Exclusive: G. Dep Calls Guilty Verdict 'God's Will'

'I'ma just stay strong and hopefully I'll see y'all in the near future,' the former Bad Boy MC tells MTV News in a jailhouse interview.
By Jesse Gissen

G Dep
Photo: Denise Truscello/ WireImage

Two days after being convicted of second-degree murder, G. Dep spoke exclusively to MTV News on Thursday (April 19), where he reacted to the verdict from behind bars.

"However it went down, it was just one of them things where I knew I was facing some type of charge, so whatever the verdict was, I knew it was God's will," Dep told us by phone as he awaits sentencing in lockup.

The former Bad Boy rapper, born Trevell Coleman, was found guilty on Tuesday of killing John Henkel in a botched robbery attempt nearly two decades ago in his hometown of Harlem. Coleman made headlines in 2010 after he confessed — unprovoked — that he had committed the crime in a surprising confession to police at Manhattan's 25th precinct. At the time, Coleman said that he longed to clear his conscience.

Although he took blame for the shooting, Coleman's lawyer, Anthony Ricco, argued in court last week that the victim was not the same man that police had pinned to the crime.

Despite the outcome, the 37-year-old seemed at peace with the judgment call. "You know, someone was taken from [the Henkel] family, so I can't feel like I was robbed in any kind of way," he said. "I just want to thank everyone that was involved in the case. I don't have no ill thoughts towards anybody."

That is if you don't count a few reporters who covered the case for New York's Daily News.

"I just wanna let people know there's a couple of reporters out there that's just talking that talk," he snarled. "I just had to make sure everything was everything," he explained about his decision to fight the charge in court. "I was already putting myself out there. I had to make sure everything was what it was. That's why the trial even was on."

G. Dep signed to Diddy's Bad Boy Records in 1998, and went on to release his debut LP, Child of the Ghetto, in 2001. The record spawned two well-received singles, "Let's Get It" and "Special Delivery," but Dep's rap career failed to take off. By 2003, he had parted ways with Bad Boy. Coleman took another stab at the indusry, dropping a mixtape the following year, but his various arrests and battles with drug abuse thwarted those efforts.

Dep is scheduled for sentencing on May 8, when he'll face up to 15 years in jail.

"I'ma just stay strong and hopefully I'll see y'all in the near future or the far future," Dep said when asked how he feels about the impending jail time. "I know life goes on, praise God. And one day maybe I could say hello to y'all again."

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