Over the past decade,
Florida has consistently produced some of the best rappers of this generation.
The reason that so many authentic street artists have come out of the sunshine state
is that beyond the sandy beaches and palm trees
is a real-world of poverty and violence
that inspires their hard-hitting bars.
Two promising rappers from Jacksonville, Florida,
Yungen Ace, and Julio Foolio
have been involved in a deadly beef that has caused a wave of terror in the city.
Here is a look at Jacksonville’s most wanted gangs ATK vs KTA.
Jacksonville police have identified as many as 30 dangerous street gangs in the city,
but the two most deadly are ATK,
a crew associated with rapper Yungeen Ace
and KTA, a crew affiliated with another rapper named Julio Foolio.
KTA stands for Kill Them All.
There is some disagreement as to what ATK stands for,
with some claiming it means Attack,
Aim to Kill, or Ace to Kill
in reference to its most famous member.
Jacksonville is known for being a wild city with one of the highest murder rates in the US.
There were 111 murders in Jacksonville in 2020 and growing up,
both rappers had to adapt to an environment of crime and violence.
Yungeen Ace was born in Chicago
but moved to Jacksonville with his family when he was three years old.
Growing up, Ace had a pretty traumatic childhood
that was full of death and betrayal.
His father was locked up on a 15-year sentence
when the rapper was young and being one of 11 kids,
his mother struggled to make ends meet.
He bounced between different relative’s houses,
never settling in one place for long as the family was constantly getting evicted.
His uncle was the head of the family
and the only positive male role model in the artist's life growing up.
After he passed away when Ace was only 13,
he started using music as a way to express himself,
while also getting sucked into the street life around him.
Julio Foolio, also known as just Foolio
had a similar upbringing, surviving the mean streets of Jacksonville.
Growing up in Duval County,
he experienced the deaths of close friends and family members with killings,
hustling, and police activity all around him.
The rapper dropped out of high school just in the 9th grade.
But before dropping out, he was shot in the leg
while exiting a school bus.
With school no longer an option,
he decided to take music seriously,
using street activities to support himself.
Yungeen Ace first blew up back in 2017
with the track Go to War, which featured the rest of the ATK gang.
Not long after, Foolio started buzzing in the city with tracks like Crooks and Slide.
Even though they were two poppin’ rappers in the same city,
their beef didn’t stem from the music.
It all started after the killing of Julio’s blood cousin Zion Brown.
Zion Brown got killed back in 2017 in what seemed to be a targeted shooting.
Police later arrested a 19-year-old named Deontrae Thomas
who was charged with throwing a brick through the window of Zion’s home
before firing off several shots.
Zion, along with two girls who also lived there
one who was 16 and the other who was only 9 were shot by Thomas.
The two girls survived but Zion was tragically killed.
Thomas had ties to Yungeen Ace.
The two had both been charged with a 2018 burglary,
where they allegedly robbed somebody who was selling weed.
During the burglary, shots were fired,
nearly hitting a couple and a one-year-old child,
but luckily no one was injured.
Ace spent a few months in jail for the robbery,
while Brown still had a warrant out for his arrest when he was brought in for the Zion Brown murder.
It’s not clear what the motive behind the shooting was
or if Ace had anything to do with the hit
although the killing was clearly targeted.
But whether he was involved or not,
Foolio was out for blood and not long after,
Ace along with four other people were the victims of a retaliation shooting.
On June 5th, 2018,
Ace along with two friends and his blood brother
were shot after celebrating a birthday at Wasabi, a sushi restaurant in Jacksonville.
After they left the restaurant,
another vehicle pulled up alongside them and started letting off bullets.
In an interview with DJ Vlad,
Ace says he tried to shield his brother from the bullets, but it wasn’t enough.
He was the only survivor of the shooting
his brother and his two friends were pronounced dead on the scene.
Ace was shot a total of 8 times
and brought to a local hospital to be treated for his injuries.
To make matters worse,
a local gun store owner saw his picture on the news
and remembered him and his boys coming into his store earlier that day.
He called the crime stoppers hotline to report seeing him in the store
and Ace was arrested in the hospital for violating his probation.
