It’s a sad day for both the music industry and the Memphis, Tennessee community as rapper Young Dolph was shot and killed in the river city on Wednesday.
According to Fox13 Memphis, the shooting took place outside Makeda’s Cookies, which he frequented often and would hype up on social media. The store’s owner, Maurice Hill, revealed to the outlet that the 36-year-old music executive — real name Adolph Robert Thornton Jr. — was walking into the bakery to buy some treats for his mother when someone drove up and shot him at around one this afternoon. He was pronounced dead on the scene when police arrived.
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So sad.
Young Dolph was well known in the Memphis community and often donated turkeys around Thanksgiving, gave money to his former school Hamilton High School, and spoke to students to encourage them. He gained success as an independent artist when he dropped his 2016 debut album King of Memphis. Since then, Billboard reported that the father of two earned three top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 chart, with his seventh album Rich Slave hitting No. 4. After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, he even went back and put a mask on all his albums’ cover art.
Dolph was also previously shot in February 2017 when over 100 bullets were fired into his SUV while in Charlotte, North Carolina. Surprisingly, he walked out unharmed at the time and later released a song about the incident called 100 Shots. That same year, he was then shot three times in Los Angeles, but eventually recovered.
We’re keeping his friends and family in our thoughts during this time. Rest in peace, Young Dolph…
If you would like to support the Black-owned cookie shop he was helping, CLICK HERE. They’re famous for their butter cookies, and they have reportedly been hit with their share of struggles during the pandemic.
[Image via Young Dolph/Instagram]
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