Kenneth Petty, the husband of rap superstar Nicki Minaj, has spent much of his adult life moving between courtrooms, prison sentences, and legal settlements. Born Kenneth Zoo Petty on April 7, 1978, in Queens, New York, Petty has become a controversial figure due to his extensive criminal history and ongoing legal battles. While his marriage to Minaj in 2019 brought him into the celebrity spotlight, his rap sheet predates that union by more than two decades and includes a violent sexual assault conviction, a manslaughter plea, and a federal case for failing to register as a sex offender.
The 1995 Attempted Rape Conviction
The foundation of Petty's criminal record traces back to 1995, when he was a teenager in New York. Petty was convicted on a charge of attempted first-degree rape in April 1995, and he was 16 at the time of the crime, the same age as his victim. According to court documents cited by the New York Times and referenced in subsequent reporting, the victim claimed Petty had led her into a home at knifepoint before assaulting her.
The conviction carried more than just a prison term. The final conviction included multiple charges of assault in the second degree, unlawful imprisonment in the second degree, and criminal possession of a weapon, for which Petty received an 18 to 54 month prison sentence. He ended up serving nearly four years, finally walking free in January 1999. Because the underlying offense was sexual in nature, the conviction triggered a lifetime obligation: the requirement to register as a sex offender, an obligation that would later land him in federal court decades later.
Minaj has publicly defended Petty over the years regarding this case. As referenced in past coverage, she once described the relationship between Petty and his victim as consensual teenage dating rather than an assault, drawing significant backlash online for minimizing a conviction tied to a knifepoint attack.
The 2002 Killing and Manslaughter Plea
Petty's legal troubles resurfaced just a few years after his release from prison. In April 2002, a man named Lamont Robinson was shot and killed in an incident that would eventually lead to Kenneth Petty's second major conviction.
Rather than face a trial on more serious charges, Petty's legal team worked out an arrangement with prosecutors. In 2006, Petty pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, a plea deal that likely spared him a far longer sentence but still carried serious consequences, including a 10-year prison term. He ultimately served seven years of that sentence before his release in 2013.
Freedom came with strings attached. Upon release, Petty was placed on five years of supervised release that lasted until around May 2018, meaning his legal troubles remained a near-constant presence throughout his adult life. Notably, by the time he reconnected with Nicki Minaj in 2018, he had just finished his supervised release stemming from the manslaughter conviction.
Reconnecting With Nicki Minaj
Petty and Minaj have a history that predates his criminal record becoming public knowledge to the wider world. The two knew one another growing up and reconnected after Petty got out of prison in 2013. Other reporting places their original meeting at LaGuardia High School in New York City, where the pair reconnected in 2018 after years apart. They married in 2019 and have a son together.
Failure to Register as a Sex Offender
Petty's move to California with Minaj created a new legal problem rooted in his decades-old conviction. After his 1995 conviction, Petty was ordered to register as a sex offender in New York, but he failed to re-register when he moved to California in 2019, as required under the federal Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.
The issue surfaced during a routine police encounter. Petty was arrested during a traffic stop in Beverly Hills in November 2019 after police learned he had moved from New York to California without ever registering his sex offender status. He was released on a $20,000 bond at the time.
The case escalated when local prosecutors stepped back and federal authorities took over. The Los Angeles District Attorney's office dropped its charges against Petty in March 2020 because he faced identical federal charges, with the Department of Justice confirming he was indicted on February 25 for failure to register, a felony carrying a statutory maximum of 10 years in prison. After posting $100,000 bail, Petty pleaded guilty to the charge in September 2020.
The sentencing, when it finally arrived nearly two years later, reflected the weight federal prosecutors placed on the violation. Petty was sentenced in July 2022 to three years of probation and one year of home confinement, along with a $55,000 fine, after having faced a possible 10 years behind bars and a lifetime of supervised release. He was 44 years old at the time of sentencing.
The Jennifer Hough Lawsuit
Petty's legal entanglements have extended beyond his own criminal cases into civil court. He is currently dealing with a harassment lawsuit filed by Jennifer Hough, his alleged 1994 rape victim. According to reporting cited by Snopes, a New York Times article detailed the victim's lawsuit against Minaj and Petty for allegedly harassing and attempting to intimidate her with the goal of getting her to recant her accusation. That case has kept Petty's decades-old conviction in the headlines well into the 2020s, intertwining his celebrity marriage with the consequences of his original crime.
A Pattern Spanning Three Decades
Taken together, Petty's record forms a continuous thread from his teenage years through middle age. His convictions include attempted rape in the first degree from 1995 and first-degree manslaughter from 2006, with the two major convictions forming the backbone of his criminal record and explaining why he remains subject to ongoing legal scrutiny.
Despite the controversy, Minaj has remained publicly supportive of her husband. In past radio appearances, she has described him as a stabilizing force in her life, even as critics have pointed to the severity of the underlying convictions, particularly the violent nature of the 1995 case and the killing tied to his manslaughter plea.
As of late 2025, Petty's past continues to surface in public discourse, with renewed attention following Minaj's high-profile appearances on the political stage, where commentators and fact-checkers have repeatedly revisited the details of his criminal history for audiences encountering the story for the first time.