Hip-hop star Young Dolph has been shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee, police confirmed. Young Dolph was shopping at Makeda’s Butter Cookies when a man ran into the store and shot him, according to store owner Maurice Hill.
Young Dolph’s debut album King of Memphis dropped in 2016 and the rapper swiftly gained an enormous following with his like “Major,” “Water on Water on Water” and “Sunshine,” his COVID-19 pandemic anthem. “God, please watch over the nurses and doctors on the front lines,” he rapped on the song. “I can’t wait ’til the clouds gone and we get sunshine.”
Young Dolph was also a beloved community figure in Memphis, where he donated money to his former high school and handed out turkeys around Thanksgiving, in addition to visiting local schools to talk to students, according to Fox 13 Memphis.
Young Dolph has survived shootings before, including one in Hollywood that briefly left him in critical condition. He used these harrowing experiences as the basis for music, which was rife with introspective storytelling about his life and the difficulties he and his parents faced when he was a child.
Last year, he spoke to GQ about how life on lockdown had helped him appreciate life with his children, saying it “made me realize how much good times I’ve been missing out on, just around the house. You ain’t gotta pay for that; you can’t pay for all that. It ain’t got nothing to do with money.”