He had been sentenced to 31 months of probation
for the robbery he committed with Deontrae Thomas
and was not legally allowed to possess a weapon as a convicted felon.
Even though Ace never actually purchased a gun from the store,
video surveillance footage showed him holding a gun,
which was enough to be considered a probation violation.
So, three days after the shooting
Ace turned himself into Jacksonville police.
Tre’von Bullard, Ace’s brother,
had just turned 18 that day
and was the rapper’s closest sibling in age.
It was a devastating loss to the artist,
who wasn’t even allowed to attend his funeral because a judge denied him a bond.
After that, it was all-out war between the ATK and KTA camps.
Foolio took to social media to taunt Ace and his dead homies.
After clearing up his legal problems,
Ace jumped right back online to tell Folio and his crew
that they would pay for killing his partners and dissing them after they were already dead.
So, the beef was no longer just in the streets
it was now being documented on the internet for everyone to see.
In an interview with Say Cheese TV,
Foolio claimed to being the most hated rapper in Florida
and doubled down on his decision
to diss Yungeen Ace and his dead friends and brother.
He said that there are consequences to street life
and if Ace didn’t already know that, then he’d have to learn.
The beef stayed on the internet for a little while, but not for long.
In January 2019,
a rapper who went by the name Boss Goon was killed in a mass shooting
that also injured five other people after a performance at a strip club
called the Paradise Gentlemen's Club in Jacksonville.
Boss Goon happened to be the older brother of another Jacksonville rapper
named Ksoo and many of the other people injured were members of his family.
Ksoo is affiliated with Yungeen Ace
and is rumored to be one of the top shooters in ATK.
Boss Goon had only recently been released from prison
after serving a 10-year sentence in the pen.
One of the other people shot in the ambush was Ksoo’s father Abdul Robinson.
Ksoo and his dad shocked the city of Jacksonville and the hip-hop community
after they were both arrested for the killing of a KTA affiliate
named Lil Buck in Arlington.
Ksoo was charged with second-degree murder
and Abdul was charged with accessory to murder after the fact.
A police officer witnessed the shooting occur
and chased after Ksoo and another man he was with.
Ksoo had already made news back in 2019,
after releasing album art for a track called “Bibby Out”
that features the photos of several dead members of the KTA gang
including Zion Brown
and a 16-year-old murder victim who went by the name Bibby Osama.
It seems like the killing of Ksoo’s brother Boss Goon, was payback
for blatantly disrespecting dead opps in the rapper’s music and album artwork.
Disrespecting dead opps in music and on social media
has become common with this new wave of trap and drill rappers
and it’s a recurring theme in this particular beef.
But it always escalates the cycle of violence to a point that no one can escape
until everyone is dead or in jail.
Many petty disagreements can eventually be squashed
if both rappers are willing to put the past behind them,
even if blood has been spilled.
But once you take it to a level where you’re creating a permanent record of disrespect
in the form of a song or album artwork,
it’s tough to walk away from that.
It’s an easy way to get to your opps
if you aren’t able to confront them in person at that moment.
But it’s a dangerous practice that any rapper who is serious about escaping the streets
should avoid because it always leads to more bodies and more jail time for those involved.
There have been all kinds of disrespectful tracks released by both camps
that have fueled this deadly beef.
After Ksoo’s album cover made headlines,
the rapper released the incredibly disrespectful track "Ksoo B****",
where he doubled down on the disrespect of Bibby Osama by taking credit for the hit.
Not long after,
Foolio released a track called Bibby’s story, as a tribute to Bibby,
where he details how he felt when Bibby was murdered
and why the disrespect is so serious.
Not long after the arrest
both Foolio and his girlfriend were shot in two separate incidents, but both survived.
It seems like the shooters tried to get at Foolio
and when they couldn’t take him out, they went after his girl.
The streets of Jacksonville are so deadly that no one is safe.
When the opps can’t find who they’re looking for,
they will go after the closest person to you
which includes friends, family members, and even innocent bystanders.
The crazy thing is
that the war seemed to help fuel both rapper’s popularity with many of their tracks
racking up millions of views.
