Then, at the beginning of July, an A&R man at Epic Records named Sha Money XL-from East Flatbush and Queens, himself of Haitian heritage, and most famous for shepherding 50 Cent to fame-clicked on a link to the video. 'Hot Nigga' went up on YouTube on March 28, 2014, surpassed 20,000 views within a few weeks, and was a local hit by May. It would later be dubbed the Shmoney Dance. But Shmurda's performance also exuded energy and a kind of joy, especially the moment when he chucked his cap in the air and did a strange, vaguely feminine dance move, swaying his hips in time to the slow rhythm. The lyrics were pure street-calling out friends with their real nicknames and saying things like Bitch, if it's a problem, we gonna gun brawl. Pollard, now fully Bobby Shmurda, rapped over a beat he'd discovered on the Internet, baleful and stripped-down, with occasional horns that sounded like emergency Klaxons. There were cornrows, hoodies, joints rolled and smoked. Just Pollard rapping in front of some dudes. No gyrating vixens, no Maybachs, no hundred-dollar bills fluttering in the air. Hanging out on the corner that afternoon for the video shoot, they performed for the camera. 'They said if we move they gonna kill us right there.' When the men left, Chewy and the others ran to the kitchen, where they found Pluto dead. They instructed Chewy and two others who were there to get onto the floor. I don't know nothin' about nothin'.' 'Stop fuckin' lyin'! You wanna die, too?' I'm like, 'I do not wanna die, but I don't know where no drugs are.' It was like a fucked-up predicament.' The men ransacked the apartment and found the weed. They were like: 'Where the drugs at?' I'm like, 'Listen, I never been here before. 'When they shot him, I turned my head to the wall, like: I don't know nothin', I ain't see nothin'. 'They shot him right in front of my face,' Chewy recalls now. 'Where the hell Pluto live?' And then Pluto's door suddenly opened-there was Pluto-and Chewy watched as one of the gunmen wheeled in surprise and fired. He was with a partner, similarly disguised and similarly armed. The gun in the man's hand was a large-caliber revolver. A pair of eyes stared back through the sight hole of a ski mask. Then someone grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. When Chewy reached the landing of Pluto's apartment, he felt something cold and hard touch the back of his head.

Pluto was the local marijuana vendor in this part of Brownsville, Brooklyn, which, together with adjacent neighborhoods in the far eastern end of the borough-East New York, East Flatbush, Canarsie, where the subways end-is regularly described by the police and the media as one of the most violent precincts in New York City. He was headed up to his friend Pluto's place. On the evening of November 5, 2013, he was still just Chewy, his childhood nickname, when he climbed the stairs of his apartment building. This was before the viral music video, before the record deal, before the world fame under the stage name Bobby Shmurda, and before the indictment that has waylaid his rap career, possibly forever.

Bobby shmurda dancing to big rich town