The rap game can get wild.
Countless rappers have lost their lives at an early age due to gun violence
from enemies who didn’t want to see them prosper.
From Biggie and Tupac
to King Von and Pop Smoke,
far too many talented rappers have ended up dead
because they got caught lackin’.
That’s why many up-and- -coming rappers today
stay strapped in case of any threats.
Here is a look at some of the most famous rappers who are ready for opps.
Soulja Boy
DeAndre Cortez Way,
aka Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em or just Soulja Boy,
is a rapper and walking meme born in Chicago, Illinois
but raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and Batesville, Mississippi.
Soulja Boy was one of the first rap artists to blow up
using the internet
and is a pioneer in online viral marketing.
His breakout song Crank That
featured one of the first viral dance moves
and was even nominated for a Grammy purely off the strength of internet buzz.
Soulja is known for his off-the-wall personality
and social media antics.
However, even though he's a hilarious figure in hip hop,
Soulja ain’t the one to play with.
Just as the artist was at the height of his fame,
he was the victim of an alleged home invasion
but managed to defend himself by shooting one of the robbers.
Accounts of what happened that night
vary depending on who you listen to.
The incident went down
after Soulja Boy’s album release party
on the night of December 30th, 2008.
Initial reports claimed that six masked men
broke into his home in Atlanta
with AK-47’s and black masks on.
In an interview with MTV after the incident,
Soulja later claimed that it was only 3 men
and they put an AK to his artist Arab’s head
and held him on the ground.
In an interview with DJ Vlad in 2017,
Soulja tells a similar story
and claims he and Arab were in the studio when they heard someone break-in.
Arab passed him a pistol
and Soulja stalked the robbers and let off a few shots.
He says he hit one of them and suggests that he may have killed the robber,
but claims he can’t speak on the subject in too much depth for legal reasons.
Another rapper named Droop
has come forward and claimed that he was the one
who was shot in the incident,
but he tells a slightly different story.
In a follow-up interview with DJ VLAD,
Droop claims that it was not a robbery,
but a business conversation gone wrong.
He says
he showed up to Soulja Boy’s crib to discuss a song they had put out together.
Droop and his crew were artists
and dancers who had a buzz in Atlanta at the time.
He claims that they were the ones who actually came up with the Crank That dance
and had helped Soulja build his buzz.
They were also signed to his record label SODMG
and were supposed to have a song on a compilation album the label released.
According to Droop,
they had sent him a track
and Soulja took one of the original artists off the song and added his own verse.
Droop wasn’t happy about the alteration
and went to Soulja’s house to confront him.
He claims he wasn’t wearing a mask,
nor was he armed and in fact
was invited into the home by Soulja Boy himself.
He says that the situation got tense
and he ended up slapping Soulja Boy for being disrespectful.
Soulja then pulled out a gun
and Droop slapped him again.
That’s when Soulja Boy started letting off the shots.
In the interview,
he even goes as far as showing Vlad the wounds
and claims that Soulja Boy’s account was totally false.
Okay, so you slapped him open hand,
and the he pulled out his gun?
That's exactly what he did.
And then just shot you?
It went just like this.
I said 'What you gonna do with that?'
So I slapped him again.
Two times, two times.
Okay,
so after you slapped him again
he let off?
That's when he let off, that's when I got hit right here.
in the front of my thigh.
That was the first shot.
Vlad did a follow-up interview with former SODMG artist Arab
who was there that night and was the one who handed Soulja the pistol.
Arab is somewhat vague about what he remembers
but claims that they were in fact in the studio and heard a commotion.
He passed Soulja a pistol
and minutes later he heard shots go off.
He won’t confirm or deny what went down
and claims that he was in the studio the whole time the shooting was going on.
Throughout the interview,
he is very calculated with his answers
and doesn’t deny Soulja’s claim,
but does seem to hint that there is more to the story
than what that the artist described.
It's pretty accurate to me, yeah, it's pretty accurate, yeah.
