Memphis lost one of its best artists last year when Young Dolph got killed.
But fans are hoping that his cousin Key Glock is ready to take over as king of the city.
Let’s take a look at the come up and career of Key Glock.
Key Glock was born in South Memphis in 1997.
He was raised by a single mom who cut hair in their kitchen just to get by.
But, she wanted to provide a better life for her son.
So she started hustling in the streets to make some extra cash.
Glock’s mom linked up with a group of other women and started hitting licks.
At first they were all making money.
But it ain’t last forever and eventually she got caught.
So she got sentenced to 15 years in prison when Glock was just 20 months old.
After his mom got locked up, Glock was raised by his grandma and aunt.
They did the best they could. But without his parents around,
Glock hopped off the porch at a young age.
According to him, he was playing with sticks by the age of six.
He said that growing up in Memphis was “like the jungle, except it’s concrete.
Still got the prey and the predators. Eat or be eaten - that’s what it is out there.”
When he was in 9th grade, Glock recorded his first song in his grandmother’s house.
At first he wasn’t interested in rapping,
but that changed after he heard Don’t Deserve It by Gucci Mane.
Gucci was already his favorite rapper,
and Don’t Deserve It inspired Glock to record his own track on the same beat.
Everyone around him showed love for what he was doing,
but Glock still wasn’t seriously focused on music yet.
He started recording more songs but still spent most of his time in the streets.
Glock told an interviewer “It was the people around me, all the feedback I was getting,
and I was paying attention to it. Everybody said I needed to take it more seriously.
‘Cause, really, I was just playing. I didn’t think I wanted to do this.
I ain’t know I wanted to be a rapper.”
Eventually he decided to link up with some homies and form a rap group.
Glock dropped his mixtape Whole Lotta Errthang and was ready to take over the game.
But then one of the artists in the group got killed, and Glock got locked up right after.
His mom got out of prison while he was a senior in high school,
but they were quickly separated and both got locked up.
On March 7th, 2016,
Key Glock was arrested for a shooting at a bar.
According to witnesses, he let a shot off into the floor
and shrapnel hit three people in the legs.
No one was seriously injured,
but he was booked on three counts of aggravated assault.
Key Glock and Young Dolph are cousins by marriage,
and they used to see each other all the time at family cookouts.
While Glock was in jail for the shooting, his aunt showed Dolph some of his music
and Dolph went crazy for it.
According to Dolph, he ain’t even know that Glock rapped at the time
and was blown away by what he heard.
When Glock was released,
it ain’t take long for his cousin to sign him to his Paper Route Entertainment label.
Dolph was already a well known rapper in the city.
He was blowing up after he dropped his album King of Memphis,
but he encouraged Glock to make his own lane and follow his own style.
Glock said “They told me I can do what I want to do, when I want to do it, how I want to do it.”
So Glock hopped in the booth and got to work.
He ain’t want to just ride the wave of Dolph’s success,
he wanted to make it in the industry off his own work ethic.
People around him say that no one puts in the time and effort like Glock.
Sometimes he records up to 40 tracks in a week,
which is more than most rappers put out in a year.
He dropped his first official mixtape Glock Season in 2017,
then followed it up with Glock Bond and Glockoma in 2018.
The single Russian Cream off of Glock Bond was certified Gold by the RIAA
and introduced everyone to Memphis’ next hottest rapper.
Signing with Dolph helped Glock gain traction in the industry,
but their collaboration almost ended before it began.
At the time,
Dolph was beefing with Yo Gotti and Blac Youngsta over the title of his album
King of Memphis.
Gotti and Dolph already had a complicated history.
Dolph turned down an offer to sign with CMG in 2014,
which turned Gotti against him.
The situation escalated in 2016 when Dolph tweeted
“Bra went from bein my #1 fan and wanting to sign me to being my biggest hater #Facts.”
Blac Youngsta responded by calling Dolph a ***** and denying he was the king of Memphis.
Dolf you a ***** you a soft ass *****
you nice ass ***** if you got a problem ***** say you got a problem,
shaky ass *****
and you ain't no motha***** king of Memphis you ain't king of south Memphis
you ain't even from the city
Dolph responded later, then Blac Youngsta sent more shots in the diss track Shake Sum.
A month after he signed Key Glock, Dolph turned up the heat with his track:
Play Wit Yo B**** (Yo Gotti Diss).
On the song, he says he had sex with Yo Gotti’s baby mama.
The day after Dolph released the video for Play Wit Yo B****,
he was in North Carolina for a show at a club.
A few hours before the show, someone started letting off shots and hit his SUV
over 100 times.
Luckily Dolph was moving smart and his whip was bulletproof,
Otherwise he would’ve died on the spot.
Blac Youngsta was later arrested in connection with the shooting
but released due to lack of evidence.
Then just a few months later, Dolph got shot three times at a hotel in Hollywood.
