It seems someone wanted Pop Smoke dead, and the real question now is who?
After the untimely death of rapper Pop Smoke, most reports claimed that that the shooting was the result of a robbery gone wrong. Authorities noted that the artist had posed pictures of gifts he had in his home before the break-in, including a package with his home address showing. He had also posted a photo of himself and a friend in a car with a great deal of money hours before the shooting. The showing of his address proved to be a major mistake for the young rapper, or perhaps his killers had already known his whereabouts.
According to TMZ, video surveillance of the break-in shows four men approaching Pop Smoke’s house and sneaking around to the back, temporarily out of sight of the camera. A few minutes later, three of the men return to the front of the house, before the last man exits through the front door. None of the suspects appear to have been carrying anything, creating suspicion about the robbery motive.
Pop Smoke was only 20-years-old at the time of his death and was just starting to make a name for himself in the music industry. After initially remixing songs within the New York City drill music genre, Pop Smoke eventually started creating his own tracks in 2018. Smoke collaborated with Travis Scott on the song “Gatti” in 2019 and created a breakout hit with “Welcome to the Party,” which was later remixed to feature Nicki Minaj and Skepta. Pop released his second mixtape, Meet the Woo 2, earlier this month, featuring collaborations with Quavo, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, Fivio Foreign, and Lil Tjay.
Pop Smoke, whose real name was Bashar Barakah Jackson, was born in Brooklyn to a Jamaican mother and Panamanian father. He once said in an interview that he created his stage name by combining a nickname his grandmother had for him with a nickname his friends created, showing that he valued his relationships with the people in his life. The suspects in the case have not been found, and law enforcement is continuing to investigate the shooting.