Um,
Yeah it was a pause before I heard a couple of gunshots.
Bow bow.
A little pause or whatever and then,
Tryna remember all the details I can right now.
I don't know man,
It's pretty much Soulja done said what he did.
You know someone else said their side of the story.
Yeah my name was in it.
You know I'll save my perspective.
But I'm not here pointing no fingers I'm not-
I did not see with my eyes none of that, only heard.
So I was on the phone calling up the peep.
What really went down that night is anyone’s guess.
No arrests were ever made
and police reports were never made public.
However, it wouldn’t be all that surprising
if the king of internet hype lied a little bit
because he knew it would give him some clout.
This next rapper was set up by his opps with a stripper.
When they tried to kill him and hit a lick,
it only resulted in someone being buried behind a middle school.
Yup… let’s get right into it
Gucci Mane
Radric Delantic Davis,
is a hip-hop legend born in Bessemer, Alabama
but raised primarily in Atlanta, Georgia.
Gucci is credited as one of the inventors of trap music
and considered to be among the most respected
and influential rappers currently working –
especially among the younger generation.
But before changing his life for the better
to focus on his health and building his record label,
Gucci Mane was considered the boogeyman of rap
and one of the wildest characters in the genre.
Gucci was always known as an authentic street artist,
but an incident early in his career solidified him as a true savage.
The incident stemmed from an ongoing beef he had with rapper Young Jeezy.
Jeezy and Gucci were two hot up-and-coming artists
who were building a buzz in Atlanta in the early 2000’s.
They were initially cool
and collaborated on a track called Icy in 2005.
Jeezy was supposed to put the track on his debut album but left it off.
Gucci then released it on his album Trap House instead.
This angered Jeezy because he claims he was never paid royalties
or even given a check for his feature.
Tensions between the two artists flared
and Jeezy ended up releasing a diss track called Stay Strapped,
where he put a $10,000 bounty on Gucci’s chain.
Gucci responded by calling Jeezy a fraud
and the beef escalated to an all out war.
Jeezy sent a group of men
to rob and kill Gucci.
They set him up using a stripper
who lured him to her home and then four men broke in and robbed him.
What happened next is unclear,
but investigators later found one of Young Jeezy’s affiliates –
a man named Pookie Loc –
buried behind Columbia Middle School in Decatur, Georgia.
Authorities put out a warrant for Gucci’s arrest
and he later turned himself in.
Gucci spent some time locked up,
but the charges were eventually dropped
after his lawyers were able to prove that Pookie Loc
had tried to murder him
and Gucci was simply acting in self-defense.
One of them had a weapon.
One of them had brass knuckles
and hit him with brass knuckles.
Didn't hit him real hard,
he had them wrapped up.
The other guy had a weapon, hit one of the other guys.
with, uh, the weapon.
It became a situation where he defended himself.
Somebody yelled, one of the five guys yelled, "Shoot him."
Something to that effect.
He grabbed a gun, it was near by,
and he opened fire,
to defend himself.
There was this inanimate girl, and five guys came in there,
to hurt him so basically,
After that,
tensions between Gucci and Jeezy were at an all-time high.
They went back and forth with diss songs for the next decade
and had one of the most high-profile beefs in rap history.
The beef lasted for the better part of 15 years,
yet all it took was a pandemic to force these two high profile artists
to confront each other.
On November 19th, 2020
after years of dissing each other on songs and in interviews,
Gucci and Jeezy appeared in a Verzuz Battle hosted by Timbaland and Swizz Beats.
The event was tense, but not violent –
which is a credit to how far the two artists have come.
Gucci performed several diss tracks,
while Jeezy kept it more chill – however,
Gucci never sent 4 armed men to kill Jeezy,
so the anger is understandable.
At one point during the event,
Gucci goes so far as to say that
“we’re smoking on Pookie Loc tonight” –
a reference to disrespecting the dead friends of one’s rivals
by smoking their ashes.
