Rap can get dangerous at times.
When you claim to be about that life, while being a public figure,
occasionally people will test you.
Here is a look at a few of the most popular rappers who were caught lackin’ and got shot.
YG
Keenon Dequan Ray Jackson, better known as YG,
is a popular rapper from Compton, California.
YG is best known for big singles like Toot It and Boot It featuring Ty Dolla Sign
and Who Do You Love featuring Drake.
YG is also a well-known member of the West Side Tree Top Piru set of the Bloods.
YG’s father was arrested for tax evasion when the rapper was young,
and he joined the gang at age 16.
YG made music throughout his teenage years
but was more invested in the streets than he was in rapping.
He began to draw some attention to his music in the early 2010s.
His debut album My Krazy Life was released in 2013
and featured performances from huge names like Kendrick Lamar and Drake,
which catapulted him to stardom.
Yet, despite all his success,
YG has never fully left the streets behind
and has continued to have run-ins with the law and rival gang members.
On June 12th, 2015 YG was shot at a recording studio in Studio City, California.
He was shot in the hip and the injuries he sustained were non-threatening.
He was back to recording music the following day,
but authorities claim he was uncooperative when questioned about the incident.
The rapper has been vocal in interviews and his music that he isn’t quite sure who shot him and why.
On an episode of the Therapist on Noisy,
YG claims that a group of men showed up in a black van
and tried to gain access to the studio he was recording at.
His friends tried to make them leave, but a fight broke out.
YG came out of the studio to see what was going on when bullets started flying.
He was shot in the hip and retreated back into the building to assess the damage.
He was then taken to the hospital and treated for his wounds but made a full recovery.
Despite not cooperating with police,
YG claims the shooting wasn’t gang-related.
According to the artist, he does not know who did it
but it was more likely an attempted robbery gone bad or another similar random incident.
On the track Who Shot Me? off his second album Still Brazy,
the project he was working on when he was shot,
YG recalls the confusion and paranoia that the situation caused him and those around him.
He claims it made it difficult for him to trust those in his inner circle,
because he wasn’t sure if the shooting was a setup or a random event.
On the Therapist, he claims that it would be much easier if he knew who it was
and what motives were behind the attack.
But having so much doubt and confusion about what transpired that evening
made him paranoid.
Because YG refused to cooperate with authorities,
the shooters were never apprehended and to this day
it remains a mystery exactly who shot YG.
However, fans have speculated
that due to YG’s paranoia and difficulty trusting those around him,
it seems like there may be more the artist is not revealing.
He was not at a busy public event or somewhere that would have been easy to locate
and therefore the shooters must have gotten his location somehow.
If it were truly just a random robbery gone wrong,
it doesn’t seem likely that YG would be so distrustful of his team.
But getting shot can take a mental toll,
so the rapper may be simply struggling with PTSD
and truly does not know what happened.
21 Savage
Sheyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, known to rap fans as 21 Savage,
is a popular artist born in the UK, but raised in Atlanta, Georgia.
21 Savage was born in London, England on October 22nd, 1992.
His parents separated when he was a child
and he moved with his mother and older brother to the United States
when he was seven years old.
The family moved to Zone 6, an area in East Atlanta known for crime and violence.
21 Savage started getting in trouble at a young age
and was expelled from every school in the Dekalb County School District
for hiding a pistol in his locker in the 7th grade.
After that, the artist bounced around between a youth detention center
and an alternative school,
until dropping out halfway through the 9th grade.
Around that time 21 joined a neighborhood gang
and started doing home invasions and selling drugs to support himself.
He later joined the Bloods around age 19.
21 Savage has been open in interviews about the number of people he’s lost to gun violence.
His older brother Quantivayus Joseph – aka Tay Man -
was killed in a botched drug deal when the rapper was younger.
21 claims that the famous dagger face tattoo that became a meme
when he first started blowing up is a tribute to Tay-Man, who had a similar tattoo.
Plus, in 2011, 21 lost his right-hand man, Larry in a shootout.
On October 22nd, 2013, on his 21st birthday,
Savage was shot six times by rival gang members.
The exact details of the shooting are unknown
because 21 is not a man to talk about the details of what he’s done in the streets.
