Hip-hop star A$AP Rocky’s downstairs neighbor is suing after a leak in the rapper, producer, fashion designer, actor, model and adult beverage entrepreneur’s $11 million New York City condo caused “catastrophic” flooding that made the apartment below “completely uninhabitable,” according to court documents obtained by The Independent.
A $1.1 million lawsuit filed October 30 in Manhattan County Supreme Court blames last December’s “devastating water intrusion” on the “negligence of the putative owner of Unit 5N, Rakim Athelaston Mayers (a/k/a A$AP Rocky),” and a local contractor, ADE Pro Painting.
A$AP Rocky’s sumptuous pad is a full-floor home with a private elevator in a Romanesque cast-iron structure built in 1895 and renovated in the late 1990s. The 3-bed, 3.5-bath loft features imported oak floors, custom ceiling beams and lighting by renowned French lighting designer Hervé Descottes. The main bedroom has a fireplace and floor-to-ceiling custom wardrobes with automated clothing rods.
Other notable residents of the Wooster Street loft building have included actress Claire Danes and designer Donna Karan.
Unit 4NF, which sold in 2021 for $6.5 million, “suffered damage and destruction” to its “fixtures, furnishings and improvements,” as well as to “furniture, clothing, and personal items,” of at least $700,000, the suit contends. It says the apartment’s residents have spent some $200,000 on alternate living arrangements and other out-of-pocket expenses since the incident.
The unit’s ceilings, walls, floors and electrical circuitry had to be “torn apart and replaced,” and the space “remains uninhabitable,” according to the suit.
In an email, the owner of ADE Pro Painting told The Independent, “I want to say that I signed a NDA with the rapper, so that prevents me from providing certain details. I want to say that we are also affected from this situation, and we did not get pay [sic] for certain services provided.”
Their insurance company is now handling the matter, the spokesperson said.
The suit names ADE Pro Painting and the building’s condo board as defendants, along with A$AP Rocky’s business manager, Tyson Beem, who oversees the trust within which Rocky’s 4,800-square-foot spread is held. It was filed by plaintiff Chez Ni, LLC, the entity that formally owns unit 4NF; Chez Ni, LLC is controlled by a 27-year-old woman named Annie Kang, according to public records. Attorney Jonathan Jeremias, who brought the suit on behalf of Chez Ni, along with Beem and the president of the condo board, did not respond on Monday to requests for comment.
A$AP Rocky has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, and shares three children with nine-time Grammy winner Rihanna. He has appeared in 10 films, three television shows and two video games, he has also collaborated on ventures with Gucci, Puma, Bottega Veneta, Guess and Belgian designer Raf Simons.
Rocky was sued by a former landlord he was renting from in 2016 for allegedly turning a Lower Manhattan apartment’s “custom made walk-in wardrobe” into a recording booth; damaging floors, walls, and cabinets; removing a chandelier and numerous security cameras; and leaving the unit “in a generally filthy state with dirt, huge piles of debris, and garbage throughout” the residence. (A$AP Rocky countersued, alleging, among other things, that the apartment had flooded and destroyed his belongings. The case was later settled.)
In July 2019, A$AP Rocky’s arrest in Stockholm, Sweden, on assault charges prompted a furious tweetstorm by then-President Donald Trump, who offered to personally cover the rapper’s bail. (Sweden does not have a bail system.) He was found guilty a month later, but given a suspended sentence and set free. He was ordered to pay the target of the assault roughly $1,300 in restitution. It later emerged that Trump threatened the Swedish government with “trade restrictions” unless Rocky was released.
Earlier this year, a Los Angeles jury acquitted A$AP Rocky on felony assault charges after allegedly firing a gun at a childhood friend, A$AP Relli, during a 2021 dispute. A$AP Relli, whose real name is Terell Ephron, is now suing Rocky, which Rocky’s defense attorney, one-time Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina, has called “a plain and blatant classic attempt at extortion.”
The flood in A$AP Rocky’s condo can be traced back to the the evening of December 23, 2024, when “several hot water pipes in and around Unit 5N… burst[,] causing a deluge of water to cascade from Unit 5N into and around Unit 4NF below, as well as to several other units,” Chez Ni LLC’s complaint states.
ADE Pro Painting had been working on A$AP Rocky’s place, and the complaint says one of the company’s employees opened all the windows in the apartment “to exhaust fumes created from the work performed.” They then left without closing them, in “below freezing temperatures,” according to the complaint.
At the same time, a third-party contractor called in to assess the situation discovered that crucial radiator supply valves had been left closed, and that no return valves had been installed, the complaint continues.
“The closure of the supply valves and failure to install return valves created an objectively hazardous situation,” it says. “... Specifically, because the supply valves were closed, water could not circulate through the mechanical heating piping and the existing water remained trapped inside the fin tube radiators.”
Since the radiators were located along the exterior walls, the water inside them froze and expanded, causing cracks in the pipes, the complaint goes on.
“Once thawed, not only did the existing water then proceed to gush from cracks in the pipes, but also because no return valves had been installed, the water continued to flow unabated causing massive flooding,” the complaint states.
It alleges that A$AP Rocky’s team had “previously engaged in unapproved construction in 2024,” and that they routed the radiator pipes underneath the floors and behind the walls knowing full well that another owner in the building had been cited by the condo board for doing so. The “extreme flooding and damage” to the apartment below was thus “completely foreseeable,” especially because of the weather outside, according to the complaint.
“Indeed, because of the torrent of water intrusion from Unit 5N, Plaintiff’s real and personal property was severely damaged or destroyed,” the complaint alleges. “... Making matters worse, to access and completely repair the concealed heating pipes to Unit 5N, portions of Unit 4NF’s ceiling were removed,” it says. “Defendants waited several months before attempting to restore Unit 4NF’s ceiling.”
A$AP Rocky and his camp “acted negligently and with reckless disregard of the safety of others,” the complaint claims, further blaming the condo board for failing to ensure the hot water piping and radiator valves were properly installed and maintained. It also slams the condo board for “failing and refusing to promptly repair and restore Plaintiff’s Unit, as required under the Condominium’s By-Laws.”
“The only action the Board took was to engage a contractor who, on December 23 and December 24, while the water continued to pour in from Unit 5N to Unit 4NF, among others, removed certain areas of saturated sheetrock, mopped areas of the floor, and placed dehumidifiers around the Unit,” the complaint states, adding that the board has since tried to charge the tenants of 4NF, not A$AP Rocky, more than $42,000 for the “initial, but inadequate” remediation job.
Kang and Chez Ni LLC are now seeking a minimum of $900,000 from Tyson Beem as A$AP Rocky’s representative, the condo board, and ADE Pro Painting; a minimum of $200,000 from the condo board; and a judgment declaring all of the defendants responsible for the $42,000 remediation, which the condo is trying to charge back to Kang and her LLC.
In 2016, the homeowner living in apartment 6N of the same building, one floor above A$AP Rocky, was sued by a commercial tenant on the fifth floor over a leak also allegedly caused by frozen pipes, reportedly doing more than $2 million in damage. The case was settled out of court in July 2024.
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