Mac Miller
Brick StowellRyan Michael Reavis has pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of fentanyl in connection with Mac Miller's overdose death three years ago.
He's now the second man to plead guilty to that same charge in Miller's death, after Stephen Andrew Walter, the 48-year-old man responsible for supplying the rapper's drug dealer with counterfeit pharmaceutical pills containing fentanyl, entered his plea last month.
The Justice Department announced Wednesday (Nov. 10) that Reavis, 38, pleaded guilty to the federal criminal charge. In court documents obtained by Billboard, the new plea deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California states that on Sept. 4, 2018, Reavis followed the direction of fellow co-defendant Walter and knowingly distributed the counterfeit oxycodone pills, which he admitted to being aware contained fentanyl "or some other federally controlled substance," to a third co-defendant, Cameron James Pettit. Pettit later distributed the pills to 26-year-old rapper Miller, who was found dead in his San Fernando Valley, Calif., home three days later as a result of an accidental overdose from cocaine, alcohol and fentanyl.
Reavis faces up to 20 years in jail and a lifetime of supervised release.
While both Reavis and Walter are expected to give their guilty pleas in front of U.S. District Judge Otis D. Wright II in L.A. in the next few weeks, Pettit's case is still pending.
On Oct. 26, Mac Miller's 2014 fan-favorite mixtape Faces landed on streaming services for the first time and went on to debut at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.
NEWS
No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.
Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.
Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.
In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...
