“It appears to be an isolated incident.”
That’s what an attorney for Trey Songz explained to a Michigan judge when describing an alleged violent altercation in 2016, where the singer was accused of punching a Detroit police sergeant in the head and injuring a cameraman when he threw a microphone stand off a stage.
However, time has proven that’s not an accurate description of the musician’s behavior. Over the past decade, Songz (real name: Tremaine Neverson) has faced multiple accusations of both physical and sexual assault.
This week, Las Vegas police confirmed it is investigating an allegation of sexual assault against Songz. The 37-year-old had been at Drai’s Nightclub in The Cromwell hotel to ring in his birthday last Saturday night. A source told TMZ that after his performance at the club, Songz and his entourage took a group of women back to his hotel room at The Cosmopolitan.
Officials would not release any further details when contacted by The Daily Beast, including exactly when the alleged attack took place, but confirmed the incident occurred in the city and was reported to the department last Sunday.
Las Vegas police said Songz was cooperating with their investigation. His team did not return a request for comment when contacted by The Daily Beast.
Songz’s track record is no secret. But for years the charming, good-looking R&B crooner, with 2010s hits such as “Na Na,” “Bottoms Up,” and “Dive In,” has managed to dodge any serious criminal repercussions for the various claims and charges brought against him.
Just this year, he was let off the hook for an incident where he was seen on security footage in a scuffle with a Kansas City police officer when he flouted repeated warnings to wear his face mask. (The county’s district attorney’s office in April declined to prosecute him, citing a lack of evidence.)
It’s a shame, Donna McIntosh told The Daily Beast, that no one took her seriously back in 2012, when she was left with a black eye after the singer allegedly slung a heavy wad of cash at the Staten Island nurse’s face in close range, resulting in his arrest for assault. (McIntosh said the case was settled out of court and she’s not at liberty to discuss the terms.)
Songz, then 28, had reportedly become enraged that McIntosh had taken a photo of him on her cellphone—something that she claims several other young women in the club were also doing—and yanked her phone out of her hand to try and delete the photo.
“I didn’t even know I had a bruise on my face until after I left the club,” McIntosh told the New York Daily News at the time. “I had to walk around a whole week with a black eye.”
“It was insulting that he just threw something. He was verbally disrespectful as well. He embarrassed me in front of everyone in the club.”
Now, McIntosh believes it spoke to an early pattern of behavior. “When I made the complaint before, no one believed me and said it was all my fault,” she told The Daily Beast. “Now it’s constantly coming up. It’s the same with him, story after story.”
“The women get knocked down—he’s not being held accountable at all.”
So far, Songz has seen little if any professional consequences from the steady stream of accusations. The singer is still slated to perform at the storied Chicago Theatre for a special New Year’s Eve concert. The venue did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment on whether Songz was still expected to perform in light of the investigation.
Earlier this year, Songz settled a $10 million civil complaint from a Jane Doe accuser out of court. The accuser detailed in court papers seen by The Daily Beast how the singer allegedly sexually assaulted her.
The woman claimed in her complaint that Songz had picked her up at a New Year’s Eve party in 2018 hosted at Diddy’s Miami mansion, before they continued the night at the popular nightclub E11EVEN.
In the VIP area, Songz “sexually assaulted and battered Jane Doe by proceeding to forcefully place his hand under her dress, without her consent, and attempting to insert his fingers into Jane Doe’s vagina without her consent or permission,” the lawsuit alleged.
The suit also claimed that following the alleged assault, another woman in the VIP area confided in Jane Doe that Songz had done something similar to her the same night. The second woman alleged that Songz also put “his hands down her pants and had placed his fingers into her buttocks without her consent,” according to the complaint.
Although Jane Doe retained her initial attorney days after the alleged assault, she alleged in court documents that he failed to bring about the complaint until days before the statute of limitations expired in January 2020, resulting in her hiring new counsel. (He has denied that he caused any undue delay.)
The parties were able to settle out of court, according to court documents, with Jane Doe withdrawing her complaint. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, and Jane Doe and her attorney did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Similarly, a battery complaint brought against Songz by Andrea Buera was dropped in 2019.
The Los Angeles-based Buera had claimed the singer choked, punched, and knocked the then- 27-year-old to the ground at his L.A. rental in Feb. 2018 after he allegedly became furious that she had been chatting with one of his friends.
“While I was on the ground, he continued punching me, and he did not stop until his security pulled him off of me,” she said during a televised press conference alongside her lawyer Lisa Bloom, adding that Songz even took her phone from her and threw it.
“I had to go to the hospital because he hit me so hard that I had a concussion and was throwing up from the migraines,” she added, claiming the alleged attack only stopped because Songz’s bodyguards got involved.
Songz claimed in court papers that he was acting in self-defense, saying he “reasonably believed [Buera] was going to harm him and any force he used was only the amount reasonably necessary to protect himself.”
