Record label faces lawsuit after rapper charged with murder

AN aspiring rap star who has been charged with murdering his roommate and eating part of her lung did so as part of his record label’s plan to cultivate a “gangsta” image for him, the victim’s mother charged in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles.

Antron Singleton, a rapper who goes by the stage name Big Lurch, faces murder and torture charges after police found him staggering naked and covered in blood on a southeast Los Angeles street on April 10 last year.

In a nearby apartment, police said they found the mutilated body of 21-year-old Tynisha Ysais, with teeth marks on her face and on pieces of her lung, which had been torn from her chest.

A subsequent medical examination showed Singleton had human blood and flesh in his stomach, police said when they charged the rapper. Singleton, who would be eligible for the death penalty if convicted, is still awaiting trial.

In a wrongful death lawsuit filed just before the close of business on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Ysais’s mother Carolyn Stinson claimed Singleton’s record label had provided him with drugs “to encourage (him) to act out in an extreme violent manner so as to make him more marketable as a Gansta Rap artist”.

The lawsuit named Singleton, Death Row Records, headed by rap mogul Suge Knight, and Stress Free records, and two employees as defendants.

Singleton, originally from Texas, had been in Los Angeles for a few months recording a rap album prior to the death.

“Part of what makes a Gansta Rap artist marketable is the fact that the artist is a current ongoing participant in violent gang activities,” the lawsuit said.

“Singleton met this criteria and was even more marketable because his songs were as violent as his lifestyle and included rape, murder and ended with him eating his victim’s body organs.”