The last few months have been tough for the YSL camp.
First Young Thug’s baby mama got shot outside of a bowling alley,
then the whole crew got hit with a major RICO case.
Now one of the record label’s most promising upcoming artists,
Lil Keed tragically passed away.
This is the true story of Lil Keed.
Lil Keed, born Raqhid Render, was raised in Atlanta’s Zone 3
the same hood as Young Thug.
He told The Fader “I’m from Zone 3, Jonesboro Road, over there on the southside.
We had to do hot stuff to get money.
I used to do a lot of hot stuff, that’s all I’ll say,
‘til I started rapping.”
Keed worked a couple of jobs as a teenager,
but McDonald’s and Subway ain’t bring in the same kind of money as putting in work in the streets.
He was already rapping at the time for fun,
but then he got hit with a reality check that made him realize he needed to change up how he moved.
In 2016, Keed’s homie Rudy got killed.
He told The Fader “Well I was already rapping but I started taking it serious after he got killed.
It was like, ‘he’s young and he’s gone.’
He ain’t even lived no type of life and it got took away.
It opened my eyes up like, I gotta do something different.
Can’t go out like that.”
After Rudy died, Lil Keed started to focus more on rap.
The studio he recorded at was close enough for him to walk to from his homie Mooktoven’s house,
and for a year straight he spent every day there.
He recorded tracks with other dudes in the neighborhood, but all the songs got lost after his computer crashed.
Everyone around him knew Keed had something special,
and music ran in his blood.
His younger brother Lil Gotit raps too,
and they worked together early on to develop their style.
Having his brother in the industry with him helped Keed stay focused and confident.
He told Complex in 2020
“Gotit, he one of them dudes.
He don’t give a **** what nobody say. He don’t care.
So I get that from him a lot…
He’s not worried about what somebody’s going to think. Because I might be the smart one like,
‘I don’t do that shit,’ and he be like, ‘so what? That’s the point.
You got to keep them guessing.’
So I got a lot of that from him, just being more confident.”
Keed dropped a few mixtapes and songs that built a buzz in Atlanta.
His first real success was the track Blicky Blicky, which got played in clubs all over the city.
Being from the same hood as Thug meant Keed had a lot to live up to,
and soon enough he finally got the chance to meet him.
One day, Keed’s homies hit him up and told him Thug was hanging out in a parking lot on Cleveland.
Keed showed up and everyone was trying to talk to Thug at once,
but he approached Keed and asked him what he was working on.
Keed played him a few tracks and Thug told him “Keep going, keep working,” then drove off.
Thug came back later and picked Lil Keed up,
and not long after he signed him to YSL records.
After signing with YSL, Keed dropped his Trapped on Cleveland 2 mixtape.
He also dropped a remix of his track Fetish with a verse from Thug,
which blew up and put Keed in the spotlight.
With one of the biggest rappers in the game pushing him, Keed stepped up and dropped the tape Keed Talk To ‘Em.
This project featured huge names like 21 Savage, Lil Yachty, and Lil Durk,
and it showed that Keed was leveling up his career and growing as an artist.
It seemed like everything was goin right for Lil Keed.
Every project he dropped gave him more momentum and one of his favorite artists became his mentor
and gave him a record deal.
Keed told Complex that Young Thug really took care of him,
and “He’s just a great person at heat.
He’s real pure-hearted. He teaches you stuff. He gives you game.
He tells you some **** folks won’t tell you.
I know a lot of folks, they say they’re big dogs and all that ****,
but they don’t really help their people. He helps his people.
That’s why I love him so much.”
But just as he was starting to see major success, Lil Keed suffered another tough loss.
While he was on tour with Trippie Redd, Keed’s homie Mexico died in a car crash.
He told Hypebeast “I wasn’t expecting him to die on me,
I was just talking to him that night, he died that morning.”
This was devastating news for Keed.
He told Hot New Hip Hop “Mexico is my brother.
He did a lot for me. I used to have to walk up and down the street to the studio
but he bought me three cars off love.
He has seen my vision too. We just did so much together.
He took me to this club called Blaze in Atlanta that I go to every day.
There’s a lot of stuff that he got me doing that I never did before.
We used to be together every day.
We’d go to the mall and he’d be like “I got these shoes for you. What size you want?”
He’d treat me like a real little brother so that’s why I dedicated the whole album to him after he passed away.”
Mexico’s death had a heavy impact on Keed,
but he took the pain of losing his homie and used it as inspiration for his debut album Long Live Mexico -
which honored his late friend and became the highest-charting project of his career.
The album had features from Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert, Roddy Ricch, and more -
and the track Snake has almost 100 million plays on Spotify as of today.
