Advertisement
Supported by
A local favorite who came up alongside Lil Baby and Migos, Marlo was found dead after a highway shooting on Saturday night.
Rudolph Johnson, the up-and-coming Atlanta rapper known as Marlo, who loomed large among his city’s rap heavyweights even as he remained an underground figure and ambivalent local celebrity, was shot and killed there on Saturday night, the police said. He was 30.
The Atlanta Police Department said that officers had initially responded to a single-vehicle accident on I-285, west of downtown, around 11:30 p.m. and discovered the driver deceased, with gunshot wounds.
“At this time, investigators believe the victim was the intended target of the gunfire and they are working to determine the circumstances surrounding the shooting,” the police said in a statement.
The Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed on Sunday that Mr. Johnson had been killed. The shooting came amid a rash of gun violence in Atlanta in recent weeks, following a turbulent period of protests against the police killings of Rayshard Brooks there and George Floyd in Minneapolis. “It has to stop,” Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said last week.
Marlo, or Lil Marlo, who was also known locally as Young Rudy or Rude, turned to music relatively late in life, hoping to escape what he referred to as “the streets” — a world of guns and drug-dealing that had surrounded him as he was raised in some of Atlanta’s most neglected neighborhoods.
In 2017, he signed to Quality Control Music, the homegrown label that had minted stars like Migos and Lil Yachty, alongside his friend and collaborator Lil Baby, who went on to become one of hip-hop’s biggest new stars.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Advertisement
Marlo, a Rising Atlanta Rapper With Big Connections, Is Shot and Killed at 30 (Published 2020) – The New York Times
Posted by