Hustle & Woe

Seated next to her dad at a cafe in Federal Way, Jasmine Parker says the ticket-selling really did provide a much-needed confidence boost. She adds that she's made good friends through the program, and her only real desire is to get her songs recorded.

"With everyone at Brave New World and all the other contestants, it kind of feels like we've become a family, and I like that," Jasmine says. "I don't expect much of anything [from them], but it would be cool if I could get my music out there. I'm not the kind of person to get my hopes up, though."

Illustration by Graham Smith

Keegan Hamilton

Selah, shown performing at Contour Lounge, played college football with former Seahawk quarterback Jon Kitna.

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VIDEO: Shyan Selah Performs "Hustla" at The Contour Lounge

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More About

• Jimmy Williams
• Shyan Selah
• Don Bazemore
• College Soccer
• Hip-Hop and Rap

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On the morning of April 8, a judge ordered Selah to pay $1,500 in attorney's fees to Lindstedt, the latest chapter in a bitter custody dispute. When Selah left the courthouse in Federal Way, he discovered that Brave New World's Hummer had been repossessed. To cap things off, that same day his five-bedroom home was sold at a foreclosure auction.

Neither Selah nor his publicist responded to questions about the rapper's tumultuous Friday. But interviews and court documents reveal that the day's events were years in the making.

In the custody case, court documents show that Selah alleged that Lindstedt was unfit to care for their child because she is "an insulin-dependent diabetic" who suffers from "mood swings and volatile emotions." He pointed out that she had been evicted multiple times. He cited his sponsorship of the soccer team and his "13-plus professional years in the entertainment and outreach industries" as evidence that he deserves custody, adding that "as an advocate for youth and an activist of youth issues, I've always been involved in practicing what you preach."

Lindstedt, in turn, claimed that Selah attended just two of his daughter's soccer matches last season, and stated that during the couple's 10-year relationship, "his career and business dealings came first, and when I heard about the people he would do business with and the problems with money being stolen or not returned, I was disgusted that somebody I had once believed in was hurting so many innocent people." She blamed her financial woes on Selah, and stated that when the couple shared a home "every bill" was registered in the name of his Brave New World entities and "nothing that I saw was ever put into his name." She also alleged that Selah improperly served her with court documents, resulting in a default judgment that allowed him to take custody of their child for three days, despite the fact that she had been the sole caretaker for the 8-year-old's entire life.

The judge ultimately sided with Lind- stedt, awarding her attorney's fees, restoring her full custody rights, and reducing the amount of time Selah is allowed to spend with the child each week by five hours. Selah has appealed the ruling.

"He said all these lies about me," Lindstedt says of the court battle. "I was so stressed out about it because he's so manipulative . . . It's scary. I was with him for 10 years and he was doing things like this the whole time and I didn't know."

As for the house in Federal Way, it was built by Curtis Kitchen, a developer who played 14 games for the Sonics during the 1986–87 NBA season. Kitchen filed for bankruptcy in 2009. Among his assets, he listed the house in Federal Way, then valued at more than $1.1 million. Kitchen told the court in August 2010 that he had a "month-to-month tenant" in the house—Selah—who had stopped paying rent and would not vacate the premises.

"My wife and I were in some financial stress and we worked out a deal with him," Kitchen says when reached by phone. "He had these documents showing he was going to get so many millions of dollars for ringtones over in Europe or something, but he never paid rent. He gives you the illusion he's doing stuff, but he's not doing anything."

King County District Court documents show that in July 2010 Selah filed a restraining order against Angelique Kitchen, Curtis' wife. Selah claimed he had been "falsely induced" into signing the lease, and told the judge that after the bankruptcy filing, the house belonged to a trustee. Kitchen was harassing him, Selah claimed, and had no right to collect rent or make him leave. During a visit in March, Richardson told a reporter that Selah was in the process of remodeling the house. However, a representative of Regional Trustee Services confirmed that the property was sold at auction on April 8 to OneWest Bank for $609,000.

Meanwhile, the Hummer was the same one that Bazemore Jr. co-signed for in 2007. Marcia Ellsworth, a Bellevue attorney who represented GMAC, the auto-loan company that financed the deal, says Brave New World stopped making the required $1,600-a-month payments in 2009, when they still owed more than $58,000 on the car.

"[Selah] knew he wasn't making payments, and that we were looking for that car," Ellsworth says. "Most people, when they get to that point, they face the reality and work through it in a respectful and dignified way. With these guys, I'd get these dumb phone calls at off hours, saying—and this is one of my favorite lines of all time—'I'm supposed to call you and tell you I'm supposed to return the car. 'Bye.' "