The surprise news of Ashanti’s secret wedding to Nelly spread across the internet like wildfire. Most fans welcomed the story with joy and delight for the couple. But it also restarted a conversation about Nelly’s past that looked all but forgotten. And the hidden truth about Nelly might shock you.
Serious Allegations Against Nelly
After the news of the marriage broke, one fan took to Reddit to once again open up the can of worms. They sarcastically wrote “hooray” for Ashanti marrying and having a baby with a man with multiple serious accusations against him.Around seven years ago, a college student named Monique Greene accused Nelly of SA.
The incident allegedly took place on Nelly’s tour bus before he was due to perform at a Florida Georgia Line concert. Monique was just 22 years old when she made the accusation. So, why has everyone seemingly completely forgotten about this massive news? Well, one possible reason might be that the story pretty much went away as quickly as it arrived.
In fact, the case was dropped after just a week. Seven days after Nelly’s arrest, Monique was alleged to have failed to cooperate with investigations. Monique’s attorney spoke about her behavior. And what she said was pretty disturbing. According to her attorney, Monique stopped cooperating because she believed that the system would fail her. In other words, she pulled out because she thought that Nelly would not face any punishment for his alleged actions no matter what.
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Nelly Speaks Out
However, Nelly’s lawyer, Scott Rosenblum, had a different take on things. The rapper’s legal representative, who said that Monique’s claims were completely false, suggested that she was motivated by greed and vindictiveness. Nelly himself also came out to deny that the incident took place.
In his statement, Nelly said that it was time for him to personally speak up against the claims, which he described as disingenuous. He continued by saying that he’d remained quiet and had refrained from saying anything up until that point. Instead, he’d apparently focused on fully cooperating on every level of the investigation to allow law enforcement to get to the bottom of the accusations.
Nelly then went on to address the remarks of Monique’s lawyer. He said that the lawyer, who’d been involved in two cases against him, had claimed that police in two different countries would not help her clients. He also claimed that the attorney had labeled the police as incompetent and constantly painted this picture of Nelly bullying the police into not doing their jobs. However, this ended up causing even more problems for him.
More Trouble For Nelly
In December, two months after the initial accusations, Monique decided to sue Nelly for SA and defamation. Which she probably would not have done if Nelly hadn’t addressed the charges in public. So, the decision ended up backfiring on him, especially after the lawsuit opened him up for even more allegations.
Because it turns out that this wasn’t just an isolated claim made by one woman. Court papers filed in the lawsuit also included more allegations from two other women in England. The women, who chose to remain anonymous, claimed that Nelly had groped them and exposed himself in front of them. One woman accused Nelly of putting his hand up her dress without consent.
The Alleged Incidents
The incidents were said to have taken place in 2016 and 2017, after the women were invited to hang out with Nelly and his crew. Which would mean that one incident would have occurred before the alleged incident with Monique, and one after. At this point, Nelly’s reputation was looking more damaged than ever. So, he moved quickly to try and protect himself.
In early 2018, he filed a countersuit in which he called the claims completely fabricated. He dismissed them as what he called an attempt to give credibility to his accuser’s far-fetched story. Nelly’s lawyer, Scott, supported his statement with a defense of his own. He questioned why the UK women would want to remain anonymous and suggested that it was to avoid public scrutiny. Which was obviously not something that Nelly was able to do.
Scott continued by saying that the accusers were using a cloak of anonymity to use the federal court system as a tool. And that they then used this tool to inflict harm against others’ reputations for their personal vendettas. But does this defense really stand up?
Cases Dropped
Could it be that the women just didn’t want to be publicly identified in such a dark and serious situation? Whatever the reason was, a lot of people soon seemingly forgot about these allegations. One of the cases in England was soon dropped for similar reasons to those for Monique’s case being dropped. UK police halted the case due to the woman failing to testify.
Which meant that two of the women who’d accused Nelly of SA later failed to back it up. Which was a pretty bizarre twist in the situation that could really be down to a lot of very different reasons. Perhaps, like Monique, the unnamed woman just saw no point, believing that nothing would happen to Nelly. Or maybe she changed her mind about her story.
After the inquiry in the UK was stopped, Nelly thanked the British police for thoroughly investigating the allegations. But since the investigation was stopped because the accuser failed to testify rather than because of anything the police had found out, it’s hard to say how thorough it really was. In his statement, Nelly also declared that he stood with women and real survivors.
A lot of people saw this as a pretty provocative thing to include in a statement defending himself from SA allegations. This was actually one of the parts of Nelly’s response that received the most backlash. However, even that backlash didn’t seem to stick around very long. Despite the fact that the investigation into these claims was pretty inconclusive, Nelly’s career somehow managed to survive.
Nelly’s Tarnished Reputation
However, he was not the same popular figure he had been before the accusations surfaced. His tarnished reputation is what many fans think is behind Nelly taking Ashanti back. The worry among fans is that Nelly only got back together with Ashanti for some good PR after several years as a laughing stock.
Just a year before he got back together with Ashanti, he became the subject of ridicule after an intimate video of him was leaked online. What made things even worse for him was that he actually leaked it himself by accident. The video appeared briefly on his Instagram story before quickly being taken down. But it was up long enough to make Nelly a laughing stock online.
He soon apologized for the clip, which he said was an old video that was never supposed to be made public. The fact that Nelly seemed to be in such a bad place in 2022 is why some fans have concluded that getting back together with Ashanti was a PR move on his part. Fans will be hopeful that the fact that they’ve gone as far as getting married and are expecting a child is proof that Nelly really does love Ashanti.
But some fans will never forget the dark past that the rapper appears to have left behind.
