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Philly rapper PnB Rock arrested for drugs, gun in Bucks County home

Bensalem Police found four pounds of marijuana and a stolen gun in a home the rapper PnB Rock rents.

Rapper and North Philadelphia native Rakim Allen, better known as PnB Rock, was arrested Sunday at the Bensalem home that he rents.
Rapper and North Philadelphia native Rakim Allen, better known as PnB Rock, was arrested Sunday at the Bensalem home that he rents.Read moreEd Newton / For the Inquirer

The rapper PnB Rock told the Inquirer and Daily News in a profile last month that his time in prison helped him grow as an artist. He soon may have more material to work with.

Rock, also known as Philadelphia native Rakim Allen, 27, was arrested on gun and drug charges Sunday afternoon in Bensalem after police served a search warrant on the luxury townhouse on a bank of the Delaware River that he rents.

He and Stephanie Sibounheuang, a 27-year-old inside the home when the warrant was served, face charges of possession of narcotics, receiving stolen property, criminal conspiracy, and related offenses, court records show. Investigators found four pounds of marijuana, $33,000, and a stolen Glock handgun, according to Bensalem police.

Both remain in custody at the Bucks County Jail with bail set at $500,000. There was no indication Monday that either had hired defense attorneys.

Residents living around the home on Konefal Street had complained to police since early November of raucous parties and the smell of marijuana. Officers patrolling the townhouse complex reported smelling it as they drove by, and surveillance determined that Rock was selling the drug out of the house, investigators said.

Dipti Das, the owner of the property, declined to speak with a reporter Monday.

Rock’s career has taken off in recent years, with the rapper performing to a sellout crowd at the Met Philadelphia last month. In 2017, he released “Selfish,” the single that made his name. Later that year, he collaborated with the rappers Kodak Black and A Boogie Wit da Hoodie on “Horses,” a song on the soundtrack to The Fate of the Furious.

But six years ago, Rakim Allen was a high-school dropout sentenced to serve 33 months on drug dealing charges.

Rock looks backs on his incarceration at the Forest state prison as the pivotal time in his creative development.

“In the penitentiary, you have music all around you,” he told the Inquirer and Daily News. “People are making beats on keyboards and rapping in circles all day. I was part of that. I’d go into my cell and write music on my own time.”

With no hip-hop radio available at the remove prison, Rock found himself constantly “listening to Top 40 music.” Prolonged exposure to artists like Drake, Katy Perry, and Rihanna inspired him to infuse his songwriting style, informed by the freewheeling delivery and hook-heavy structure of ’90s R&B, with an accessible pop sensibility. Positive feedback from fellow inmates convinced him that “this is the sound people like — so I should stick with it.”

Much of the music Rock crafted on the inside made it onto 2015’s RNB 1, the first in a series of self-released grass-roots mixtapes that got him on Atlantic’s radar.

“I generated a big buzz.… The music I was putting out, it was believable, there was a story behind it,” Rock said.