Even though Canada doesn’t have the same reputation for violence as the US
it still has its fair share of dangerous hoods and deadly rap beef.
Houdini – one of the most promising rising rappers from the 6
– was tragically gunned down in Toronto’s Entertainment District in May 2020
due to a violent gang feud with another hood in the city.
Let’s take a closer look at the story of Houdini and the curse of Canada.
Houdini was a rapper from Toronto best known for tracks like Late Nights and Backseat.
At the time of his death, he was on his way to becoming one of the biggest stars in Canada
besides major names like Drake and the Weekend.
But tragically, just as he was starting to blow up on an international level,
he would be gunned down at just 21 years old while out shopping.
Houdini grew up in the Jane Driftwood neighborhood near the block of Jane and Fitch –
one of the most dangerous areas in Toronto.
He started rapping under the name DaHoudini in 2016
but then shortened it to just Houdini in 2018.
He was known to collaborate with fellow Toronto rappers Pressa, Robin Banks, and NorthSide Benji.
Together, he and Robbin Banks founded UpTop Movement Inc, an independent record label
showcasing up and coming artists in the city.
He dropped the single Late Nights
featuring fellow UpTop Movement artist Burna Bandz on May 8th, 2018
which quickly racked up millions of views within its first month of being released.
He also dropped a collaborative mixtape with other artists on Uptown Movement called Northside Jane
that featured popular songs like One of Mines and No Favours, which have also racked up millions of views.
He dropped his debut mixtape, Hou am I in February 2019,
which peaked at number 27 on the Canadian Independent Music Charts and was certified gold on April 7th, 2020.
Later that month he recorded an acoustic version of one of his most popular tracks,
Myself with ukulele player and producer Einer Bankz, which helped expose him to audiences in the US.
He dropped his second mixtape, Who Woulda Thought? On August 2nd, 2019,
which featured the singles Freak, Kenzo, Belmont Boyz, and Ain’t No Cap.
So, Houdini was well on his way to becoming a major star and was one of the top streaming artists in all of Canada.
In March 2020, he would drop a 5 song EP called underground,
which featured the singles Big Time and Fantastic.
But unfortunately, that EP would be the last project Houdini would release while he was still alive.
On May 26th, 2020, the rapper was shot and killed while out shopping in downtown Toronto.
21-year-old musician also known as Houdini
was shot and killed at King & Blue Jays way Tuesday afternoon
Houdini was walking down the street with two friends and a 15-year-old boy
when a Blue Volkswagen Tiguan pulled a U-Turn as they were crossing the street.
Surveillance footage later revealed that the car had been parked on the east side of Blue Jays Way,
waiting for Houdini to walk by.
As Houdini and his group walked closer,
the car moved towards them and a lone shooter hopped out of the car and started letting off shots.
His two associates start firing back using a handgun with a high-capacity magazine,
while the 15-year-old who was with them ducked into a nearby building.
Houdini was killed in the shooting and the 15-year-old also sustained injuries.
A 27-year-old woman who just happened to be standing in the doorway of her condo was also hit
but non-fatally injured.
Police believe that the vehicle was parked "for almost 40 minutes before the attack,
while the shooter waited for Houdini to walk by.
Even though Houdini didn’t have much of a criminal record
and seemed to be more focused on his music career than on the beef,
he still grew up in a rough part of Toronto and was caught up in the street life.
Houdini was from the Jane and Finch neighborhood – also known as Driftwood.
Many popular rappers including Houdini are from the Driftwood neighborhood
and so they have a lot of influence in the city.
But they also have ties to a notorious cripp set that has beef with a bunch of other hoods.
When the drill wave came to Toronto,
these beefs got even more serious as rappers from each hood would diss each other in their music,
which only led to more violence and killings.
One particularly wild incident involved another popular rapper from Driftwood who goes by the name Pressa.
According to police reports, two teens who tried to crash a party being hosted by a rival gang were kidnapped,
beaten up, forced to play Russian Roulette,
and sexually assaulted over the course of two days.
The two victims were members of the queens drag cripps
and allegedly tried to crash a party being held by their opps
the Young Buck Killers at an Airbnb.
There was a tense standoff and then a shootout, where one person sustained minor injuries.
The following day, two seventeen-year-old members of the cripp gang were kidnapped
by members of the Young Buck Killers and tortured for the next 48 hours.
They were tied to a chair and beaten and forced to play Russian Roulette with a loaded handgun.
What’s even crazier is that they were allegedly forced to perform sexual acts on each other against their will
– and it was 2 dudes who were kidnapped.
The teens were released to their parents after their parents agreed to pay a ransom.
The Young Buck Killers are from the Up-top section of Jane and Finch and originally Pressa was involved in the case.
But, he was cleared of the charges
after another rapper who goes by the name Ranski Gleechie was convicted of the kidnapping
and sentenced to six years in prison.
So, it’s not hard to see why other areas in Toronto have beef with Driftwood.
Not long after that,
another popular rapper from Driftwood, Robin Banks,
was shot nine times at a nightclub in Woodbridge.
Robin Banks was one of the founders of Up Top Movement
and was known for helping other rappers in the city promote themselves and develop their careers.
He and other rappers on the label started to build a major buzz in the city
and even caught the attention of mainstream artists like Meek Mill.
Meek played the rapper’s video on his Instagram
and was even discussing signing to his Dream Chaser’s label.
To celebrate, Banks decided to throw a party at a hookah lounge called Cameo.
But announcing the party gave his opps the drop and they showed up to confront him.
The fight resulted in a shooting where Banks was hit nine times.
Miraculously he survived but suffered injuries to his back,
neck, chest, shoulder, wrist, and spinal cord.
One bullet even grazed his skull.
