Did Young Dolph have to Die?

Whether it’s a murderous drug dealer like Alpo or a transformative artist and businessman like Nipsey Hussle, or an independent artist who made money without a major label, all three met death via bullets on their home turf.

Rapper Young Dolph is the latest rapper to be shot and killed in his hometown. At a cookie restaurant that was once a haunt of Dolph’s, he fell after a brief exchange of bullets against his opposition.

Did Dolph have to die? Does JAY-Z frequent Marcy Projects? Does he do business around the place where he remarked he was from the “murder capital where we murder for capital”? Why do rappers feel the need to stay around their old stomping grounds? Dolph had succeeded so much that he could afford vehicles with distinctive camouflage. It’s too bad none of that saved him from his killer’s rounds.

Dolph should have known better than to continue to pursue businesses in a place where he had many “haters.” While he planned to hand out turkeys, he forgot that everything in his neighborhood is not all that sweet. Because the streets have no love, he could have recognized that his nemesis was lurking and waiting to catch Dolph lacking.

In a WorldStarHipHip documentary, the thirty six-year-old hip hop artist explained his experience with his parents’ addiction to crack cocaine and his beloved grandmother who died a few years before the short film. Dolph explained his life as something that was a struggle but that he had risen up from his dire situation.

Rapper Gucci Mane related how Dolph was real and about living a life of integrity. Dolph took the time to display his section of Memphis, Tennessee.

But didn’t he have enough sense to stay in a place like Bozeman, Montana? Couldn’t he have taken his beef with Yo Gotti to a place with peace and reconciliation?

Maybe not. Maybe he wanted to taste hot lead. Maybe Dolph yearned to lie in a casket after catching shots. He certainly gave no indication he wanted to live a life of complete tranquility. If he apparently sent shots back, either he had poor aim or he didn’t send shots to his targets in time.

Whatever the case, this is just the cycle. People within depressed areas and especially with higher concentrations of melanin, the tears will fall and the unknown and unknowable will be sought. There will be prayers sent up to nothingness and clergymen will glaze over the “street” aspects of Dolph and be concerned with his love of Jesus.

This will continue until reason and individualism are imbued into not only these neighborhoods and the musicians in the hip hop genre, but everywhere.

Dolph wanted to make a change in his life and in the process, made millions of dollars. His aspiration to be a model of how you can elevate above negativity in his hometown was not enough for him to avoid being gunned down soul-brother style.

Though Dolph might have made it to places where most people dream, he found himself in a position where he could not win. Dolph couldn’t understand that streets gotta eat and that he must’ve been showing his plate. That’s when the wolves ran down on him.

The moment when those projectiles met his flesh, that had to have let him know quickly that his choice to stay in the neighborhood was his ticket to the medical examiner’s slab. He might have been able to see into the future in regard to business matters, but in terms of personal security, he failed to see how he could get touched.

Since any of us can be strong in our mind but pervious in body, we should consider Dolph’s actions as cautionary to say the least.