Plies brought the Montgomery riverboat brawl back onstage over Labor Day weekend, pulling out Dameion Pickett in front of a hometown Alabama crowd. Pickett is the Harriott II co-captain who became the face of the August 2023 confrontation at the Montgomery riverfront, and Plies had him up there partying like the guest of honor he was. The rapper was booked for the “40 & Up With A Good Job All White Day Party” at Riverfront Park on September 6, which is the same stretch of water where the whole thing went down.
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The brawl started on August 5, 2023, when a private pontoon boat parked itself in the Harriott II’s designated docking space while the riverboat was trying to come back in with 227 passengers on board. The crew spent about 40 to 45 minutes asking the pontoon owners to move, first over the boat’s PA system. According to Pickett, the response was somebody flipping them off and walking away. Pickett and a teenage deckhand took a smaller boat to shore and moved the pontoon a few feet themselves.That is when it turned. Video showed a group running up on Pickett, and Montgomery Police Chief Darryl Albert later said the co-captain was simply doing his job before things escalated. Multiple people attacked him, and then the Harriott II docked, and its crew came off the boat, and half of Montgomery seemed to come off the bank with them. The footage was captured from every angle and was everywhere within hours.What it turned into is a permanent part of internet history. The white folding chair that Reggie Ray was swinging became a full symbol, printed on T-shirts, turned into memes, referenced for years after. That it happened in Montgomery, of all cities, is the part that gave the whole thing its weight. Pickett himself did not have a clean ride out of it either. He was charged with third-degree assault in October 2023 after one of the men charged in the brawl filed a complaint against him, and he pleaded not guilty.
Three years later, he is back at that same riverfront, this time under the lights next to Plies with a crowd chanting for him.
