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At least one assailant stabbed Drakeo in the neck.
Premature memorials and instant theories about who was responsible spread; there was gloating on Instagram.
Drakeo the Ruler wasdead at 28.
But any comparison can only be carried so far: The man, like his music, was singular.
Drakeo first participated in L.A.s hip-hop scene not as an MC but as a dancer.
Drakeo and his high-school friends established their own clique, dancing at house parties and outside their school.
As the 2000s became the 2010s, jerkin gave way to something adjacent but a little meaner.
The sound is best exemplified byMy Krazy Life,YGs Def Jam debut from 2014.
Many ex-jerk kids followed this move; Drakeo did not.
Instead, he was toying with a style he would eventually dub nervous music.
Over the next several years, Drakeo further refined this style, his voice growing lower.
So Coldand the secondMoselyfind Drakeos approach fully realized.
(Second in command was his youngerbrother, Devante, who had rechristened himself Ralfy the Plug.)
But that momentum would soon be interrupted.
In January 2017, the sheriffs department raided Drakeos apartment on Aviation Boulevard, near LAX.
They arrested Drakeo along with several family members and friends, including Ralfy.
Detectives also seized guns, which they were hoping to tie to an unsolved 2016 murder in Carson.
Drakeo spent almost all of 2017 behind bars on gun and gang charges.
(At this time, he had not been charged in connection to the Carson shooting.)
As a vocalist, he was deepening the grooves thatMosely 2andSo Coldfirst wore in.
While his music often hinges on menace,phraseology like that lets slip the playfulness thatunderlinesso many Drakeo songs.
As Drakeo suspected, though, his freedom was fleeting.
All charges stemmed from that 2016 shooting in Carson, which left one man dead and two injured.
Surreptitious jailhouse recordings suggested that the shooter was 17-year-old Jaidan Boyd, a Rollin 40s Crip.
Boyd implicates just himself and Mikell Buchanan, another Crip known as Kellz.
Because this is California, that classification would open up the possibility of sentencing enhancements on any possible convictions.
But each is enhanced by immersion.
The five records Drakeo released over the past 12 months were generally well-received if understudied.
Not everything on the outside went so smoothly.
He had a court date scheduled for today.
Drakeos death like Ketchys comes duringa period of unfathomable loss in hip-hop.
Each of these lists is incomplete.
It is often said that this torrent of deaths has a numbing effect.
He leaves behind a son, Caiden, who is about to turn 4.
His imprint will be traceable forever.
