Rapper Tyga Arrested on Domestic Violence Charges For Alleged Assault Of His Ex
The LA-based rapper best known for dating Kylie Jenner was released on bail after his Tuesday arrest.
A rapper who achieved notoriety for his ties to the extended Kardashian family is facing charges of abusing his most recent girlfriend.
Tyga, the stage name of 31-year-old rapper Michael Ray Nguyen-Stevenson, was booked by the Hollywood devision of the Los Angeles Police Department on felony domestic violence charges on Tuesday, according to a Tweet from the LAPD.
He turned himself in on Tuesday morning, according to NBC Los Angeles, and was booked and released on what police said was $50,000 bail.
The charges reportedly stem from an incident that occurred at Tyga's home at around 3:00 a.m. PT on Monday morning. A "source close to the rapper" told TMZ on Monday that Tyga's very recent ex, 22-year-old model Camaryn Swanson, allegedly showed up uninvited to Tyga's house at that hour screaming. Police sources told TMZ that a fight occurred during which Tyga assaulted Swanson.
Swanson's mother, they said, came to pick her up, after which police were called. Swanson had, at the time of her report, what police said were visible marks.
The police, TMZ said, then went to speak to the rapper, who refused to speak to them at that time.
After TMZ's report blaming Swanson for the altercation, the model posted pictures of her injuries — which include a visible black eye and blood stains on the wrist and chest of her shirt — to her Instagram stories and tagged TMZ in a comment which read, "I've been emotionally, mentally, and physically abused and I'm not hiding it anymore," according to the New York Post.
She additionally posted a screenshot of an alleged text conversation between her and the rapper from overnight on Monday, showing he sent a car for her, again tagging TMZ with a message: "i didn’t show up ‘screaming’ or uninvited. when i tried to leave he physically assaulted and refused to let me leave for hours," according to the Post.
TMZ published another micro video from Swanson's Instagram Stories intended to refute TMZ's reporting of Tyga's camp's allegations, in which she showed different angles of her injury and her bloodstained clothes.
"I’m so embarrassed and ashamed it had to get to this," she wrote in a comment on the video in her Stories, "but I have to stand up for myself."
Tyga and Swanson became official on Instagram in the spring of 2020, though it's unknown when they started dating.
Tyga, who released his first major studio album in 2011 on Lil Wayne's label almost immediately thereafter became known for his high-profile romances. He first started dating model Blac Chyna — who had appeared in a number of high-profile music videos at that point — in 2011 and the couple gave birth to a child in 2012. In 2014, the couple split after he became involved with Kim Kardashian's half-sister Kylie Jenner, who Tyga met performing at her older sister Kendall's Sweet Sixteen party in 2011.
Though both Kylie Jenner and Tyga have denied they were involved when Kenner was under 18 and the rapper was 25, the two were first pictured together at her 17th birthday in 2014 and at various events with her family well before her 18th birthday in 2015, when the couple was more pointedly included on the show "Keeping Up With The Kardashians," according to Billboard. After appearing in two of his music videos, the couple broke up in 2017.
Thereafter, he was publicly linked with a fitness influencer and then-23-year-old TikTok star-turned-singer Bella Poarch in 2020, according to Life & Style, before beginning the relationship with Swanson.