Yo Gotti was staying at the hotel and Dolph brought his crew over there to confront him.
Then a fight broke out and Dolph got shot.
Rumors started going around that Gotti was the shooter,
but he was never charged in the case.
A Yo Gotti associate named Corey McClendon was arrested for the shooting,
but also later released due to lack of evidence.
Dolph luckily survived, but it only added fuel to the beef
between Paper Route Entertainment and CMG.
Key Glock also inherited that beef
and got into his own problems with artists on their roster.
In 2020, a CMG affiliate named Lil Migo started beefing with Glock.
The two of them sent shots back and forth on social media for a while.
Migo went off on Instagram Live about Key Glock being a snitch,
then tried to ban him from performing in Memphis.
He posted a slide on his Instagram Story that said
“@keyglock You A *****, I Got A 100K U Aint Gone Do A Show in the CITY.”
Glock wasn’t about to be run out of his own city.
So he pulled up to the hood with all his jewelry on
to prove he wasn’t taking Lil Migo’s threats seriously.
But Migo ain’t the only dude from CMG that Glock has had beef with.
On October 30, 2020, Blac Youngsta dropped a video for his track I Met Tay Keith First.
This was a subliminal diss aimed at Key Glock,
who started working with Tay Keith back when he was in high school.
Even though he was making some new enemies, Glock’s career was taking off at a crazy pace.
After his run of solo tapes,
he collaborated with Young Dolph on a project called Dum and Dummer.
Then in January 2020, he dropped his debut album Yellow Tape,
which peaked at #14 on the Billboard 200.
Glock was determined to make it to the top on his own.
Instead of getting bigger artists to feature on his tracks to catch people’s attention,
he wanted to build his own buzz.
He said in an interview: “I know if I would have used the big features
I would have reached a higher peak than I’m at right now.
I know I’m going to still get to that point eventually, and I’m going to do it my way.”
He followed up Yellow Tape with another solo mixtape in May 2020,
then he reunited with Dolph for the sequel to their 2019 project.
Yellow Tape 2 dropped on November 5th, 2021,
and everything seemed to be going in the right direction.
But just when Glock was starting to see major success,
his mentor and best friend was murdered.
On November 17th, less than two weeks after Yellow Tape 2 dropped,
Young Dolph was ambushed at Makeda’s Butter Cookies in South Memphis.
Sources say he was picking up cookies for his mom when a white Benz pulled up
and two shooters started letting off shots.
Dolph allegedly fired back, but died at the scene.
When the news broke that Young Dolph had been killed,
the streets of Memphis went crazy.
City officials immediately issued a citywide curfew to prevent rioting and more violence.
Even though he wasn’t around for very long,
Dolph already cemented himself as a Memphis legend and his death hit the city hard.
But nobody took it worse than Key Glock.
He was Dolph’s cousin by marriage, but they called each other brothers.
After the murder, Glock deleted all of his social media and ghosted everyone.
He left Memphis, and no one knew if he would ever come back.
He stayed quiet for a while,
but then broke his silence by posting a tribute to Dolph on his Instagram.
A few days later he dropped the single “Proud” and let everyone know he wasn’t going anywhere.
Even after he lost his best friend, Glock is still pushing forward.
In February 2022 he announced his first ever solo tour.
Young Dolph left some massive shoes to fill in the city of Memphis.
But if anyone can carry on his legacy, it’s Key Glock.
Meanwhile police are still investigating who is behind Dolph’s murder.
Police named Memphis rapper Straight Drop as one of the main suspects
and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Straight Drop posted on social media that he was going to turn himself in,
but then tried to flee the state.
But the cops eventually found him in Indiana.
Not long after that
a dude named Cornelius Smith was charged in Mississippi on a warrant
involving the white Mercedes Benz used in the shooting.
Now two more men have been named as suspects in the case.
Joshua Taylor and Devin Burns are both wanted by the police.
Burns already has a rap sheet and was charged with attempted first-degree murder,
possession of a firearm, and aggravated robbery in 2015.
After the news came out that two more guys were wanted by the cops,
rumors started going around that someone was snitching.
Some believe that Straight Drop’s behavior has been strange the whole time
and he might be working with the cops.
But right now there’s no hard evidence to confirm that, so it’s all just rumors.
When Dolph was murdered, a lot of people thought Yo Gotti was somehow involved.
The police were worried about someone trying to get payback
so they shut down and surrounded Gotti’s restaurant
to make sure no one would burn it down or shoot it up.
But right now there’s nothing that ties Gotti to Dolph’s death.
No one really knows what went down at the bakery yet.
But if someone involved is working with the police,
it’s only a matter of time before the truth is revealed.
Dolph had a lot of enemies in the city,
but it also could’ve just been a robbery gone wrong instead of some personal beef.
Let's just hope that Key Glock can stay out of trouble
and continue to build off the momentum that Dolf started