So far this week I’ve covered three deaths due to coronavirus and one due to a drug overdose. Today, we have good old-fashioned murder.
Rapper Pop Smoke was shot and killed during a home invasion at his Hollywood Hills residence. He was 20 years old.
Pop Smoke was best known for the song ‘Welcome to the Party,’ released a year ago and later made into remixes featuring Nicki Minaj and Skepta. If it weren’t for Nicki Minaj, nothing in the previous sentence would have made sense to me.
Coronavirus seems to have hit the country music world particularly hard. Perhaps that’s because it’s a genre with a disproportionate amount of older men. Whatever the reason, I came across a number of country artists — both obscure and well-known — when researching these posts.
A new name to me was Joe Diffie, a Tulsa native who released 13 albums and scored 20 Top Ten hits in his career, with most of his success coming in the 90s. He churned out novelty tunes and sincere ballads and collaborated with some of country music’s biggest names.
Eddy Davis, banjo virtuoso and bandleader, died earlier this month due to complications from coronavirus. He was 79 years old.
Davis is best known as a member of The Eddy Davis New Orleans Jazz Band, with which Woody Allen has played clarinet for nearly 35 years. Allen famously missed several Oscar ceremonies because they were held on Monday nights, conflicting with his weekly gigs at Michael’s Pub and later Café Carlyle. Davis appeared in several of Allen’s films, either on the soundtrack or in a cameo role.
It wasn’t coronavirus that killed rapper Lexii Alijai on Jan. 1. It was drugs and alcohol, or “mixed fentanyl and ethanol toxicity” as the coroner’s report put it. Add another name to the list of artists struck down by fentanyl.
The Minnesota rapper was just 21 years old when she died, but she had already released four mixtapes and a full-length album. She found success rapping over beats by established artists such as Drake, Childish Gambino and Beyoncé, writing about her life and delivering a flow often compared to J Cole, whom she cited as an influence.
It’s been a rough year for the music community. Many artists have died, either from coronavirus or unrelated causes, over the last few months. This week and next I will feature songs by some of the dearly departed.
Oliver Stokes, Jr., known as Go DJ Black N Mild, was a New Orleans DJ and radio host who died on March 19 at the age of 44 after testing positive for COVID-19. He is survived by a wife and four children.
Meet Me In Montauk 