slowthai. Photo by Sergione Infuso/Corbis via Getty Images
slowthai, the 29-year-old English rapper born Tyron Frampton has been found not guilty of three counts of rape, the BBC reports. He and his co-defendant Alex Blake-Walker were charged in September 2023 and accused of assaulting two women after a slowthai show in Oxford in September 2021. Blake-Walker was also cleared by the Oxford Crown Court of the same charges as well as one count of sexual assault.
According to the prosecution, the women met slowthai before the Oxford show and were given VIP tickets to the performance. Afterwards, they invited him and his friends to a party, where the assaults allegedly took place. Prosecutors accused slowthai of raping one of the women twice and encouraging Blake-Walker during the rape of the second accusor.
Both slowthai and Blake-Walker maintained that the sexual encounters at the party were consensual. "I know she was consenting, there wasn't a question," slowthai said of his accuser in court earlier this month. "The energy she was giving me wasn't of someone who was not consenting."
Patrick Gibbs, slowthai's defence attorney, said in closing remarks that the rapper would be "cancelled for the rest of time" regardless of the verdict. "There’s all the difference in the world between being up for a good time, in a boyish and immature way," Gibbs told the court, "and forcing yourself upon someone against their will.”
The FADER has reached out to slowthai's representatives for comment.
