AKA killed by unknown gun men

By Bernadette Idalu 

The South African entertainment scene was Friday, February 10, 2023, thrown into mourning with the murder of thirty-five year old rapper,  Kiernan Jarryd Forbes, popularly referred to as "AKA" at Florida road, Durban.

Though there is presently no motive for being shot at six times leading to his death alongside his friend with his bodyguard surviving the shooting spree with injuries to his body, his attackers got away in the two cars they came in.

AKA, whose net worth puts him as one of the richest rappers was billed to perform on the night his life was cut short. Preparatory to the show, he had posted a video to his Instagram account showing himself singing in his car and telling them where he was scheduled to perform later at night. He later put out a picture of the food he was eating at the famous Wish Restaurant.

Haven sent out his real time location, things took a sinister turn as he stepped out of the restaurant shortly before 10 pm, leaving a splatter of blood, anger and anguish in the entertainment world.

Unknown to most people, as a teen, AKA used to be a co-host of a midday South African entertainment show aired then on the free to air cable network which featured and gave prominence to a crop of budding South African entertainers. The crop of young presenters popularized the use of the word, "Eish" in their segments whenever they felt an act failed to live up to expectation. 

He later quit the program and went into mainstream rap music, gaining notoriety in 2010 with his single “Victory Lap” from his debut studio album, Altar Ego.

He was passionate about his country and craft. His beef sometime ago with Burna Boy stirred controversies on who had mastery of their country, turf, and craft as far as killing the beats on show was concerned. Posting online he promised  Burna Boy a fight if he dared step his feet into South Africa, promising him a return back to Nigeria draped in a body bag. There was a ceasefire from both ends though, after the viral public spat which pitched netizens, fans and nationals from both countries against one another.

This is not the first time a South African musician is cut short in his prime and in public view. Reggae star, Lucky Dube, was shot dead in front of his children in a botched carjacking attack on October 18, 2007.

He was shot and killed as he dropped off his teenage son and daughter at their uncle’s house in Johannesburg’s Rosettenville suburb. Three men approached the car and shot the singer at close range leading to his vehicle crashing into a tree in his futile attempt at escape. He died instantly. The attackers never knew who he was. They only wanted his car.

Violent crimes in South Africa are not in rebate; they have become part of the checkered history of a nation reeling in the after effect of apartheid, struggling under the weight of racially motivated violence, hatred by blacks for those living above them in the upper strata of society, fight by Afrikaans to maintain dominance, xenophobia, and targeting of artistes. 

 

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia in two studies give a list of rappers and hip hop musicians on the international scale who got murdered since 1987 while highlighting reasons for such deaths.

The studies in the mid-2010s concluded that murder was the cause of 51.5% of hip hop musician deaths. The average age of death is between 25–30 years of age. Hip hop has a higher rate of homicide than any other genre of music, ranging from five to 32 times higher.

Some reasons cited for the high homicide rate include poor background of many artists, criminal gang activity, drug use, and inadequate pastoral care among artists and record labels.

In 2020, XXL wrote that of 77 rapper deaths they examined, more than 40 remain unsolved, including the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, the 1997 murder of the Notorious B.I.G., and the 1999 murder of Big L.