Hip-hop pioneer Melle Mel arrested on suspicion of domestic violence
Hip-hop pioneer Melle Mel was arrested Monday on suspicion of domestic violence in downtown Los Angeles where he had attended the 2023 BET Awards.
Los Angeles Police Department officers took Melle Mel, whose real name is Melvin Glover, into custody at 7:45 a.m. in the 900 block of Wilshire Boulevard where the InterContinental hotel is located, according to L.A. County Jail records.
Glover, 62, was booked on a felony domestic violence charge, an LAPD spokesperson told The Times, and released later that afternoon after posting $50,000 bail. Glover’s arraignment is scheduled for July 17.
The charges stem from a reported argument at the InterContinental between Glover and an actress and dancer he had reportedly previously dated.
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In a Rolling Stone report published Wednesday, Glover acknowledged he had argued with the woman, but denied hitting her. The rapper and a representative did not immediately respond Thursday to requests for comment from The Times.
The woman, Jori Jordon, also spoke publicly about the incident — posting a series of videos to her public Facebook account.
In a Facebook Live from her hospital room Tuesday, she said that she met Glover when she was 22 and the two had previously dated. She described the relationship as abusive and called him “a bully,” though she said he had never physically attacked her before.
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Jordon said Glover invited her up to his room at the InterContinental early Monday morning. The pair just had attended the BET Awards together at Microsoft Theater, as well as an after-party.
While inside the hotel room, Jordon said she turned down Glover’s offer for some drinks. She claimed she was sitting on the bed, looking to play music, when Glover hit her in the face.
“I’m just sitting there, I’m chillin’, next thing you know, this man goes, ‘whack,’ with four rings on his finger, and hits me on my eye,” Jordon said, adding that she was still recovering from cornea surgery and previously had stitches. “And he popped one of my stitches, so there’s a hole in my eye.”
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Jordon said Glover dared her to call law enforcement, which she did. In a separate video taken from inside the hotel room and posted to Facebook Tuesday, LAPD officers can be seen placing Glover in handcuffs. “Mel, I don’t want you to go to jail. He chose this,” Jordon could be heard saying through tears.
Glover told Rolling Stone he has known Jordon for more than 20 years, and they previously lived together. He said she contacts him when he is in L.A. and claimed she asked to meet him at the hotel.
At one point, Glover said he asked Jordon to leave, but she refused. After an argument, during which Glover said he attempted to escort her out of the room, he acknowledged “something did happen to her eye.”
“But I did not punch her,” he told Rolling Stone. “With me tussling with her and trying to get her away from me, to get her out of the room, something happened.”
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Glover said Jordon asked if he could take her to the hospital, but he instead told her to call the police, hoping she would leave. Once officers arrived, Glover claimed Jordon told them he had assaulted her.
“She said I punched her in the eye,” he said. “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.”
A member of pioneering hip-hop group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Glover is considered one of the genre’s original artists. Performing as Melle Mel, he is best known for rapping the group’s 1982 song “The Message.” The group wrote the song during the Reagan administration, the economic and drug policies of which critics say exacerbated issues of poverty and incarceration in Black neighborhoods.
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Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five became the first rap group inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Glover continued performing as a solo act throughout the 1990s.
Glover performed parts of “The Message” at the 2023 Grammy Awards as a part of the show’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop. He is scheduled to appear at another anniversary event in New York on Aug. 11.
That concert celebrates the date in 1973 when Clive “DJ Kool Herc” Campbell led a back-to-school party inside a recreation room at an apartment building in the Bronx, an event widely credited with helping birth the genre.
Another founding member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five — Glover’s older brother, Nathaniel, known by his rapper name, Kidd Creole — was sentenced to 16 years in prison last year for stabbing and killing a homeless man in New York in 2017.
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