Rapper Drakeo The Ruler fatally stabbed at L.A. music festival

Rapper Drakeo The Ruler has reportedly died after being fatally stabbed at the Once Upon A Time In L.A. festival, with the Los Angeles Times saying someone with “direct knowledge of the incident” saw Drakeo get “attacked by a group of people” backstage before he was set to perform. The event, which also included appearances from Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, and 50 Cent, was canceled shortly after and everyone involved was sent away.

The L.A. Times story has an approximation of the timeline of events, with the LAPD being called around 8:40 last night after Drakeo had apparently been stabbed in the neck in “some kind of altercation,” though it sounds like it might have happened a while before that, and the event organizers and police started to shut things down within an hour. The Los Angeles Times also says there’s footage of people rushing onto the stage to try an “break up a fight.” Drakeo, meanwhile, was rushed to a hospital and later died from his injuries.

Drakeo, whose real name is Darrell Caldwell, just released his first album (The Truth Hurts) this year after a handful of mixtapes, including Thank You For Using GTL—which was recorded using the prison system’s Global Tel Link communications platform while Drakeo was being held in jail in connection to a 2016 murder. He was later acquitted.

Writer Jeff Weiss summed up the reactions to Drakeo death this weekend on social media, referring to Drakeo as “the greatest West Coast artist of a generation” and “a legend who invented a new rap language of slippery cadences, nervous rhythms, and psychedelic slang.”

Though completely different situations, this comes more than a month after after the still-under-investigation crowd surge at the Travis Scott-headlined Astroworld event in Texas that left multiple people dead.