Mourning in the world of hip-hop. Rapper Takeoff, one of three members of the popular Atlanta group Migos, was killed last Halloween night in a shooting at a private party in a Houston, Texas, bowling alley. The death was confirmed by a representative of the rapper.
According to the TMZ portal, the events occurred around 2:30 in the morning, during the course of a game of dice in the aforementioned entertainment venue, in which another member of the band, Quavo, also participated. According to these same information, Takeoff -28 years old and whose real name is Kirshnik Ball- died on the spot when he was shot in the head or near the head.
According to the same sources, two other people were injured by the shots and taken to hospital, while Quavo was unharmed. Houston police confirmed one person dead but only identified him as a black man in his 20s. He also confirmed that there were two injuries.
It so happens that both rappers, Quavo and Offset, had released their first song together Only Built for Infinity Links without the presence of the other member of the Migos.
Born in Lawrenceville, a town in the urban area of Atlanta (Georgia), in 1994, Takeoff founded, together with Quavo and Offset -who are his uncle and his cousin, respectively-, the trio Migos. It is one of the most influential formations of hip-hop of the last decade. Together they started the project back in 2008 and, in these 14 years, they managed to position themselves as one of the most popular phenomena of American rap, also retaining good reviews from critics.
Part of their success is due to the burgeoning popularity of a hip-hop subgenre such as trap - something to which they have undoubtedly contributed. The city of Atlanta and its surroundings are the epicenter of this style born in the nineties and characterized by its insolent and dry lyrics and a cruder sound, in which the use of auto-tune or metrics also stands out. simpler than conventional rap.
In this way, Migos started from this genre and was one of the bands that best knew how to place it in the most commercial sphere, starting with the success of the single Versace in 2013, which then reached prominent positions on the US charts. As usually happens in these cases, the fact that the then popular rapper Drake used the song for one of his remixes contributed to the group's fame.
But it was in 2016 that the Georgian band achieved worldwide success. Bad and Boujee, a collaboration with Lil Uzi Vert, reached #1 in the US. Following that, the albums Culture, Culture II and Culture III (2017, 2018 and 2021) cemented his prestige and popularity.
