On Wednesday, Kidd Creole of Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five was sentenced to 16 years in prison for stabbing a homeless man in 2017.

After being charged with murder in 2017, Kidd Creole has received his sentencing. On Wednesday (May 4th) the 62-year-old member of Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five was sentenced to sixteen years in prison after being found guilty of of first-degree manslaughter by a New York Supreme Court jury. The court, presided over by the Hon. Michele S. Rodney of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, cited Creole's 2017 fatal stabbing of homeless man in Midtown Manhattan.

“A life is a life is a life,” said Justice Rodney, according to The New York Times. She added that the killing was not “somehow justified because the person is homeless.”

The homeless man was 55-year-old Jolly Jolly and the incident occurred on August 1st, 2017 when Creole – born Nathaniel Glover – was walking to his maintenance job. According to Glover, Jolly allegedly approached the former rapper and said "What's up?"

Glover could have been sentencing to 25 years, but lead prosecutor, Mark Dahl, asked that Glover be sentenced to 18 years, noting that the rapper previously seemed remorseful. However, Dahl noted that Glover rejected a plea deal, where he would have received a lesser sentencing of 10 years. Dahl then expressed that, “The Nathaniel Glover who took responsibility on the day of the killing is not the man who stands before you today. He blames everyone but himself.”

Jolly's cousin, Cheryl Horry, was present and shared her disappointment that Glover did not receive maximum sentencing.

“He didn’t say sorry,” she said. “He didn’t even say sorry to his own family. That shows a lot.”

Defending Glover was his lawyer, Scottie Celestin, who said that he would appeal the sentencing. Prior to the sentencing, Celestin argued that Glover was acting in self-defense upon Jolly's approach, stabbing the homeless man twice in the chest. Jolly was then taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died. Glover's defense team claimed that Jolly was intoxicated during the attack and that the stab wounds were non life-threatening – his death was caused from alcohol and a sedative given by the hospital.

Prior to his sentencing, Glover claimed that Jolly was hitting on him. In a 2021 interview with The Source, Glover denied that the attack was homophobic.

“Now I’m fighting the image that they portrayed me as a person who’s intolerant of people with alternative lifestyles and that’s not true,” Glover said. “[...] They made me seem like I was the villain and the person who actually attacked me was the victim. How do they justify charging me with murder when this guy attacked me?”

This story was updated on Thursday, May 5th.