On May 9, 2022, Martinez Arnold — better known as the rapper Lil Duke — flew to Atlanta from Los Angeles. After landing at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, he went to the home of his longtime collaborator, Jeffery Williams, better known as the superstar Young Thug.

Arnold and Williams grew up minutes from each other in southeast Atlanta. The two have been together since the outset of Williams’s illustrious career; Arnold has said he sees Williams less as a friend and more as a brother. While Williams is an extravagant, singularly strange musician, Arnold has always been a more workaday presence. (One endearing lyric: “I’m always on the road / just like a Uber, man.”) He’s a lovable sidekick.

On that May afternoon, police raided Williams’s home and arrested Arnold and Williams. Alongside twenty-six others, they were indicted by Fani Willis, the Fulton County District Attorney, who alleged that YSL — a rap group and record label created by Williams — was in fact a criminal organization. The indictment stated that Arnold’s participation in YSL amounted to a violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. The penalty for violating RICO in Georgia is a prison sentence between five and twenty years.