Lil Durk is one of the OG Chicago drill rappers
and has maintained his relevance longer than almost anyone else from that area.
But being at the top comes with its dark side
and all the beef that has helped Durk sell albums and increase his popularity
has also led to the death of many people who are close to him.
News broke last week that his older brother DThang was killed in front of a nightclub in Harvey, Illinois,
a city just outside Chicago.
The brother of local rapper Lil Durk is dead.
After a shooting at a club in Harvey this weekend.
Although DThang’s killers are still on the loose
and there is no proof that his murder had anything to do with Durk,
fans automatically assumed that DThang was another casualty in the ongoing War in Chiraq.
DThang is far from the first person Durk has lost since blowing up.
In the past decade, he’s had to mourn the deaths of his cousin Nuski,
his manager Chino, his close friend King Von,
his producer Turn Me Up Josh, and now his older brother.
Wild rumors on the internet have accused Durk of being cursed or even sacrificing his own friends and family members
to secure wealth and power for himself.
But the truth is likely much simpler –
when you build a career off of being a savage and dissing your opps at any chance you can get,
eventually they’re going to want payback.
When they can’t get to you, they’re going to go after whoever is closest to you
and it seems like DThang
was just the latest victim in the endless cycle of violence that haunts Chicago and every other hood in America.
Let’s take a closer look at Lil Durk’s career
and all the unfortunate losses he’s encountered during his rise to fame.
Durk grew up surrounded by violence and gangs in the Southside of Chicago.
His father Dontay Banks was arrested and sentenced to life in prison when the rapper was just 7 months old
for being part of a major drug distribution ring.
Growing up, the artist had to take on many adult responsibilities to help his family.
He started making music and building a fanbase on Myspace and YouTube while he was still in high school.
But after getting his girlfriend pregnant at just 17 years old,
he was forced to drop out.
After that, he joined the Black Disciples and supported his family through street activities.
He continued to make music and build a fanbase,
but started getting into trouble with the law and was arrested several times for gun charges
while he was on the come up.
If you’ve been following our coverage of the Chicago drill scene,
you know that the BD’s are currently at war with the Gangster Disciples,
as well as several other sets in the area.
The rise of drill only added fuel to the fire in these violent beefs and throughout his career,
Durk has lost people close to him just because of tensions in the city.
On May 31st, 2014, Durk’s cousin OTF Nunu or Nuski
was shot and killed while sitting in a car.
Nuski was also a rapper who was signed to Durk’s OTF record label.
He just started blowing up in the city with the track OC, which also featured Durk.
But before he could really enjoy the success,
he was gunned down while sitting in one of Durk’s SUV’s outside a shopping complex.
Nuski’s death was rumored to be retaliation for the killing of another rapper named Lil Marc.
Lil Marc was a rapper who was associated with 051 Money Gang, a set of the Mickey Cobras and Black P Stones,
who are known to beef with the BDs.
In March 2014, Lil Marc dropped a track called No Competition,
which was a remix of Durk’s song Competition
and contained disses of many well-known BD’s in Chicago.
Three days after dropping the track,
Lil Marc was shot and killed while standing outside a bus stop.
After Marc was killed, many of the BD’s who he dissed on the song would go on social media and mock his death,
something that has become a common theme in drill music.
Durk was one of them and he recorded a video of himself at the bus stop where Lil Marc was killed,
laughing and saying that the bus stop was a ‘real famous place’.
Ay this-this, ay this bus stop right here tho,
this a real famous place you heard me?
This a real famous place.
Not long after, OTF Nunu was killed and many say it was payback for Lil Marc’s death
and all the disrespect that followed.
Less than a year after Nuski was killed,
Durk’s close friend and manager OTF Chino
was killed in a similar situation,
where he was sitting in a car in the Avalon Park neighborhood of Chicago.
It’s not clear exactly why Chino got killed,
but the word on the street is that the same person who shot Nuski was also responsible for Chino’s death.
