Lifestyle
Grammy-winning rapper Lil Durk is charged in murder-for-hire conspiracy
Lil Durk poses in the press room with the award for best melodic rap performance for “All My Life” by Lil Durk featuring J. Cole during the 66th annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 4 in Los Angeles.
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Grammy Award-winning rapper Lil Durk has been arrested in Florida on federal charges that he paid for the attempted 2022 revenge killing of rapper Quando Rondo at a Los Angeles gas station, a shooting that resulted in the death of Rondo’s cousin.
Durk, 32, is charged with conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire in the slaying of Saviay’a Robinson, 24, who was gunned down on Aug. 19, 2022, according to an FBI affidavit released Friday.
Five other members of Durk’s Chicago-based rap collective, “Only the Family” or “OTF,” have also been arrested and at least two more arrests may be forthcoming, according to court documents that have been filed. Durk was arrested Thursday night in South Florida as he attempted to flee the country, the FBI says.
Durk, whose real name is Durk Banks, won a Grammy earlier this year for Best Melodic Rap Performance for his song “All My Life,” which featured J. Cole. He has also been nominated three times and was a featured performer on Drake’s “Laugh Now Cry Later.”
Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for Los Angeles, called the shooting “a cold-blooded murder.”
“The shooting occurred in the open, at a gas station at a busy intersection, endangering many others in the area,” Estrada said in a statement. “Violent gun crime of this sort is devastating to our community and we will have zero-tolerance for those who perpetrate such callous acts of violence.”
FBI Agent Sarah Corcoran said in her affidavit that OTF members engage “in violence, including murder and assault, at the direction of Banks and to maintain their status in OTF.”
Durk’s representatives did not immediately respond to emails Friday seeking comment.
According to Corcoran’s affidavit and other federal court records, the shooting stems from the November 2020 slaying of OTF rapper King Von, 26, at an Atlanta nightclub after Von and Rondo got into a fight. Records say a friend of Rondo’s pulled a gun and shot Von several times, killing him. Von, whose real name was Dayvon Bennett, had two hit singles, ″Crazy Story″ and “Took Her to the O.”
Authorities say Durk made it known that he would “pay a bounty” to anyone who killed Rondo, whose real name is Tyquian Bowman.
Almost two years later, a murder plot quickly came together, Corcoran wrote.
On Aug. 18, 2022, Durk’s associates learned that Rondo was staying at a Los Angeles hotel. That day, Deandre Wilson, Keith Jones, David Lindsey, Asa Houston and a fifth unnamed suspect flew from Chicago to San Diego and then drove to Los Angeles using funds provided by Durk, Corcoran said.
That day, Durk allegedly texted an associate arranging the flights, “Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit me.” Corcoran said there is video evidence that Durk was staying at a house in the San Fernando Valley that day.
Once arriving in Los Angeles, the OTF members met Kayon Grant, who had flown there on a private jet. Grant, a top OTF associate, got the men hotel rooms, purchased four ski masks and obtained two luxury sedans, court records say. Grant allegedly gave Jones, Lindsey and a third unnamed suspect guns, including one that had been converted into a machine gun.
The next day, the group allegedly followed Rondo and Robinson as they drove a Cadillac Escalade to a Los Angeles marijuana dispensary, a West Hollywood clothing store and then a gas station across the street from the Beverly Center.
There, Houston allegedly parked his car behind the station so Jones, Lindsey and the unnamed defendant could ambush Rondo. They got out and opened fire, killing Robinson, who was standing outside the Escalade, but missing Rondo, the indictment and news stories about the shooting say.
The suspects then went to an In-N-Out hamburger stand where they discussed payment with Grant and then flew home to Chicago from San Diego, Corcoran and other documents say. Wilson allegedly later paid Jones and Lindsey an undisclosed amount.
Grant, Jones, Lindsey, Wilson and Houston were arrested Thursday in Chicago on conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire charges. No attorney information was immediately available for those men in court records.
After their arrests, Corcoran wrote, Durk booked two flights from South Florida airports — one to Dubai and one to Switzerland. He then booked a private flight to Italy, but was arrested in Miami before he could board it.
Durk and the other defendants are being held pending their transfer to Los Angeles.
In 2019, Durk and King Von were charged in Atlanta with a drive-by shooting that left a man wounded in the leg. Prosecutors dropped the case against Durk in 2022, two years after Von’s slaying. Durk had denied his involvement.
In 2014, Durk pleaded guilty to felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and felony possession of a firearm after he was seen carrying a gun on a Chicago street. He was spared jail time.
Two villages in Chicago’s western suburbs, Bellwood and Broadview, last week honored Durk and announced collaborations with his charity, Neighborhood Heroes Foundation, to provide youth mentors.
But on Friday, Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson announced she had severed ties to Neighborhood Heroes and had withdrawn the honorary key to the village given Durk.
While acknowledging that Durk and other suspects are presumed innocent, village residents have “even higher moral and ethical standards of behavior,” Thompson wrote on the village’s Facebook page.
A telephone message seeking comment from Andre Harvey, Bellwood’s mayor, was left at his office.
Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
hide caption
toggle caption
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
-
California10 seconds agoCalifornia’s AB 412 Still Demands Developers Do The Impossible
-
Colorado5 minutes agoColorado governor vetoes bill that would have allowed lawsuits against federal immigration officers, signs another to regulate detention centers
-
Connecticut12 minutes agoOwner seeks return of historic Abraham Lincoln documents lost in New London
-
Delaware15 minutes agoDelaware high school lacrosse star returns for playoffs after potentially deadly jaw condition
-
Florida20 minutes agoTeen on e-scooter crashes into Florida deputy’s patrol car, video shows
-
Georgia27 minutes agoChattanooga closes Wilson Road bridge connecting Tennessee to Georgia for structure repair
-
Hawaii30 minutes agoUniversity of Hawaii leaves Spectrum Sports for free over-the-air broadcasts
-
Idaho30 minutes agoIdaho water officials warn thousands of users about potential reductions amid historic drought
