Grammy-nominated rapper Mystikal has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for third-degree rape.
The “Danger” rapper was arrested in the summer of 2022 and booked into the Ascension Parish Jail in Louisiana and charged with first-degree rape, simple robbery, domestic abuse battery–strangulation, false imprisonment and simple criminal damage to property after the victim identified the rapper as the suspect from the hospital where she was being treated for injuries.
According to Baton Rouge-based ABC affiliate WBRZ, the victim told a Louisiana courtroom on Tuesday that Mystikal, real name Michael Tyler, punched and choked her, pulled braids out of her hair and forcibly raped her during the 2022 incident. The victim requested the maximum sentence for the rapper.
“If I did that to you, I deserve the max sentence,” Tyler told the courtroom before he was sentenced to 20 years for third-degree rape, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years with no chance for early release or probation.
In March, Tyler entered a guilty plea, which knocked his first-degree rape charge down to third-degree. In Louisiana, first-degree rape carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. According to WBRZ, the rapper’s attorney filed a motion to withdraw the guilty plea days before Tyler was sentenced, but the motion was tossed.
The New Orleans-born artist was convicted more than two decades ago of sexual battery after pleading guilty to charges in 2003. He served six years in prison and was released in 2010.
The rapper was previously indicted in 2017 on rape and kidnapping charges stemming from allegations in 2016. He spent 18 months in jail before being released in 2019 on a $3-million bond, the Associated Press reported. The Caddo Parish district attorney in Louisiana ultimately dropped those charges in 2020 after a second grand jury declined to bring an indictment.
With his raspy vocal intensity and scream-like musical delivery, Mystikal shot to the top of the charts with Master P’s No Limit Records in the late 1990s. In 2004, the rapper’s original label, Jive Records, released two compilations of his music, “Prince of the South … The Hits” and “Chopped & Screwed.”
Former Times staff writer Nardine Saad contributed to this report.
