Kelvin Evans pleads guilty to stealing hard drives and laptops from a car before singer’s Atlanta tour dates in 2025
A man arrested for stealing hard drives containing unreleased Beyoncé music has pleaded guilty in an Atlanta court on Tuesday.
Kelvin Evans was arrested by the Atlanta police department in September in connection to a July 2025 car robbery where two suitcases containing Beyoncé music and tour plans were stolen from a rental car.
In an Atlanta court this morning, Evans accepted a five-year sentence of which he will serve two years in custody. Previously he had pleaded not guilty and reportedly declined to take a deal in April, according to Rolling Stone.
Evans was ordered to avoid the location of the theft in Atlanta and refrain from contact with the victim as part of his probation terms.
According to a July police report, Beyoncé choreographer Christopher Grant and dancer Diandre Blue called 911 to report a theft from their rental vehicle, a 2024 Jeep Wagoneer, before Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour dates in Atlanta.
woman on stage wearing red, white and blue outfit
Unreleased Beyoncé music stolen in Atlanta during Cowboy Carter tour
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An October indictment stated that Evans entered the car on 8 July “with the intent to commit theft”.
The stolen hard drives contained “watermarked music, some unreleased music, footage plans for the show and past and future set list”, according to a police report. Clothing, designer sunglasses, laptops and AirPods headphones were also stolen, Grant and Blue said.
Local law enforcement searched for the location of one of the stolen laptops and the AirPods to try and locate the property. One police officer wrote in the report: “I conducted a suspicious stop in the area, due to the information that was relayed to me. There were several cars in the area also that the AirPods were pinging to in that area also.
“After further investigation, a silver [redacted], which had traveled into zone 5 was moving at the same time as the tracking on the AirPods.”
Evans was arrested several weeks after Grant and Blue filed a report, and was publicly named as the suspect in September. He was released on a $20,000 bond a month later.
At the time of his arrest, Atlanta police said that the stolen property had not been recovered. It is unclear whether it has since been found.
Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter was the highest-grossing tour of last year, earning the performer over $407m across 32 shows. She won the 2025 album of the year Grammy for the project, which was praised by the Guardian’s Michael Cragg as “a thrilling 27-track journey through and beyond America’s roots music”.
Earlier this month, Beyoncé co-chaired the Met Gala alongside Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour. She was accompanied by her husband, Jay-Z, and daughter Blue Ivy.
“It feels surreal [to be back] because my daughter’s here,” Beyoncé said on the red carpet. “She looks so beautiful. It’s incredible to be able to share it with her.”
Rumors have been swirling that Beyoncé will drop her new album this summer, speculatively titled Act III and with a possible rock direction.
When asked about the project on the Today show earlier this month, Tina Knowles, Beyoncé’s mother, was tight-lipped: “I’d tell you, but I’d have to kill you,” she joked.