Keed kept the momentum pushin with a string of singles and guest features throughout the rest of 2019.
Then in 2020 he announced his second album Trapped On Cleveland 3
and started promoting the release like crazy.
He dropped A-Team (You Ain’t Safe) with Lil Yachty, Zaytoven, and his brother Lil Gotit.
He followed that up with two more singles,
but then almost lost his life while filming a music video with Gunna for the track Fox 5.
In June 2020, police officers responded to a report of gunfire
and found two gunshot victims with non-life threatening injuries.
Footage surfaced online showing the scene of the music video where it went down.
In the video you can see Gunna dancing in front of the camera while a dirt bike and ATV are driven in the back.
Someone tells the cameraman to get some shots of the dirtbike for the music video,
then shots start ringing out and everyone scatters.
After the shooting, rumors started flying around that Keed or Gunna got shot and might have even died,
but Gunna hopped on IG and said “Don’t believe the cap.”
Keed never directly spoke about what happened, but he posted videos of the set and captioned them with
“I brought the hood out yesterday,” and “Dooms Day.”
There’s all kinds of rumors about who was behind the shooting,
but Thug claimed it was actually YSL letting off shots.
He posted a video on Instagram saying
“Anytime you see like shoot outs and shooting or anything and we involved in it, know, we the ones that did it.”
It’s not clear if he meant that YSL affiliates were shooting at someone else,
or if the whole thing was just a publicity stunt.
No one was ever arrested for what went down,
but a lot of people thought it was related to the war between YFN and YSL -
but that’s just a rumor and hasn’t been proven.
Lil Keed ain’t let the shooting slow him down.
He dropped Trapped On Cleveland 3 in August 2020,
and was included on XXL’s Freshman Class.
He told XXL “I don’t wanna be no superstar.
I wanna be a megastar.
I wanna try to be past Prince and Michael Jackson and ‘em.
And I know I can do it as long as I stay committed to what I’m doing.”
Later that year he dropped a deluxe version of Trapped On Cleveland 3 with new features from Lil Gotit,
Quavo, Chris Brown, and more.
His dream of becoming one of the biggest artists in the world was starting to come true,
but Keed had something even more important on his mind:
his daughter Naychur.
Before the release of Trapped On Cleveland 3,
Keed told Complex “The most important thing I want my fans to know is that I’m doing all this **** for my ****** daughter…
I spend all my time with my daughter.”
He made it clear that beyond all the music and clout,
his family was the only thing that really mattered.
But tragically, Lil Keed passed away before he could see his daughter grow up.
On May 14th, Lil Gotit wrote on Instagram
“Can’t believe I seened u die today bro
I did all my cried I know what u want me to do and that’s go hard for Mama Daddy Our Brothers Naychur and Whiteboy
#ImaHoldthisShitDown.”
Fans were shocked by the news and hoped it was some kind of mistake,
but Keed’s reps confirmed to Complex that he had passed.
Nothing is known yet about what happened,
but rumors say it might have been liver or kidney failure.
He was scheduled to perform at a show in North Carolina the day after he died, which seems strange
if he were suffering from health problems - but right now the details are unknown.
His girlfriend Quana Bandz wrote a huge message to Keed on Instagram after the news broke,
writing “I love you sooooo much baby what I’m post to do with out you I can’t breathe right sleep right nothing
I don’t even wanna talk to nobody Keed I can’t take this.
What am I supposed to tell Naychur?
What am I gone tell our new baby ?
Keed I just told you the other day if you left me with these kids I was gone loose my mind my Mind is lost baby.”
Later in the same post she said
“THESE **** *** N*** KNOW THEY COULDNT FUCK WITH U
AND THEY HATE THEY. MY BD NEVER LACK
YALL PUSSY ASS N****S DONT NEED TO BE ACTIN LIKE THIS YALL BODY EITHER.
GOD WANTED MY BOY HOME he had better plans.”
Rumors was flying that Lil Keed might have been shot,
but it sounds like Quana is saying that’s not the case.
From what she wrote on Instagram telling dudes not to claim they killed Keed,
it looks like she’s saying he died of some kind of natural cause.
No matter how it happened, it’s still a tragedy.
Lil Keed was a rising star who left behind a three year old daughter and had another child on the way.
Keed was also one of the few YSL members who wasn’t caught up in the RICO indictment with Thug and Gunna.
Keed seems like a dude who made it out of the streets and really tried to leave all of the violence and negativity behind him.
Unfortunately he passed away before accomplishing all of his goals,
but his legacy will live on in the music he made and the family he left behind.
Rest in peace to Lil Keed.