More than four years after Drakeo the Ruler was fatally stabbed backstage at the Once Upon a Time in L.A. festival, the late rapper’s estate is offering its most detailed account yet of how it believes the event’s security system failed him.
A new collection of contracts, emails, security plans and deposition testimony filed in Los Angeles Superior Court portrays an artist compound protected by multiple security contractors, law enforcement agencies and layers of screening — but also by a vehicle-search procedure that one security vendor later concluded made it “virtually impossible” to prevent prohibited items from entering the site.
The evidence was submitted by attorneys for Drakeo’s estate in support of a motion seeking pretrial discovery into the financial condition of Live Nation Worldwide and its subsidiary C3 Presents, two defendants in the wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the rapper’s family. The Estate is pursuing punitive damages and must first convince the court that it has a substantial probability of proving that the companies acted with malice, oppression or conscious disregard for Drakeo’s safety.




