Rapper Remy Ma recently told daytime talk show host Wendy Williams that she did not shoot her former friend in a July 2007 scuffle that sent her to prison, despite her attorney’s claims that she did otherwise.
The “Melanin Magic” rapper appeared virtually on the Wednesday, March 31, episode of “The Wendy Williams Show,” where the two women discussed a plethora of things, including Remy’s pregnancy rumor infamously started by her husband Papoose, motherhood, and much more. However, it was her response to a question about her 2008 conviction that shocked Williams.
Remy, whose real name is Reminisce Mackie, told Williams that not only did she not shoot the victim, Makeda Barnes Joseph, but she didn’t even know her at the time.
As many may remember, the native New Yorker spent six years in prison after being convicted of intentional assault after shooting a member of her entourage, an assault prosecutors said Remy carried out because she believed Joseph had stolen about $3,000 from her. Although the rapper’s defense in court at the time was that the shooting was accidental, a jury did not accept that defense.
“See, this is the thing. I tell people this all the time. It’s like one of my mottos. Everyone that is in prison is not guilty. The same way that everybody that’s walking around in the streets is not innocent. Do y’all really think that every single time the DA, the judge, and the jury got it right every single time? No, they didn’t,” Remy explained. “Did not know this girl, wasn’t my best friend. All of these things that were said over these years were not true, but once you’re in prison, no one cares. And once you come home — I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life trying to prove to people I didn’t know this person.”
Remy explained the extent to which she knew Joseph, claiming she found out her last name at the same time as the public. She also stated that suggestions that Joseph was her best friend or babysitter were simply false. When Williams questioned Remy about her motive for shooting Joseph, the rapper said, “I didn’t shoot anybody.”
Remy sang a different tune on Wednesday than her attorney Ivan Fisher did during her trial. Fisher called the shooting an accident in court, telling the jury that the women’s hands hit the rearview mirror of Joseph’s car during a tussle over a bag and that the gun went off.
“There is no other explanation for why Remy Smith would have chosen that unique moment in time to shoot her,” Fisher told the jurors during closing arguments in the March 2008 trial. The previous July, two days after the shooting, Remy maintained her innocence to reporters, saying, “I didn’t shoot my friend.”
Joseph testified in the trial that Remy shot her, saying on the witness stand, “I knew that she was making a scene. I didn’t think she was going to shoot me, but she did. By the time she got in the car, she was in so much rage.”
Joseph was hit twice in the abdomen, and prosecutors said Remy responded by going through Joseph’s purse and then speeding away in her own vehicle, never calling an ambulance.
Remy was released from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in August 2014 and was on parole for five years after that, which she completed on Aug. 1, 2019.