Both hits were credited to an 051 Money gang member named 051 Melly.
Melly was a true savage and one of the most feared shooters in Chiraq history.
A few days before Chino was killed,
Durk had dropped a remix to Chief Keef’s Faneto where he dissed 051, rapping
“***** I’m riding through the opps
Finna go and shoot Young Money Up”.
051 Melly clearly wasn’t feeling the diss and posted a video to social media calling Durk a fake gangster.
Not long after that, Chino was killed.
051 Melly would eventually be killed at a house party in 2019
over an unrelated beef,
while Durk would continue to build momentum in the music industry.
So, the violence started to die down for a while,
at least when it came to people close to Durk.
But that would all change after the rapper entered the second phase of his career
and teamed up with a childhood friend and fellow BD, King Von.
The Chicago drill scene started to die down in the late 2010s,
as all the hot rappers would end up dead, in jail, or just move away from the streets.
Other drill scenes in cities like London and New York started to attract fans of the genre as well.
Although Durk was still relevant and successful in the industry,
he has even admitted that he started to fall off in the mid 2010’s.
He had embraced more of an auto-tune R&B sound with tracks like “My Beyonce”
featuring Dej Loaf and he abandoned the drill sound that had made him popular in the first place.
So many of his OG fans started to stop listening to him and focus their attention on other new rappers.
But rather than give up, Durk got back to his roots
and started releasing mixtapes that returned to a harder, street-oriented sound.
He left Def Jam in 2018 and started to focus on building his own brand: OTF.
Around that same time, King Von, Durk’s childhood friend and another street legend from Chicago,
was released from prison after beating a murder charge.
He would eventually sign to Durk’s label and release the single Crazy Story in December 2018,
which immediately went viral.
Von was a pretty wild dude and well known in Chicago for being a respected shooter.
Taking Von under his wing earned Durk tons of attention from rap fans across the country,
but it also tied him back into the street drama that had claimed the lives of his cousin and manager.
At the same time that Von was starting to take off,
another rapper from Chicago named FBG Duck was also making some noise in the industry.
FBG Duck was affiliated with the GD’s and was one of O’Block and OTF’s biggest rivals.
Durk and Duck had been dissing each other for years.
So, with Von back on the streets and Duck starting to build a name for himself in the industry,
the beef only got worse.
In July 2020, FBG Duck would release a track called “Dead B******”,
where he disrespects multiple dead members of O’Block and other BDs.
Less than a month later, Duck was shot and killed while out shopping in the upscale Gold Coast neighborhood.
But in Chicago, the beef doesn’t stop when you're dead,
and Durk would only continue to diss Duck every chance he could get.
He even went as far as naming a song after the dead rapper on his album The Voice, called “Should Have Ducked”.
But it wouldn’t be long before Durk would be grieving another member of his team and in November 2020,
King Von was shot and killed outside a hookah lounge in Atlanta.
King Von was killed during a shootout between two groups outside a hookah lounge
in downtown Atlanta on Friday morning.
Von’s death had nothing to do with Durk or any old street beef in Chicago.
He was killed after getting into a fistfight with rapper Quando Rondo.
According to rumors, Von had gotten into it with NBA Youngboy
after he allegedly slept with Youngboy’s baby mama Jania.
Rondo is signed to NBA Youngboy’s label
and known to take responsibility and action for his beefs.
So, when Rondo and King Von saw each other that night, things got out of hand, and Von ended up dead.
King Von was a well respected and loved figure in the streets of Chicago and his death was a huge loss,
not just for Durk but the entire city and rap community.
Crazy rumors started going around that Durk sacrificed Von
because he was scared that his friend might outshine him in the music industry and take his spot.
But the reality is that Von was really about that life
and when you’re still moving a certain way,
no amount of money or fame can protect you from the consequences.