But what is clear is that it was a botched drug deal.
A rival crew ambushed 21 and his associates and a shootout followed.
21 was shot in the neck, arm, hand, and collar bone.
After getting shot he claims he grabbed his shooter’s gun and shot him back.
21 was brought to the hospital and made a full recovery
but suffered nerve damage and continues to experience pain from the shooting to this day.
Although he survived the ambush, his partner and best friend Johnny was killed.
21 claims that the shooting inspired him to change his life
and find a way out of the streets.
Johnny’s death had a huge impact on him,
and he started rapping after getting out of the hospital.
He dropped his first single in 2014 and built considerable buzz,
even though he had just started making music.
21 claims that he was well known in the city already
and that the music was just a way to make money off of the reputation he’d already built.
He released his debut mixtape, The Slaughter Tape, in 2015
and a follow up called Slaughter King, later that year.
He started gaining mainstream attention for his 2016 collaboration mixtape with Metro Boomin’,
Savage Mode and has since gone on to release a string of hit records and projects.
21 Savage is known for his authenticity and the pain he puts into his music.
The 2013 shooting that pushed him to pursue rap is something he frequently references,
either in his music or in interviews.
So, despite the tragic circumstances,
who knows if the world would have ever heard a 21 Savage song
if that shooting hadn’t occurred.
50 Cent
Curtis Jackson, better known as 50 Cent,
is a rapper in South Jamaica, Queens, New York.
He is considered hip hop royalty and one of the most influential rap stars of all time.
But in the early 2000’s he set the bar for how tough a rapper should be.
Part of what added to this legacy
was the fact that he was shot nine times at point-blank range outside of his grandmother’s house
in South Jamaica and survived to tell the tale.
50 Cent was originally raised by his mother, Sabrina in South Jamaica,
during the deadly crack epidemic that swept across low-income neighborhoods in New York.
Sabrina was a drug dealer, who died in a fire when the artist was only 8 years old.
His father had abandoned the family
and 50 was sent to live with his grandmother after his mother passed away.
He started selling drugs at age 12 to support himself
and had numerous run-ins with the law in his teenage years.
He was caught bringing a gun to school in the 10th grade and was arrested.
Then in 1994
he was arrested for selling cocaine to an undercover cop and for possession of heroin,
crack, and a pistol when the police searched his house a few weeks later.
He was sentenced to 3 to 9 years but only served 6 months in a boot camp,
where he got his GED.
In 1996, 50 was introduced to another Queen's legend, Jam Master Jay of Run DMC,
who taught the artist how to hone his craft as an MC.
He started gaining attention with his controversial single How To Rob,
where he described exactly how he would rob famous rappers of their jewelry and money.
This was an early glimpse of how 50 Cent would troll the music industry to gain attention,
a tactic that made him famous and he continues to use to this day.
Just as his career was heating up,
50 was ambushed outside of his grandmother’s house on May 24th, 2000.
On the day of the shooting, the rapper was about to get into a friend’s car
but went back into the house to grab something he’d forgotten.
When he came back out, another vehicle pulled up next to him
and shot him 9 times with a 9mm handgun.
50 was hit in the hand, arm, hip, legs, chest, and even his left cheek.
Miraculously, he survived but had to undergo extensive physical therapy
and spent thirteen days in the hospital.
The shooter is believed to be a man named Darryl Baum,
who was a childhood friend and former bodyguard of Mike Tyson.
It’s been alleged that Baum was hired to kill 50 by a powerful local drug dealer
named Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff.
Allegedly, 50 rapped about Supreme on an unreleased track called Ghetto Qu-ran
and the drug lord felt he was giving away too much information.
He arranged the hit on 50 and hired Baum, known as Hommo -short for Homicide,
who was a well-known shooter in New York.
Baum himself was killed three weeks later.
50 alludes to the fact that his shooter was killed
in his popular track Many Men of his classic album Get Rich or Die Tryin’.
However, it’s believed that Baum was killed in retaliation over an unrelated gang beef,
although his shooting of 50 Cent may have played a role.
However the shooting went down, 50 made a full recovery
and went on to have one of the most prolific careers in rap history.
Who knows where the genre would be
if one of those bullets had hit him an inch in the other direction and taken his life.
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