In a meeting of the minds that is shocking only in its capacity to surprise anyone at this point, current and soon-to-be-former disgraced NYC mayor Eric Adams recently sat down with Kai Cenat, one of the most-watched streamers on Twitch and probably the most famous from a mainstream perspective. The latter, a Bronx native, attempted to host an in-person PS5 giveaway in 2023, which – to give you an idea of how that went – has its own Wikipedia page titled “2023 Union Square riot.” Now, fresh off the success of Streamer University’s more contained chaos and on the verge of hosting another giveaway, Cenat has some misgivings about how the NYPD treated him and his friends.
As part of a video promoting the upcoming second giveaway, Cenat asked Adams how he could avoid another disastrous outcome. After the two exchanged pleasantries – with Adams granting that every day in New York is “crazy,” as is his wont – Cenat, who until recently resided in Atlanta, Georgia and has since departed for another undisclosed city, explained why he got the sense that he’s no longer welcome in NYC. In short, Cenat feels like the police continued to bother him and his friends even in 2024, after the 2023 riot incident was resolved.
"[NYPD] be picking on us in a way,” Cenat told Adams, a notoriously pro-cop mayor who was once an NYPD captain himself. “In terms of a lot of times where police was doing things that they wasn't supposed to be doing. It made it feel like NYPD was a gang at one point. My friend [Roberto] Fanum [Gonzalez] got his car taken away for no reason [in 2024]."
Adams then asked if the NYPD impounded the car on the same day as the riot, to which Cenat replied that it had happened on "a whole different day." The incident Cenat described was, indeed, alarming, with an officer pointing a gun at Gonzalez after last summer's Bronx Dominican Parade and handcuffing him. Police proceeded to take the car, a purple Lamborghini Urus, on the basis that, as a rep later told Complex, the vehicle lacked license plates. However, Gonzalez claimed on social media that he'd received a permit for the purposes of the parade. Additionally, pictures surfaced that seemed to depict officers posing with the car.
“The police would just look at us and pick us out,” Cenat told Adams. “We had trouble the whole summer [of 2024]. … I kinda feel like coming to New York, it’ll be kinda hectic in terms of, I gotta move a certain way.”
In response, Adams suddenly brought up one of the handful of things he’s declared war on during his time as mayor: drill rap.
"We've come a long way from where we were,” Adams said, never clarifying which time period he was referring to. “And what's happening now even in the Bronx, there's a lot of crews, a lot of folks getting into battles over drill music. They're disrespecting each others' community. And so, I have to find that right balance. I've got to make sure we're safe, but not with disgrace."
“Yeah,” replied Cenat, “I just feel like there were some points where, you know, it’ll be the cops taking the car and posing with it, and we’re basically getting laughed at. So, us being from New York, we felt some type of way in terms of, like, we can’t even embrace the city without something going on because of how big we are. We always have a radar every time we fly in. It was always something.”
Of the car incident, Adams then asked the question on everybody’s mind: “What did [police] take it for? Was he drag racing?”
Cenat, perhaps more prepared for Adams’ jazz-like stream-of-consciousness approach to conversation than Adams – who loves putting on a show but hates doing his homework – was for anything involving Cenat and his friends, somehow did not miss a beat: “No,” he said, “he wasn’t doing nothing.”
“OK,” Adams finally resolved, “we need to look at that.”
Cenat and Adams’ discussion of the 2023 riot and the upcoming giveaway was comparatively brief. The riot, which took place in August 2023, stemmed from a comedy of errors. Cenat and fellow mega-famous content creators like Gonzalez and Duke Dennis failed to obtain a permit for a gathering that ended up drawing thousands, who grew increasingly unruly as what was billed as PS5 giveaway collapsed under its own weight. A small handful of fans were injured, and 65 were arrested. Police yanked Cenat out of the ensuing chaos and hit him with charges of inciting a riot and unlawful assembly, though the charges were dropped after Cenat paid $55,000 in restitution fees and posted an apology. He also decried fans’ actions shortly after shit hit the fan. This is not to say that Cenat’s moral compass was rendered infallible by the lessons he learned on that fateful day; during the aforementioned Streamer University, for example, Cenat and friends palled around with and consistently praised YouTuber and rapper DDG, who has been accused of physical and emotional abuse in a restraining order filed by his ex, singer and actress Halle Bailey.
During the recent conversation with Adams, Cenat, cognizant of damage done by his previous event, asked if there was a way he could more safely run it back. Adams replied by pointing to Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, a boxing event so wonky that one of its main fighters, Ryan Garcia, partially blamed its walled-off setup for his loss, but which nonetheless transformed a portion of Times Square into a boxing arena without descending into a riot.
"Let's look at what we just did two weeks ago,” said Adams. “We had a major, major boxing event right in the middle of Times Square. A couple hundred thousand people were there. They coordinated with the city. ... You can't still do [events] on the level you did before because now you've blown up. So now you have to do it on another level. You sit down with my team. I get the agencies involved. You map out what your plan is: ‘This is what I want to do. I want to do something to give back.’ Now you've got the city in alignment to make sure you can execute the plan."
Cenat found these terms agreeable, saying that he simply wants to “give back” to his home city after botching his first attempt.
He then returned to the more pressing matter at hand: “Is there a way that my friend like Fanum could probably get an apology for what happened or anything like that?”
Adams, initially confused, reiterated that he’ll look into it, and then, “if something was done wrong, [Fanum] will get an apology.”
Cenat then turned his attention to one last major concern:
"How do you get the key to the city or, like, a street sign?” he asked. “I just want to see Cenat Ave, or something like that."
“I’m looking to have Eric Ave,” Adams said, before explaining that City Council names streets, while Adams can indeed bestow the key to the city upon a worthy recipient, but only for their life’s work.
"That’ll be fire to get," said Cenat. "I just wanted to get the greenlight if I ever wanted to run back an event or run back something like [if] I can. Because, right now, I didn't know if I was able to run any event back to give back to New York because of what happened last time."
“Do it right,” Adams replied.
“Yeah,” said Cenat, “we'll do it right.”
