Soulja Boy was arrested early Wednesday morning in Los Angeles after police found him carrying a loaded gun during a traffic stop in the San Fernando Valley.
The 23 year old rapper, whose real name is DeAndre Cortez Way, was a passenger in a car that a Los Angeles police officer pulled over around 4 a.m. on a residential street in Granada Hills after the driver allegedly ran a stop sign. LAPD spokeswoman Rosario Herrera told CNN that the officer saw Soulja Boy was carrying a weapon, and TMZ, which first reported the arrest, said it turned out to be a loaded gun. An LAPD representative confirmed to MTV News that he was arrested for possession of a concealed weapon but would not confirm whether it was loaded.
Soulja Boy was booked into a San Fernando Valley jail on a felony weapons charge. Jail records showed his bond was set at $35,000, and he posted it and was released later the same day.
This is not the first time Soulja Boy has been arrested after a traffic stop. In October 2011, he and four other men were pulled over on a Georgia interstate in Carroll County, and police said they found more than five ounces of marijuana, cash, and handguns in the rented SUV. Soulja Boy was charged with felony marijuana and gun possession. The Carroll County district attorney’s office later said it declined to prosecute because federal prosecutors took over the case.
The arrest comes just weeks after one of the biggest moments of Soulja Boy’s recent run. In December, Drake jumped on a remix of his song “We Made It” from The King mixtape, putting the Atlanta rapper back in the conversation. Soulja Boy rose to fame in 2007 when “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned him a Grammy nomination.
He also made headlines last August when he was removed from an American Airlines flight after a dispute with flight attendants, which he later apologized for.
