Zuko Komisa
AKA, Tupac Shakur, Notorious B.I.G. – unpacking stories behind assassinations of famous hip hop artists.
The Notorious B.I.G., South African rapper AKA, 2PAC, and other well-known musicians are among the music industry assassinations that have come as a shock to music lovers across the world.
It’s overwhelming how long the list of musicians who were shot and killed, the list included the likes of Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Peter Tosh, and John Lennon.
In a recent conversation on Point of View with Phemelo Motene, Musicologist Shelldon Roch Leal unpacks the media industry threat of assassinations.
Listen to the full conversation here:
Shelldon Roch spoke about how there’s this pattern that, “If you are a musician, you are either going to die over a plane crash, a drug overdose, some mental health problem, or you are going to get assassinated.”
On AKA’s assassination
“AKA was born in Cape Town, moved to Joburg, and went to a very posh private school, which is also interesting that another friend of mine Zwai Bala also went to a posh private school. But, that’s not the origin of hip hop, it started in the Bronx in 1973, and New York was not a nice place at the time, there was high crime and poverty… Gangsterism, violence, and crime converged on each other, and unfortunately, the occupational hazard of being a rap star is that an assassination could occur, because many of the rappers came from a background of gangsterism.
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Tupac Shakur’s assassination
One of the longest-running unsolved murders in the music industry persisted for almost thirty years: Tupac Shakur’s murder. Numerous articles, books, and documentaries were inspired by his 1996 murder close to the Las Vegas strip in an attempt to identify the precise killer of the hip-hop icon.
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