Smoking on Pookie Loc tonight.
I'll tell you what.
But despite the tension,
the two officially squashed their beef
and performed the track So Icy at the end –
showing that despite their past,
both have too much to lose to resort to petty violence.
But Gucci isn’t the only Atlanta artist ready for the smoke.
This next group of rappers
got into an intense shootout with enemy opps on the highway in Miami.
The story is crazy so stick around...
Migos
You know people are you know, allegedly shooting at you guys on a Miami highway,
and people are shooting back.
There's like real life situations happening here.
That most artist never have to deal with.
What we got going on we trend setters, we change the game
We young, we aint been in the game as long as these older folks
This the life we live.
But then I hear there's, you know, you go out to Chicago.
The news station beginning with a party van
coming under fire on I-95 and then creating hazmat situation
At a South Florida hospital.
That party bus carrying members of a music group from Atlanta.
And at least one person on board took a bullet,
Let's get right to Jackson memorial hospital where the shooting victims is being treated.
The Migos are a hip-hop group from Lawrenceville, Georgia
made up of uncles/cousins Kirshnik “Takeoff” Ball,
Quavious “Quavo” Marshall,
and Kiari “Offset” Cephus.
They are all around the same age
and were raised primarily by Quavo’s mother,
although technically Quavo is Offset’s cousin and Takeoff’s uncle.
They formed the Migos in 2008
and started to take off with their hit track Versace in 2013.
Today, the Migos are known as superstars with a tough,
yet laid back personality.
But early on in their career,
they were quite wild
and were even schooled in the rap game by legends like Gucci Mane and Coach K.
In March 2014,
the Migos were even involved in a crazy shootout on a highway in Miami.
They were traveling down highway I-95 in Miami
after their show in Pembroke Pines, Florida
had been canceled.
According to reports,
a dark vehicle pulled up alongside their van and opened fire.
The Migos team didn’t miss a step
and ended up firing back at the van.
A total of 12 shots were fired
and one person in the Migos entourage was shot in the leg
but made a full recovery.
None of the main members of the group were injured
and it was never determined whether anyone in the other van sustained injuries.
And this afternoon
we spoke with the hospitals spokes person who says.
None of the three people in this music group
Migos are here in the hospital this afternoon.
However,
They were here this morning with that van full of people,
because one of the people in the enterage
was shot in the leg.
During a shootout on the highway.
According to the statements,
uhh,
a dark vehicle pulled along side and basically opened fired on them.
Uh,
one of the passengers in that van, uhh,
was in possession of a handgun,
and exchanged fires with the uh- gun fire with the other vehicle.
No one was ever arrested
and it’s unclear exactly what the cause of the shooting was.
But many have speculated that it may have
had something to do with an ongoing beef the group had with Chief Keef.
When Migos were first blowing up in 2013,
they got into a heated social media exchange with the Chiraq legend
after Keef felt that the group had subliminally dissed him in a song.
Keef and the Migos exchanged diss tracks aimed at one another
and things got tense.
The Migos even performed in Chicago
and taunted Chief Keef and his GBE crew.
A few months after the Miami shooting,
the group was jumped by Chief Keef affiliates in DC
and Quavo allegedly got his chain snatched.
Quavo later denied that he lost his chain,
but it was clear that things were tense.
So, it wouldn’t be too surprising if Keef and his crew either sent the shooters
or if some Chief Keef fans took it upon themselves to send a message.
Shortly after the brawl in DC,
the Migos and Keef’s crew officially squashed their beef.
Even though the Migos are from the Atlanta area
and Keef is from Chicago,
they have mutual business partners and mentors in the music industry.
Gucci Mane and his network were major parts in helping both crews
early in their career
and allegedly some of these rap veterans got together
and decided that the beef had to end or else someone was going to get killed.
The two groups ended up posting a photo together to social media
to announce that the beef was officially squashed
and there was no more bad blood.
So the crew was able to end the beef
without any violence
or either of the crews damaging their street cred.