DJ Akademiks faces lawsuit over rape, assault and defamation allegations

DJ Akademiks, a podcaster and internet personality, was accused of sexual assault and defamation in a lawsuit filed on Monday.

Fauziya Abashe alleges in the lawsuit that DJ Akademiks, whose legal name is Livingston Allen, raped her at his New Jersey home in 2022 after she was drugged and raped by two of his friends.

In the complaint filed in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Abashe said that she met Allen in 2021 through social media and that they had casually dated. Abashe, a writer living in Pennsylvania, said she visited Allen’s home periodically before the alleged incident and “did not suspect any ill intentions” when he invited her to his house in July 2022.

When she arrived, she said, she saw Allen’s friends, referred to as John Does 1 and 2 in the complaint. While they talked and waited for Allen to join them, Abashe alleged that the two men followed her to Allen’s hot tub and gave her alcohol that made her feel lightheaded. John Doe 1 then allegedly started making sexual advances toward her before tossing her into the nearby pool, which she tried to climb out of. As she slipped in and out of consciousness, the men then allegedly gang-raped her, the complaint continues. Sometime around 4 a.m., she woke up in bed with Allen, where she said he was “brutally raping” her.

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Abashe said in the complaint that she didn’t know what happened until Allen showed her surveillance footage of the incident on his pool deck the morning after. According to the lawsuit, she reported what happened to police, who performed a rape kit on her. It’s unclear whether criminal charges were filed, but Allen said he wasn’t at risk of being arrested.

“I’m confident that justice will prevail and the veil will be removed so no other woman will have to endure what I did,” Abashe said in a statement through her lawyer.

She also accused Allen of defaming her after he discussed the incident on social media around December 2023.

Allen, under his DJ Akademiks moniker, is a podcaster and internet personality with more than 1.5 million followers on X, more than 2.8 million subscribers on YouTube and 500,000 followers on Twitch, where he regularly shares his thoughts about the music industry. His often controversial views have caught the attention of rap fans and artists, including Eminem, who referenced him on his 2018 song “Fall,” and Joe Budden, who has invited DJ Akademiks onto his popular podcast multiple times.

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In video clips shared on one of his X accounts on Tuesday, Allen denied the accusations, saying police already cleared him of any wrongdoing. “Whatever this is will be handled in court,” he said.

Allen seemed to address the events in a video shared on YouTube in December. In the video, he said he came home from a party and forgot that he had invited an unnamed girl over to his home. He said he didn’t discover what happened at his house until the following morning, then accused the woman of having sex with his two friends willingly. The events laid out by Allen in his YouTube video, which was referenced in the lawsuit, were similar to the events detailed by Abashe and her attorneys.

“Litigation is always the last resort,” Abashe’s lawyer Tyrone Blackburn wrote in a statement. “After several unsuccessful attempts to privately resolve this case, Ms Abashe was left no choice other than to file.”

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The lawsuit said Allen through “hubris, guilty conscious, and sheer stupidity caused him to incriminate himself in several social media posts.”

Allen raised suspicions about Blackburn in a video uploaded a month before the lawsuit against him was filed. In the video, he accused the lawyer of writing complaints as “shakedown attempts” against high-profile names. Blackburn has been the lead attorney representing music producer Rodney Jones and yacht steward Grace O’Marcaigh in lawsuits filed against Sean “Diddy” Combs and his son Christian Combs.

“Let me tell you something about Tyrone [Blackburn],” Allen said. “His lawsuits read like a novel.”

In recent weeks, clips of Allen’s videos and streams have circulated on social media amid the rap feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar. DJ Akademiks, widely known as a Drake fan, has alleged that he has ties to the rapper and shared alleged updates from Drake’s side of the beef on his streams. On Monday, Allen and rapper Meek Mill, who has previously feuded with Drake, sparred on social media, where Meek Mill accused Allen of being a rapist. Representatives for Meek Mill did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

correction

A previous version of this article incorrectly said when Livingston Allen, a.k.a. DJ Akademiks, uploaded a video referring to Tyrone Blackburn. It was a month before the lawsuit against Allen was filed, not a week before. The article has been corrected.

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