A Bronx man best known as a founding member of the pioneering rap group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was convicted of manslaughter on Wednesday in the fatal stabbing of a homeless man on a Midtown Manhattan sidewalk five years ago.
The man, Nathaniel Glover, who performed under the name Kidd Creole, was found guilty after a trial in which prosecutors described to the jury how, while on his way to work in August 2017, Mr. Glover had killed the homeless man, John Jolly, 55, during an argument on East 43rd Street.
The episode began as Mr. Glover passed Mr. Jolly on the street and the two exchanged words, according to prosecutors. Mr. Glover turned, approached Mr. Jolly and met him chest to chest before stabbing him twice in the torso with a steak knife, prosecutors said.
After a group of tourists found Mr. Jolly crumpled on the ground, he was taken to a hospital, where he died as a result of the stab wounds, prosecutors said. Mr. Glover rushed two blocks to where he was working at the time, changed his clothes and cleaned the knife in a sink, prosecutors said.
About 15 minutes later, prosecutors said, Mr. Glover left his workplace, got on the subway and dumped the knife in a sewer near a Bronx subway station, where it was later found by the police. He was arrested the next day.
“Nathaniel Glover committed a shocking act of violence,” Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said in a statement. “This conviction makes clear my office will hold people who commit violent crime accountable to the full extent of the law.”
Mr. Glover’s lawyer, Scottie Celestin, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the verdict.
At the time of Mr. Glover’s arrest, the authorities said the deadly encounter, which was captured on security video, had begun because Mr. Glover believed Mr. Jolly was making a sexual advance when he said, “What’s up?” as Mr. Glover passed him. Mr. Glover, prosecutors said, believed the comment indicated that Mr. Jolly thought he was gay.
Mr. Glover, under his stage name, was among the members of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2007 — the first rap group to achieve that distinction.
The group is considered among the most influential of hip-hop’s early practitioners. Their 1982 song “The Message” is one of the first in the genre to have addressed social issues, describing the difficulties of being poor and living in the ghetto. It has long been regarded as one of hip-hop’s finest compositions and has had a major impact on generations of artists that followed.
Mr. Glover, 61, is scheduled to be sentenced on May 4.
