Sugababes husband profits from violent crime videos
Cops target ‘vile’ YouTube clips
SUGABABE Amelle Berrabah’s husband makes money out of menacing YouTube rap videos glorifying gang warfare.
Record company boss Marcio Sousa Rosa helps produce clips viewed millions of times on his firm’s PressPlay channel and profits from adverts.
Now a leading knife crime charity wants “vile” gang videos taken down, accusing producers like Mr Sousa Rosa of helping promote criminal lifestyles.
Our revelation comes after London’s Metropolitan Police forced YouTube to remove more than 30 music clips they had linked to rising gang violence.
At least 60 murder investigations have been launched in the capital this year and Met chiefs have vowed to treat gang members in the same way as terrorists.
PressPlay said on social media it had hosted clips taken down, but insisted they would be back up in a “few weeks”.
Among its stable is the NPK (Northumberland Park Killers) gang who terrorise the area where 17-year-old Tenesha Melbourne was mistakenly killed in a drive-by shooting in April.
PressPlay’s most popular clip is a song by Brixton’s 410 gang member Skengdo. With 3.6million views, its title “Macaroni is slang for a Mac-10 sub-machine gun. Lyrics include threats to shoot enemies.
Mr Sousa Rosa’s channel also hosts the Harlem Spartans collective – several of its members have done time for burglary and violence.
Another of PressPlay’s hit rappers is Sneakbo, real name Agassi Odusina, spared jail after breaching an Asbo for threatening the lives of a mum and her seven-year-old daughter. He has denied police accusations he heads Brixton’s GAS gang.
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Patrick Green, of the Ben Kinsella Trust charity, said: “Producers should know better than to allow these vile videos to reach hundreds of thousands of young people every day. A line must be drawn at content which promotes gun and knife crime as an aspirational lifestyle choice.” Ben, 16, was stabbed to death by three men in London in 2008.
Singer Amelle, 34, who left the Sugababes in 2011, is expecting a baby with Mr Sousa Rosa. Neither responded to requests for a comment.
Ten years ago her then boyfriend, Freddie Fuller, was nearly killed in a machete attack at a wine bar in Aldershot, Hants, while she was with him.