Music

Wu-Tang rapper sues TMZ for mistakenly claiming he cut off his penis

by Jeremy Mersereau

Cast your mind back to the heady days of April 2014, when the music blogosphere was inundated with a story about a Wu-Tang Clan affiliate rapper’s suicide attempt that left him without the most precious member of all: U-God his penis.

Last year, the TMZ-sourced stories of one Andre Johnson severing his own ol’ dirty bastard and leaping from a second-story apartment in North Hollywood made waves throughout several news outlets. TMZ‘s original story claimed that the person in question was one Marques “Andre Roxx” Johnson, but in fact, the actual johnson-less rapper was Andre “Christ Bearer” Johnson, one-half of the RZA-produced duo Northstar.

The original, false info quickly spread to outlets like BET, USA Today, and others, many of which erroneously conflated the two mens’ identities. Not us, though.

Now Roxx, who was in prison at the time of the incident, has filed a defamation suit against TMZ along with the many other companies who mistakenly named him as the dick-cutter in question. Roxx claims that he was forced to go into protective custody due to harassment from other inmates, and that the negative publicity from the story adversely affected his music career. Giant media companies like Warner Bros., Viacom, Gannet, and iHeartMedia all now find themselves named as co-defendants in the suit.

For his part, Christ Bearer has recovered from his suicide attempt and had his penis reattached, thankfully mostly functionally intact. Speaking with VladTV, Johnson said he was “proud” of surviving his ordeal. The reason behind his actions last April? “PCP and meth and molly and alcohol and no sleep. That was the main thing: no sleep.” Well, far be it from me to cast aspersions, but the main main thing was probably the PCP and meth and molly.

[h/t The Hollywood Reporter]