Melle Mel, a member of the groundbreaking hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, was arrested in Los Angeles on Monday, June 26th, and charged with felony domestic violence, reports Rolling Stone.
The 62-year-old rapper (born Melvin Glover) was released after posting a $50,000 bond and is expected back in court on July 17th.
Jori Jordon, the woman accusing Glover of domestic violence, claimed in a Facebook video reviewed by Rolling Stone that he struck her in the eye after they had drinks at his hotel room in LA. “I’m just sitting there, chillin,'” she said. “Next thing you know, this man just goes ‘whack’ with four rings on his finger and hits me in my eye.” Jordon added that “there’s a hole” in her previously “injured” eye after he “popped” one of her stitches.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Glover claimed he has known Jordon for nearly two decades and that they even lived together at one point. According to the artist, he and Jordon attended an afterparty following the BET Awards (which took place on Sunday) and agreed that she would meet him at his hotel.
Glover said the incident took place after Jordon refused to leave when he asked. While Glover attempted to escort Jordon out of his room, she allegedly grabbed her eye and asked him to accompany her to the hospital — to which Glover declined and encouraged her to call the police. When the officers arrived, Jordon told them Glover had assaulted her, and he was arrested and taken to Los Angeles County Jail.
“It’s very simple,” Glover said. “She said I punched her in the eye. She also said she had eye surgery a month ago. Had I punched her in the eye, especially with rings on, she would have had a cut eye. It would have been way worse. Something did happen to her eye, but I did not punch her. With me tussling with her and trying to get her away from me to get her out of the room, something happened.”
Melle Mel isn’t the first member of the Furious Five (or his own family) to run into major legal trouble. In May 2022, his brother Nathaniel Glover, aka Kidd Creole, was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being found guilty of manslaughter in the 2017 killing of a homeless man.