Kirshnik Khari Ball, better known as Takeoff of the trap music trio Migos, was shot dead in Houston Tuesday. He was 28 years old. His loss is just the latest in a string of rappers who have died in gun violence. GBH’s arts and culture reporter James Bennett II joined Morning Edition hosts Paris Alston and Jeremy Siegel to talk about Takeoff’s legacy. This transcript has been lightly edited.
Jeremy Siegel: To be clear, while Boston might have a pretty robust underground rap scene, we're nowhere near churning out talent the way places like Atlanta are, where Migos were from. But how would you describe Migos' influence on rap music and culture?
James Bennett II: A lot has been talked about how Migos, and Takeoff in particular, were able to craft a very dense and melodic, but also a very percussive flow. That triplet rhythm where you're squeezing three individual notes into the span of two beats, that's kind of like a signature of that group. There's an old interview with Snoop Dogg, actually, on GG News Network, that was 50 Cent's old show — this is back in 2014 — and he is lamenting that, you know, in the mid-2010s that all rappers were starting to sound the same. And he starts mimicking this sound. And so you have Snoop Dogg just going on to being kind of crotchety.
And so that's the answer for this matter of outsized influence. Listening to that interview back, it's like, oh yeah, it's annoyed an old guard. But I do want to make it clear that style and that flow technique was not invented by this trio. It was not invented by Offset. But they certainly, I think, had something to do with bringing it to a much wider audience outside of Memphis and outside of Atlanta, outside of the South.
Paris Alston: And to that point, James, their music has really been a soundtrack for many folks' lives in different periods of their lives. Jeremy and I were just talking about how we remember like senior year of college, listening to Migos at any given time: "Bad and Boujee," "Fight Night," whatever you may have. And James, I know you and I were talking about how Takeoff was our favorite Migo, right? Even though he probably wasn't the most prominent. A lot of the time he got the last verse, but I feel like he was such a great hype man. So what would you say that his impact was individually? And how would you describe his persona, you know, outside of the music?
Bennett: So I'll do that in two parts. I think the first is that when Takeoff is rapping, you know it's him because of the sheer density of the lyrics. It took me a bit of a longer time to hop on to the Migos train. I do remember "Versace" and "Bad and Boujee" and "Fight Night" and "Hannah Montana," of course. Quavo and Takeoff released a new album like two weeks ago that I actually really liked. And that dynamic is so interesting and fun to listen to. And when Takeoff is bringing that energy to that collaboration, it's just kind of like your ears perk up a little bit to try to catch everything that he's trying to say. All the wordplay that he's going into.
Quick aside, there's a track on that album called "Bars into Captions," it's like the fourth track off of an album, and they actually sample heavily another talented group, Outkast, "So Fresh, So Clean." And Takeoff is mimicking Andre 3000's flow. Outside of that musical context, I didn't know him personally. But by all accounts, it's like he was just a really chill dude. In fact, here's what I'll say: He was on Drink Champs, what one might call controversial podcast, to say the least. And he was with Quavo. And a comment came up about Takeoff feeling a bit underrated or in the shadows, or kind of like, chilling back. And he was like, I'm good at what I do. I want my roses now. Like, don't wait until I'm gone. I may be kind of do my own thing. I may be a bit more low key, but that doesn't mean any of us invested in the music.
Siegel: Hearing that, you know, he's talking about how he wants to be embraced while he's around, smell his flowers, not have them on a grave, essentially. I'm thinking about how we haven't been talking about Takeoff before on NPR. Now we are in the aftermath of his death. The same thing happened with Nipsey Hussle and his death not too long ago. Were you thinking about the way legacy and media coverage are attached to the enduring legacy of figures in rap like Takeoff?
Bennett: I'll try to keep it brief for time, but I think it's weird that we have these conversations about violence and community violence with respect to rap after some figures are killed. Takeoff has been killed, and PnB Rock, and Young Dolph. It's not an issue, I think, of rap itself. It's like we've divorced this conversation from the larger conversation about gun violence and reform of gun laws and gun access. And so to me, it's a sense of like annoyance. It's a sense of — this is part of like a bigger issue. This isn't unique to rap in a way.
Alston: There's a tension for lovers of rap music. I mean, I often feel this way, being a woman, specifically a Black woman, who loves rap music. And rap music is not always kind to women, right? But you still feel this need to protect this this part of your culture that you really love and still embrace, even with that.
Bennett: And I get that, right. But — I don't know. I was listening to The Raconteurs and their song "Carolina Drama," and it's just about a little kid going into the barn and seeing, his awful stepdad and then breaking a bottle of milk over his head, like killing him in cold blood. I think about a lot of old blues songs about fights at the saloons and shootings. Judas Priest, Bob Dylan — it's not a rap thing. It's a storytelling mechanism, and conflicts at the heart of a lot of stories.