Andrea Buera (R), who is accusing Trey Songz of assaulting her, speaks during a press conference with her attorney Lisa Bloom (L) at The Bloom Firm on March 13, 2018, in Woodland Hills, California.
Greg Doherty/GettyBuera provided a photo of herself in a hospital bed where there appeared to be a bruise forming under her chin, and other photos with marks around her eyes and forehead.
“I want you to get help,” Buera told Songz at the press conference, pushing for the Los Angeles Police Department to press charges against him. “Although I am not your first victim, I’d like to be your last.”
When officials declined to pursue a case against Songz, Buera filed a civil complaint in Aug. 2018. A person with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Beast that during the lawsuit, Songz’s team had hired a personal investigator to dig into Buera’s personal life, reaching out to her past romantic partners.
By April 2019, Buera filed to withdraw her complaint with prejudice, meaning that she could not attempt to sue Songz again over the same incident. And although it was not reported if a settlement was reached, the source told The Daily Beast that Buera came into a sum of money shortly afterwards but did not know if that was related to the withdrawal of the suit.
The Daily Beast also uncovered a previously unreported criminal charge against Songz from 2012, where he was charged with assault and battery against a woman in Virginia stemming from an incident on New Year’s Eve in 2011.
The woman claimed she was photographing a party when Songz allegedly “smashed my camera into my face and while ripping my camera, asked me why I was taking a photograph of him smoking,” according to the criminal complaint obtained by The Daily Beast. “I replied that he had hit me in the face for no reason as I had not taken a photograph of him.” The case was later dismissed.
Actress Keke Palmer also spoke of a concerning interaction with Songz, alleging in 2017 that he used “sexual intimidation” to pressure her into appearing in a music video that she did not want to be featured in, claiming she hid in a closet to try to hide from him.
“After you found me in a closet HIDING because I was so afraid of anymore conflict,” Palmer wrote in a series of since-deleted tweets about her cameo in Songz’s video for “Pick Up the Phone.” “Literally my last option was to hide because you all would not listen when I said I did not want to be in the video the FIRST time.”
Songz dismissed Palmer’s concerns, tweeting, “Babygirl buggin. Point blank period. Got my number, coulda called, saw the cameras and the lights, heard action. I don’t do this twitter shit, girl you know me and got my number fuck outta here.”
Instagram model Celina Powell appeared on Adam22’s podcast No Jumper last year with her friend Alize, who claimed that Songz once refused to let her leave his home. (Adam22 has also been accused of rape and intimidation in the past.)
“He took my phone and my purse away for a whole day and held it over the balcony and was like, ‘Bitch, if you try and leave, I’m going to drop this shit,’” she claimed. “He did the same thing to [Powell]. He just does the same shit. He’s, like, weird.” (Songz denied their claims in a series of tweets.)
Songz has also faced allegations of physical violence from men and is currently being sued in Los Angeles by bartender Jeremy Johnson, who claims that during a concert at the Hollywood Palladium in 2019, Songz jumped up and sat on the bar’s counter.
Since it was against the venue’s policy, Johnson claimed in a legal complaint against Songz seen by The Daily Beast that he requested for the singer to get off the bar. “[Johnson] then put his hand on Neverson’s back to get his attention and again stated that he was not allowed to be on the bar,” the suit, which was filed in May, alleged.
“Neverson did not immediately respond, but then he turned around and struck [Johnson] in the head with a closed fist.”
Johnson’s suit comes a month after officials in Kansas declined to press charges against Songz after he was seen on security footage striking a police officer at a Kansas City Chiefs game after he was repeatedly asked to wear a face mask at least three separate times.
According to police, people around Songz and his entourage complained they weren’t wearing face masks—a mandate the stadium was enforcing for spectators in January. Security personnel came by on several occasions, warning Songz to wear his mask.
Eventually, a police officer came by and after a few moments, the officer moved to detain or remove Songz, who stepped down to the row below his seat. Security footage released by the KCPD appears to show that Songz threw the first punch, leading to the officer and him wrestling on the ground.
Although Songz was arrested and charged with assault of a police officer, officials declined to press charges.
But Songz did face felony charges in Michigan in 2017 when he allegedly became enraged that the Detroit music venue cut off his performance after he went over the allotted time, throwing a microphone stand from the stage and injuring a cameraman, resisting arrest, and flipping off the camera in his booking photo, according to police and reports at the time.
He was charged with assaulting a police officer and aggravated assault. Songz’s legal team secured him a plea deal, where he was able to plead guilty to two reduced counts of disturbing the peace in exchange for dismissing the more serious charges, evading any jail time with a non-reporting probation period of 18 months and attending anger management classes.
Songz and his team have managed to thwart any serious charges against the singer time and time again, as officials decline to pursue charges after a few months or his alleged victims settle with him out of court, never to be heard from again.
If a case is brought to court, his legal team has managed to successfully isolate the recurring incidents, speaking of how Songz donates to charity and has a clean criminal record. Time will tell if Songz will ever face the music.
