black Chicagoans, Chop said he knew from the very beginning that the OTF/GBE collective was special. To Young Chop, few from Chicago uplifted other city rappers the way Durk’s group did for the last 13 years.
“I always looked at them like they mean something,” said Chop. “It wasn’t no niggas doing it like that. It wasn’t no niggas coming strong like that at one time and then put other homies on too.”
Similarly, many of Durk’s fans laud the rapper because he isn’t afraid to talk positively about relationships and love in his music. He has been in a long-term relationship with India Royale since at least 2017 and announces her as his wife via the song “Can’t Hide It” from his album Deep Thoughts. They share a daughter, Willow Banks.
Durk has been very open on social media, during his concerts, and in his music (he made a three-part series of songs dedicated to India) about his love for her. [Durk also has several additional children.]
At least one fan, Zha Zha Casanova, applauds Durk for being an example.
“In the drill scene, you don’t see men that are in love,” said Casanova. “You don’t see men who are married. You don’t see men who are trying to create a sense of family. But he was. He’s a street nigga but he’s also in love and he has a woman that’s down for him. I think that’s a beautiful thing, and that’s one of the reasons why he was able to create the life that he has now.”
For many, Lil Durk is an unlikely hero from Englewood. As he grew up, so did they. His music encapsulates the psychological toll of poverty, of losing countless people from gun violence before 30, and of being fatherless until adulthood because of the same criminal justice system that he’s now entangled in. He wore these truths in almost every song, and that rawness is why his social media handle is “The Voice.”
To fellow rappers like Ashlee Bankz, with whom Durk collaborated for 2012’s “Let’s Get It,” Durk was proof that people can rise above their circumstances.
“He showed everybody that you can literally come from the trenches to a million-dollar house,” said Bankz. “And it ain’t even about the material, I think it’s just the matter of showing what it’s like to be resilient no matter what you’re going through. He gave people hope and showed people the way.”
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