Photo Credit: Yo Gotti/Instagram
Rapper Yo Gotti performed in Nashville Tuesday at Mercy Lounge doing a free performance for his Fan Appreciation Tour, only to get back to his tour bus to discover it had been shot up while no one was on it. The event happened near the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel, police say. This makes him the 6th rapper to be involved in a shootout in the last week. The motive behind why the 37 year old rapper was targeted or any arrests but it is currently being investigated. Other artists performing with him include 42 Dugg, recently signed to his collaborative and rising rapper Co Cash with Interscope meaning any one of them could have been a target. This isn’t his first gun incident, either. Back in 2017, Gotti’s associate Corey McClendon was charged with attempted murder after an argument with Gotti’s rival Young Dolph that resulted in Dolph being shot. That lead to him getting 10-14 years.
I have to reiterate that this makes for the 6th recent rapper shootout. This was something I didn’t even think was possible to have happened, especially after I just finished ranting about how I don’t recall seeing so many occurring at one time after the 5th was announced earlier today. At the very least, the one thing I will give credit here is that no women or children were hit unlike the shootout that happened in broad daylight outside of the Trump Hotel in Sunny Isle, Florida where about 6 cars were hit including a child in trying to get NBA Youngboy. For one, there’s a man code about protecting women and children. Community activists who were once in the streets themselves from previous generations will tell you that they did whatever it was that they did but left women and children out of it and if by chance you hit one of them, you’d be shot or killed yourself, because they didn’t do that. That was an express level of disrespect that didn’t set well with me after it happened. At least here, it happened late at night.
On the other hand, we’re glad Gotti and his team are alright. The elephant in the room here is that this year has proven that these record labels are signing a number of gang members and they’ve all been going after each other left and right. It comes with the territory of the genre as many rappers come from tough backgrounds, but the labels have to take some responsibility to not be aiding and abetting certain behaviors because if you’re the one writing the checks knowing full well where it’s going, at some point you’re going to get a knock on the door to ask what did you know and when did you know it? They know what’s going on and how to stop it. Whether that involves moving them out of their hometown while signed to your label, etc., than so be it. That beats making multiple clones of the same type of artist after the ones on your roster end up incarcerated or dead, one behind the other. Rap is currently the most popular genre in music and these repeat incidents make not only the industry look bad, the genre and black people as a whole. We have to do better.