Durk has continued to honor Von’s legacy and featured him on the cover of his 2020 album the Voice with the caption,
“Long Live Granson” – Von’s nickname on the streets.
Even though Quando Rondo wasn’t the one who actually fired the shot that killed Von,
the BD’s have let it be known that they are holding the rapper responsible.
Durk even went as far as purchasing every table at a club
that Rondo was set to perform at in Atlanta and the show had to be canceled.
But, Durk didn’t let the loss of his friend stop his hustle
and in 2021 alone he’s already dropped a deluxe edition of The Voice, as well as a collaborative project with Lil Baby
Called The Voice of the Heroes.
So far the new project is a hit,
but it seems like Durk is back to his old ways,
dissing opps both dead and alive.
On the track Still Runnin’ featuring Meek Mill,
fans believe that Durk dissed not only Youngboy and Quando Rondo, but also FBG Duck.
A leaked clip of the songs have surfaced online before the project dropped,
which made the internet go crazy.
Durk responded to the alleged diss, saying
“I never said a lame name – stop lyin on me”.
But it’s pretty clear that he’s trying to get at someone on the track, even if he didn’t call anyone out by name.
Just two days after the project was released,
Durk’s brother DThang was shot and killed outside of Club O in Harvey, Illinois,
a city about 30 minutes from the Southside of Chicago.
According to witnesses, DThang had been at the club all night
and was leaving around 1 am.
He got into a verbal fight with a group of men outside the club,
which resulted in him getting shot in the head.
DThang passed away almost immediately at just 32 years old.
A week before DThang was killed,
Durk’s go-to producer, TurnMeUp Josh also passed away.
The details of his death are not clear,
but Durk himself confirmed the news on Twitter, saying “RIP Turn me up josh smh”.
So, the rapper had lost another two people close to him in just the span of a week.
Dthang was Durk’s older brother and had always been an influential person in the rapper’s life,
with his father locked up for his whole childhood.
Dthang supposedly convinced Durk to invest more of his money into other businesses
outside of rap and helped him purchase a trucking company.
That way Durk could eventually get out of the spotlight
and avoid all the drama that comes with being a famous drill rapper.
But unfortunately, that day didn’t come quickly enough
and it seems like DThang fell victim to the same cycle that claimed the lives of Chino and Nuski.
The police have not arrested anyone or announced any information yet regarding Dthang’s death.
So it’s possible the shooting had nothing to do with Durk.
But it doesn’t seem like Dthang was robbed,
so it’s hard to think of what kind of motive the killers would have other than retaliation.
Especially because the shooting happened just outside of Chicago.
What separates drill from other sub-genres of hip hop is the blatant disrespect of opps,
especially the dead.
It’s also what seems to be fueling all the violence behind it.
At this point, Durk has enough money and connections to move smart and avoid any situations that may put him in danger.
But not everyone around him has that kind of money or the mindset to be on guard 24/7.
As long as he keeps up with the dissing,
everyone around him is a target.
The opps aren’t going to let up, just because they can’t get to Durk,
so they’re just going to hit up whoever they can get that matters to him.
And even though Durk is at the top of his career,
he still doesn’t have the time or resources to make sure that his people are protected at all times.
That’s unfortunately what comes with being a hot drill rapper.
A big part of what gets sales and plays is street image,
and backing that up with disses.
Durk is a businessman and he probably noticed that when he was doing pop and R&B tracks,
the sales weren’t great.
But when he started hopping back on drill beats and talking about his opps,
his career was suddenly going somewhere.
The only problem with this is the fact that your fans only want more and more.
But the longer you keep it up, the more you put yourself and the people around you at risk.
Hopefully, Durk can take some time to reflect on his brother’s death
and go in a new direction with his music.
At this point, he’s a multimillionaire
and doesn’t need to keep beefing with dudes in the street who have nothing to lose.
But then again, the more blood that is spilled,
the harder it is to escape the cycle and it may be too late for Durk to change his ways now.
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