Before you declare a rap star’s day of recognition, gentlemen, it pays to make sure he’s finished building his rap sheet.

When the Baton Rouge Advocate runs the headline “Boosie Badazz arrested for allegedly hitting a Houston nightclub security guard with a hookah,” a certain kind of Louisiana reader does one of two things.

They laugh.

Or they sigh.

Most of us did both.

Baton Rouge’s own Boosie Badazz is in trouble again. Houston trouble this time. Hookah trouble, specifically. According to authorities, the rapper, born Torrence Hatch Jr., known professionally as Boosie Badazz, known to the Harris County justice system as a defendant, allegedly struck a security guard in the head with a glass hookah at a Houston nightclub. He now faces assault charges.

Which is a real shame. Because just weeks ago, things were going so well.

Allow me to set the scene.

It is late April 2026. Boosie Badazz is in the Lafayette area to promote his annual Boosie Bash concert at the Cajundome. A perfectly normal Tuesday in the Pelican State. Before the show, St. Landry Parish President Jessie Bellard, an elected official, a man entrusted with the governance of a Louisiana parish, a person who presumably owns a computer with internet access, invites Boosie to receive an official government proclamation.

Bellard declares May 10 to be “Boosie Badazz Day” in St. Landry Parish.

The proclamation cites Boosie’s representation of “resilience, creativity, and cultural identity.”

Resilience. Creativity. Cultural identity.

These are the words Jessie Bellard chose. Jessie Bellard, who had access, free of charge, available to anyone with a smartphone, to the Wikipedia page of a man who had beaten a first-degree murder charge, pled guilty to federal gun possession, and served five years in a Louisiana state penitentiary.

But sure. Resilience.

Boosie, moved by the honor and apparently feeling the warm glow of civic responsibility, decides he wants to share his good fortune with the youth of Lafayette. Specifically, the minority students at Northside High School.

State Representative Tehmi Chassion, again an elected official, a sitting member of the Louisiana legislature, a man who ran for office and won, personally escorts Boosie Badazz through the doors of a public high school.

The students reportedly greet him with a roar.

Boosie enters to his song “Wipe Me Down.” For the uninitiated, “Wipe Me Down” contains the lyric “I bust ya dome.” At the time, the students of Northside High presumably took this as artistic expression. The security guard in Houston now has a more literal interpretation.

He delivers what witnesses describe as a motivational talk about purpose, responsibility, and making sound decisions.

Read that last sentence again. Take your time. We’ll wait.

Now, in a functioning universe, this is where the story ends. Rapper visits school. Kids get inspired. Everyone goes home. The end.

But this is Louisiana.

Lafayette Parish School System officials, apparently the only people in this entire episode who had functioning frontal lobes, placed Principal James Rollins on administrative leave for allowing the visit without prior district approval.

Six days. Unpaid.

Rollins’ offense, to be absolutely clear, was not that he invited a man with a federal gun conviction to speak to children about making sound decisions. His offense was that he did so without filling out the correct paperwork first.

In Louisiana, the paperwork is the line.

Boosie, to his genuine credit, and this is not a joke, immediately took to social media to demand Rollins’ reinstatement. He campaigned publicly for the principal’s return. He called Rollins a good man who handled security professionally.

A rapper with a murder trial on his résumé had to go to bat for a school principal’s job.

Jessie Bellard and Tehmi Chassion, conspicuously, were quiet.

Rollins got his job back after six days. The internet had opinions. Louisiana shrugged and moved on, as Louisiana does, because there is always something else coming and you learn early not to get too attached to any particular outrage.

Something else, it turns out, was already on its way from Houston.

Glass hookah. Security guard’s head. Assault charges.

Here is the thing about mentors. For a man to turn his life around and inspire children to succeed, first he must turn his life around. This is not a complicated concept. It does not require a parish proclamation to understand. It does not require a state representative to personally walk you through the school doors.

Boosie Badazz never claimed to be turned around. He never claimed to be reformed. He never presented himself as a role model. He showed up, he spoke to some kids, he tried to get a principal his job back. On that specific Tuesday in Lafayette, he was arguably the most responsible adult in the building.

The men who handed him a government document declaring his own official day, those men made the claim. Those men put children in a gymnasium and pointed at Torrence Hatch Jr. and said: this is what we want for you.

Kids, a word of advice from someone watching all of this from a safe distance: skip the crime part and just succeed. The resilience is optional. The federal plea is optional. The hookah assault is very much optional. You can get straight to the cultural identity without any of the intervening paperwork.

Perhaps next time, gentlemen, consider someone like retired General Russel Honoré. He grew up on a farm in Pointe Coupee Parish, one of twelve children, and became a four-star general and a national hero. He has never been known to drop a beat. He has also never been charged with hookah assault. In Louisiana, that combination apparently makes you an unlikely candidate for Motivational Speaker of the Year, but the option exists.

As of this writing, May 10 remains officially Boosie Badazz Day in St. Landry Parish.

Jessie Bellard has not issued an amendment.

Tehmi Chassion has not issued a statement.

The security guard in Houston reportedly has a headache.

Boosie once described his music not as hip hop but as “reality rap.” His reasoning: hip hop can make you dance and bob your head, but it takes reality rap to make you cry or touch your heart.

But of course, nothing makes you bob your head like the rap of a hookah when you’re not looking. Wipe me down. 

A glass hookah, pictured here in its traditional non-weaponized form. File photo.