But with so much blood already spilled,
it seems impossible for either camp to leave the streets alone
long enough to capitalize on the success.
After surviving one near-fatal ambush,
Ace became the victim of another shooting where one of his homies was injured
and another was killed.
He and his crew were ambushed outside a Hampton Inn in Waycross, Georgia.
In March 2019,
police were called to the hotel with reports that gunshots had gone off.
They found 30-year-old Jeremy Brookins dead by the pool
and 29-year-old Dewayne Scott inside a hotel room with a gunshot wound.
Ace was also with the group but was not injured,
surviving his second near-fatal ambush within the span of a year.
Not long after, two members of the KTA squad, Spazz and Rod K,
were killed in retaliation adding two more names to the endless cycle of violence.
Not long after that, the police saw what was going on
and decided to keep Ksoo locked up while he awaited his murder trial
for the killing of Lil Buck.
Foolio claimed this as a victory and started mocking Ksoo on social media
claiming that the rapper used to rock with him and his homies before jumping ship
to clique up with Ace
What came next
were some of the most disrespectful hip-hop tracks ever recorded in hip hop history.
On March 28th, 2021,
Yungeen Ace, along with ATK members Spinabenz, Whoppa Wit Da Choppa
and Fast Money Goon released a track called Who I Smoke.
The song is a remix of the song A Thousand Miles by Vanessa Carlton
and came along with a video
of the four Jacksonville goons messing around on a golf course.
The track is hard-hitting and catchy,
until you get to the hook,
where Ace starts the chant of Who I Smoke
followed up by the names of real KTA affiliates who have been killed,
including Bibby, a Florida rapper killed in 2019 named Teki
and Lil 9ine another rapper shot and killed in 2020.
The song is definitely creative,
but tough to sit through
once you realize they’re disrespecting real people who are now dead,
some as young as 16 when they were killed.
At least with most modern drill songs that contain lyrics dissing opps,
the beat is cold-blooded and menacing,
so you know some real **** is about to be said.
Who I Smoke takes you by surprise by sounding like a pop record,
until you actually listen to the lyrics.
The song was so wild,
it’s even gotten innocent Twitch streamers caught up in the beef.
Not long after the track was released,
internet personality Adin Ross
was tricked by some other dudes in a Discord chat into singing the lyrics.
He later had to issue a public apology to Foolio during a live stream,
who was clearly pissed off but not about to smoke a gamer
just for getting pranked by some dudes who want to see him get into some bull****.
In response, Foolio released the track “When I See You” Remix
which samples the R&B track When I See U by Fantasia.
Despite also having a catchy melody and upbeat instrumental,
Foolio takes the disrespect to a new level
by rapping about the shooting that almost left Ace dead,
while filming the music video on the grave of his dead friends and brother.
He even went as far as having a poster with their faces on it
from the Fox News coverage printed,
which he raps alongside throughout the video.
With these tracks, both rappers seem to be trolling
while also dissing each other’s dead friends and family,
which is tough to do with a straight face.
If there was any hope that the rappers could put the beef behind them
and focus on music rather than the streets,
these two songs destroyed it.
Who I Smoke now has over 17 million views
and the When I See You Remix has over 7 million.
What’s even crazier
is that both rappers were able to get the rights to the original tracks they sampled.
This war is far from over
and the two viral songs will likely lead to even more bloodshed.
It’s a shame that two talented rappers have gotten caught up in such a wild beef
that has no end in sight.
Given how creative they are with dissing each other,
there is no telling what they could accomplish in the music industry
if they put their minds to something positive, rather than deadly street beef.
But with so much blood already spilled
and diss tracks already released,
it’s unlikely either side will let up any time soon.
If you liked this video check out some of our previous videos!
From rappers in gangs to rappers who beat a murder charge
we cover the most insane stories that you need to hear!
Well, that's all for today!
If you enjoyed this video, go ahead and give us a thumbs up
and let us know in the comments what you'd like to see in the future.
Don't forget to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification button,
so you never miss any great content like this.
Catch you in the next video!