Most people’s first taste of the Migos was probably the disorienting drug-dealer slapstick of “Versace†or “Hannah Montana,†the madcap hits from the Atlanta rap trio’s breakthrough 2013 mixtape, YRN (Young Rich Niggas). But if you followed hip-hop closely in those years, your introduction might’ve been the same project’s more reflective and determined “R.I.P.,†where the group mourned the murder of Freebandz associate OG Double D and laid out what was at stake if rap didn’t pan out as a career. The trio worried out loud about safety and mortality, with Quavo opening up about the death of his father and Takeoff cycling through grief and braggadocio before landing on paranoia: “I know that they’re after me, but I won’t let them capture me / And everyday and every night, I pray they won’t shackle me.†The Migos could do cartoonish absurdism and stressed-out realism, and were instrumental in shifting attitudes about trap in the years where the audience wasn’t nearly as open-minded as it is now. It’s a testament to how much of a crucible 2022 is that we even potentially have to talk about them in the past tense as we mourn the passing of Takeoff, the 28-year-old group member who was shot and killed this week in Houston.
It was a family band: Quavo is Offset’s cousin and Takeoff’s uncle. They had the chemistry people who grew up together do, and the schism implied in Offset’s recent lawsuit against the group’s record label Quality Control Music over ownership of his solo catalogue (underlined by the Quavo and Takeoff dropping the Unc & Phew album Only Built for Infinity Links without him) didn’t seem like it could go on indefinitely. These were guys who’d see each other on holidays. “His momma took care of everything, and us,†Quavo recalled in a 2013 Fader interview. “We always stayed in the same house.†Rap was Takeoff’s idea. Art imitated life; the Migo who put the group together was the glue, the one who held a song together and the fulcrum Quavo’s hook-man/front-man tendencies and Offset’s laser focus on impressing you with his grasp on tricky syllables rested on. Takeoff could do all that or play the field while you showed out. A lot of his greatest verses are situated near the tail end of a long song. (That’s why it really never made sense that he was left off of “Bad and Boujee.â€) He went second to last on Drake’s “Trophies†remix and melted it: “When I touch down, I’ll hop in a Zonda / Smoking on good marijuana in Mexico, call that Kitana / Tryna fuck me a Rihanna.†It’s Takeoff’s spot on the Culture album bruiser “Deadz†that drives the lumbering thing home, his perfect timing and percussive enunciation: “Niggas debating, they hating, they plotting, they waiting / They want my ice, tell ’em come take it / Had people tell me that I couldn’t make it / Now I’m doing shows outta state in the nations.†Put him in pole position and he crushed. On “All Good,†from the 2014 Rich Nigga Timeline mixtape, Takeoff grumbled about incurring the anxieties of a worrying significant other who is “Talkin’ ’bout I treat her like Macaulay Culkin ’cause she stay at home alone.†Elsewhere, he resolves to take her to Miami and keep her by his side like a tommy gun, leaning into the Scarface thing but also counterbalancing it with humor.
It was smart stuff, undeniable evidence of a refined craft, but it mystified a lot of people who came to the music looking for a pronounced moral compass. A track like “Contraband†— “Narcotic, narcotic, narcotic†— upsets a certain type, people who listen to rap lyrics hearing the ways other pairs of ears might receive them, who worry about the ability to distinguish between real and deliberately hyperreal violence. For that contingent, Takeoff joking about beating pots like Bernard Hopkins, Winky Wright, Adrien Broner, or Mike Tyson sold harmful suggestions to impressionable fans. If you think music should be a delivery service for uplifting messaging, you have trouble with the bando talk because it’s not explicitly telling you that dealing drugs can be a terrifying line of work. Migos’ songs made you aware of the spoils and toils the lifestyle can lead to but left you to your own devices the way an action movie depicts its hero cleaving a rough, jagged morality out of a dearth of options. Culture’s “Brown Paper Bag†goes there: “Never look back at my past, sip slow and live fast / I ended up in first place but I swore a nigga started last / I was born empty-handed but a nigga knew I had to get a bag / I was raised by my mama, so a nigga never really had a dad.â€
These are waymakers, not role models — the arrests, altercations, and civil suits made the latter a difficult sell. But Black artists deserve license to tell grim stories without spoon-feeding moral takeaways to young listeners, to tackle adult themes in art intended specifically for mature audiences. We can implore rappers to be more mindful of the messages they’re promoting. We can’t ask them to parent everybody in earshot, and we must have more to offer fans mourning influential community figures than icy, moralistic distance. Rappers are in danger if gun violence took Takeoff at a dice game, and Young Dolph was fatally shot after a trip to the cookie store, and Trouble couldn’t relax at home unperturbed. And if we hold these tragedies, alongside the deaths of PnB Rock and Pop Smoke, as proof of a soullessness at the core of the hip-hop community, we serve it up to actors who have no interest in the culture beyond the ways they can use it to pathologize and criminalize Black youth and their interests. Turning violence in hip-hop into a story about abdicated personal responsibilities, singling rap out as a source of toxic worldviews and criminal activities rather than a megaphone for amplifying pre-existing stances and schisms, tells people who have a vested interest in public safety but no care for the future of hip-hop as a lifestyle that you stop crime by keeping rappers from doing business, and shutting Black youth out of incredible career opportunities is no solution to the problem of latchkey kids who lack positive outlets and influences.
You’re within your rights to pine for more uplifting music in this precarious moment, to appeal to artists to cool their tempers on their records and social-media posts. But we can’t flatten the art, stepping over the aspirational threads in a rapper’s body of work to highlight only the dirt they do or discuss. (Yes, Takeoff is brandishing the Draco on Culture’s “T-Shirt.†He also touches on religion and civic duties: “I’ma feed my family, nigga, ain’t no way around it / Ain’t gon’ never let up, nigga, God said show my talent.â€) We need to treat this problem like it’s bigger than hip-hop. In a climate of widening wealth disparities and sectarian violence and mass murders, where not even routine shooting sprees can rouse our national leadership to legislating gun reform, it’s foolish to ask 20-something rappers for grace our elected officials can’t be bothered to display. That’s a recipe for inertia.
Treating the loss of Takeoff like a casualty of violent rap’s chickens coming home to roost distorts the picture of who he was, which is best seen in the giddy buddy raps and the warm family remembrances of recent Takeoff and Offset tracks like “Two Infinity Linksâ€: “Before the cake, before the stage, we split up honey buns / 5:30, momma house, we was all sons / 85 NAWF where we all from.†They sound certain they’d get to spend the rest of their lives sharing these experiences. It’s something beyond shocking having tragedy strike even Migos, this group that brought impressive comedic timing and infectious triplet flows to pop charts, and forced fair-weather rap listeners and staunch old-heads alike to appreciate the craft. Takeoff will be missed. One of the great rap trios will never be the same again. But inside the abundance of records he left behind, Takeoff is still shining, all green diamonds on his neck, looking like the Riddler. We just have to consult him there now.