Although he survived, he is now a paraplegic and is paralyzed from the neck down.
Two men were later arrested for the crime,
a 29-year-old named Nicholas Rhoden
and a 22-year-old named Rushawn Anderson.
Rhoden was given a 16-year sentence and Rhoden was given a life sentence.
Robbin Banks has not let the shooting stop his hustle
and he’s continued to release tracks and promote other local artists in Toronto.
But his opps have used his disabilities to create memes and take shots at him on social media.
So, the incident only escalated the violence between Driftwood and their enemies.
The following summer,
Driftwood would get into beef with another hood that would only make the violence worse,
after another popular rapper named Smoke Dawg was killed by a dude from Driftwood.
Shots rang out on this busy block of Queen Street West
just before 8 yesterday.
a triple shooting that left two people dead and police have just identified the victims,
28-year-old Ernest Modekwe and 21-year-old Jahvante Smart
who we told about you earlier in this show, he was a hip hop artist better known as Smoke Dawg.
Smoke Dawg was a rapper from the Regent Park area of Toronto,
who was also building a major name for himself in the city
and had even started to cross over into the US.
The rapper blew up in 2015 with the track Trap House,
which was later remixed by French Montana and featured a viral dance move called flippin.
Smoke Dawg had also attracted the attention of Drake, who decided to bring him on his headline tour.
So, the rapper was already doing big things
and it seemed like he was going to become the next major rapper from Toronto to blow up on a mainstream level.
But just as he was beginning to reach his potential,
he was gunned down by a dude from Driftwood who went by the name 21 Neat.
On the night of June 30th,
Smoke Dawg and 21 neat got into a heated argument at a club and they went outside.
There, 21 Neat ended up shooting Smoke Dawg and his manager Ernest Modekwe
in broad daylight outside the Cube Night Club in Toronto’s entertainment district.
This created an immediate beef between Regent Park and Driftwood,
who were never cool with each other,
but previously didn’t have any major issues between them.
Smoke Dawg’s death was pretty gruesome,
and he was by far the most famous rapper from the area at the time.
So it was a major loss for Regent Park and they decided that they had to get revenge.
After Smoke Dawg’s murder, 21 neat went on the run
and it took police a long time to find him.
They eventually located him in Vancouver in 2019
and had him extradited back to Toronto to face murder charges.
21 Neat and his brother 22 Neat
grew up on the same block as many of the popular Driftwood rappers including Robin Banks and Pressa.
But the beef got even more complicated after it became known that 22 Neat,
the brother of Smoke Dawg’s killer,
murdered his own friend who they also grew up with in Driftwood, a rapper named Why-S.
Why-S had just gotten out of jail and was starting to build a buzz as a rapper,
when he turned up dead in South Surrey, a city near Vancouver.
A rumor began circulating that 22 Neat was responsible for his own friend’s death
after they had a falling out over money.
It didn’t take long for the streets to get revenge
and 22 Neat would be murdered just a few days later in Calgary.
So not only was driftwood beefing with other rival gangs,
they were also dealing with internal conflicts and their own homies turning against each other.
The next rapper from Driftwood to lose his life to gun violence
went by the name fourty4double0 or just Tallup Twin.
Noseworthy was one of three men who died Friday night
the other two 20-year-old Joshua Gibson-Skier
and 21-year-old Jalen Colley.
Originally, the Tallup Twins was a group he started with his twin brother.
But after the brother got locked up,
he started going by just Tallup Twin, to benefit from the buzz they’d already built.
In February 2020, Tallup Twin went to a party that was being hosted at an AirBnB on Queens Warf Road.
His opps got the intel that he would be at the party and showed up looking for smoke.
They ended up letting off shots,
but Tallup Twin was also strapped and started firing back.
He managed to take out both of his attackers,
just before he passed away from his own injuries.
But there’s some confusion as to how he was actually killed.
The police say that he went into a different room to take his own life after the shooting –
maybe because he was afraid he’d be arrested for murder.
Other’s say that he tripped and accidentally shot himself.
So it’s hard to tell what exactly happened,
but it only intensified the war in the streets of Toronto between Driftwood and their opps.
Then in May of that year,
Houdini would be gunned down in broad daylight.
Because driftwood had so many talented artists who were also caught up in the street life,
it became a trend for their enemies to target the rappers.
Houdini was probably the most well-known rapper from that neighborhood at the time,
so he was a major target for their opps.
That’s why the killers were willing to sit and wait patiently for over 40 minutes for Houdini to walk in their direction.
But the thing about Driftwood is that they have so many different beefs,
it’s hard to tell exactly who is responsible.
To make matters even worse, a memorial service for the rapper held 3-days after his death was also shot up.
Just before 11:30 pm, a vehicle driving down Highway 401
stopped in front of the memorial service when a man jumped out and opened fire on the crowd.
Police say that at least 60 shell casings were found at the scene and two victims sustained injuries.
Police later arrested three suspects, Javontae Johnson,
Terrell Whitaker, and Glen Danchie for the shooting.
It’s a tragic story because Houdini was on his way to do big things.
Even though he was still independent at the time of his death,
he was looking into offers from major record labels and had gotten cosigns from major artists in the industry.
After he passed, artists like Meek Mill and Tory Lanez mourned his death on social media.
It seems like the rapper lost his life over hatred and jealousy.
His opps saw him doing big things and realized that they could get some quick street cred
by taking out the biggest artist from the most hated hood in the city.
Unfortunately, Houdini didn’t get the chance to reach his full potential as an artist
and gain the kind of recognition he deserved.
But it goes to show that as a rapper,
once you start to get the money and fame, you have to move out of your own city.
Because you never know when your old beef or opps can come back to haunt you and end up costing you your life.
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