All About Laughs
K*llings and Hip-hop go hand in hand. Since the dawning of gangsta rap, the idea of rappers being k*llers has been a popular one in the mainstream. It became more scary and real when real people began to pass away, starting with the passing of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G in the early ’90s. Since then, and most specifically in recent years, there has been a disturbing amount of young rappers being slain. From King Von to Pop Smoke, it seems like there is a rise in the number of rappers and people around them really willing to pull the trigger on someone. Even more disturbing is the amount of them that talk about the incident in songs. A Chicago woman might be able to find justice for her husband thanks to some rappers bragging about it in their record.
Notorious B.I.G often rapped about his paranoia and fear of passing. Tragically he was right. In the years since he and Tupac’s passings changed the way the loss of life is viewed in hip-hop, several acts still talk about taking the lives of their enemies brutally.
Young Florida rapper YNW Melly was a rising star with a Kanye West co-sign and all before being convicted of taking someone’s life. The 19 year old MC, real name Jamell Demons, and another rapper YNW Bortlen took the life of two of their friends and staged the crime scene to look like a drive-by. The most ironic part of it all was that Melly’s biggest hit at the time and too date was a song called “Murder on My Mind” where he raps in graphic detail about k*lling someone. The song was uploaded to soundcloud on March 4th 2017 and includes the lyrics “His body dropped down to the floor and he had teardrops in his eyes/He grabbed me by my hands and said he was afraid to die.”
Bobby Smurda became a household name in 2014 thanks to his hit “Hot N*gga” and the viral dance that made it popular on social media. Unfortunately it was that same song that got him in trouble with the law. In the records he rapped that “I been selling crack since like the fifth grade” because “Jaja taught me”; Shmurda also rapped about his crew’s past and future k*llings. While it was not enough alone to convict him it did not make him look any better when he was charged for similar things to what he’d been rapping about.
Last summer in Chicago’s South Shore area, a local man named Aaron Carter’s life was taken when bullets entered the back of his house in August. His widow, Asiah Carter, recently came out with speculation that rap songs released since his passing actually include confessions from the people who took his life.
She spoke with CBS Chicago and talked about a song that surfaced that she feels is related to Aaron’s passing, saying, “It was so disturbing because nobody in the entire state of Illinois had claimed Aaron’s passing until these guys did.” She continued, saying, “They literally sang about it, and they continue to mock him. It’s not fair to k*ll people and mock their families. It’s not trendy.”
