Migos rapper Takeoff dead after Houston shooting, rep says
HOUSTON (AP) — The rapper Takeoff, best known for his work with the Grammy-nominated trio Migos, is dead after a shooting early Tuesday outside a bowling alley in Houston, a representative confirmed. He was 28.
Kirshnik Khari Ball, known as Takeoff, was part of Migos along with Quavo and Offset. A representative for members of Migos who was not authorized to speak publicly confirmed the death to The Associated Press.
Police responded shortly after 2:30 a.m. to reports of a shooting at 810 Billiards & Bowling, where dozens of people had gathered on a balcony outside of the third-floor bowling alley, police said. Officers discovered one man dead when they arrived. An AP reporter at the scene observed a body loaded into a medical examiner’s van around 10 a.m., more than seven hours after the shooting.
Security guards who were in the area heard the shooting but did not see who did it, a police spokesperson said. Two other people were injured and taken to hospitals in private vehicles.
No arrests have been announced. Media members at the scene later Tuesday morning were being kept across the street, which was otherwise blocked off to the public.
A handful of fans watched and pointed their phones at workers from the medical examiner’s office as they removed the body on a stretcher. The bowling alley where the shooting happened is in downtown Houston in a popular entertainment complex that includes high-end restaurants, a House of Blues, and a Four Seasons hotel.
Takeoff was the youngest member of Migos, the rap trio from suburban Atlanta that also featured his uncle Quavo and cousin Offset. They first broke through with the massive hit “Versace” in 2013. The song was remixed by Drake, heightening its popularity.
The group had four Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, though Takeoff was not on their multi-week No. 1 “Bad and Boujee,” featuring Lil Uzi Vert. They put out a trilogy of albums called “Culture,” “Culture II” and “Culture III,” with the first two albums hitting No. 1 on the Billboard 200 album chart. They also earned an ASCAP Vanguard Award in 2018, for their streaming success with multiplatinum songs like “Motorsport (featuring Cardi B and Nicki Minaj),” “Stir Fry,” and “Walk It Talk It.”
The trio also played a fictional version of themselves on an episode of the hit TV show “Atlanta,” but the group wasn’t currently together.
Offset, who is married to Cardi B, released a solo album in 2019, while Takeoff and Quavo released a joint album “Only Built for Infinity Links” last month.
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Landrum reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Jill Bleed in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this report.
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