Lil Snupe, a new signee to Meek Mill’s Dream Chasers record label, was shot and killed in the northern region of Louisiana early in the morning on June 20.
The young rapper was gunned down in the small town of Winnfield, La., where he was found with two bullet wounds.
Lil Snupe, whose real name is Addarren Ross, was reportedly shot around 4 a.m. at an apartment complex in Winnfield known as the Maplewood Apartments.
While it is uncertain why the 18-year-old rapper was there, police have identified a suspect but still have not figured out a motive for the killing.
The news broke when several of Lil Snupe’s close friends and business partners in the music industry took to Twitter to express their grief.
“The call I got this morning is un real RIP 2 my Lil n*** lilsnupe,” DJ Smallz, Lil Snupe’s manager, tweeted.
As the Twitterverse found it hard to accept the news and fans tried to convince themselves it was just a cruel hoax, one of Lil Snupe’s label mates sent out another tweet that confirmed the tragedy.
“I aint gone lie i can’t stop crying,” Louie V Gutta tweeted. “I Can’t Believe My Youngin Gone! RIP lil bro @LilSnupe.”
While the police haven’t released much information about the killing, it has been reported that he was shot over a dice game.
Even people who weren’t fans of Meek Mill’s prodigy were disgusted that someone had so little value for a young man’s life.
“Lil snupe is dead shot an killed over 100$ dice game XXL Mag HNH & multiple DC associates confirming Wasnt a fan but this world is ****ed up,” one Twitter user wrote.
For some, the tragic death comes as no surprise, as most members of the hip-hop community know it is the dangerous lifestyle that lures young people into the rap game in the first place.
Many of his songs were direct reflections of his hardships growing up and violence he was forced to witness every day. Now it seems his lyrics are an eerie foreshadowing of his own violent end.
“N*** they wanna blaze me / I hate it because I made it,” he rapped on the song “Nobody Does It Better.” “They say… over night, I was being patient/ I’m thuggin every night, n*** tryin to take my life.”
Even Meek Mill admitted that it was Lil Snupe’s painful background that encouraged him to sign the youngster after only listening to his mixtape for about 20 minutes.
“He was spittin’ so much pain, he’s from the South with a flow like an East Coast guy,” Meek Mill told MTV.
It was a mere two months ago that Lil Snupe sat down with MTV to tell him how he was discovered.
While many rappers turn to Twitter and YouTube and other online means for pushing their music, the young rapper proved that sometimes you have to do things the old- fashioned way.
“He was in a van, they was finna pull off,” the “Melo” rapper said during the interview. “And I went and knocked on the van, on the window. They let the window down, grabbed the mixtape and it was like 10 minutes later, 20 minutes later, they called me.”
While Lil Snupe was far from being considered a mainstream or commercial rapper, he still won the respect of many. It only took a matter of seconds before #RIPLilSnupe topped Twitter’s worldwide trending list, coming in above other trending phrases such as Nashville, Sopranos, and James Gandolfini who also died this week.
