A pair of autograph-hunters go to the home of rapper "Sweet" Clarisse James, but find that she's been shot dead. The list of suspects includes her producer, Andre Blair (Ato Essandoh), who was engaged in a financial dispute with her. When it's discovered Clarisse was pregnant, another suspect comes into the picture: "Iced-Out" Ike Krantz, a married diamond wholesaler with whom she was having an affair. He is arrested and pleads guilty, but at his sentencing, his story makes no sense. He eventually claims that Andre Blair killed Clarisse, then threatened to kill Krantz' family if Krantz told anyone.
Blair refuses to co-operate with the investigation, and evidence places him near Clarisse at the time of the murder. Krantz is then stabbed in jail and says his attacker claimed to have been sent by Blair. In court, Blair maintains he didn't hurt Clarisse and that Krantz is trying to frame him. Connie thinks Blair's telling the truth, so she and McCoy investigate further and learn Krantz paid another inmate to stab him in order to set up Blair. Krantz is forced to take a murder charge. Blair angrily confronts McCoy and says the legal system wanted to believe he, rather than white, privileged Krantz, was guilty. McCoy says he just followed the facts of the case; but privately concedes that Blair may be right.
This episode contains examples of:
- Asshole Victim: Downplayed. Andre turns out to be innocent of Clarisse's murder, but he's such an aggressive, self-righteous Jerkass that it's incredibly easy to believe he really was the murderer. Additionally, whilst he gets off on the murder charge, he doesn't escape being subsequently investigated for the drug smuggling and money laundering charges that came up during the murder investigation.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Clarisse's music apparently consisted of this.
- Creative Differences: Clarisse was trying to move away from her Gangsta Rap image, resulting in poor sales; Blair blamed her for the loss of royalties and was going to kick her off his record label.
- Everything Is Racist: When brought to court, Blair's "defense strategy" consists mostly of verbally denouncing the jury as simply wanting to throw him in jail for his race, refusing to acknowledge his established potential motive and history of physical violence, combined with his bad attitude, is why people are really willing to believe he's guilty.
- Friendly Rivalry: It's initially suspected that one of Clarisse's rivals in the music business might have been involved in her death. The other rapper says their relationship was this trope; they just played it up to sell records.
- Invoked and subverted with the male rapper whom Blair had once hung out of a window to make him sign over his publishing rights, but who showed up at Blair's Christmas party acting like they were all pals; he confidentially tells them that he hates Blair, as does everyone who works with Blair, but he didn't dare go to the police or snub him because Blair would have used his financial and social connections to make it impossible for him to continue publishing.
- Gangsta Rap: Clarisse and Blair's line of work.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Even though Blair had long manipulated and bullied the people he employed into compliance with little in the way of consequences and was not responsible for Charisse's murder, he still has to answer for his crimes of drug smuggling and money laundering, so thankfully he's not getting off for too long.
- Not Helping Your Case: Blair's naked contempt for the investigators and the court on racial evidence, and his refusal to say anything useful, make him look openly guilty of everything he's being accused of — especially when he responds to the charge of having threatened to kill the other suspect by stating that he would have skipped the threats and just done it. Lampshaded in the closing minutes of the episode, when McCoy points out that everything Blair did in the court just undermined his plea of innocence.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Krantz holds Blair and Clarisse in contempt because they're black and grew up in poverty.
- Sarcastic Confession: Krantz admits the murder, but intentionally gets several details wrong so that McCoy won't believe him.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Krantz pulls one to try to make Blair look guilty. Not that he needs to do a lot on this part...
