The world of hip-hop suffered another tragic and senseless loss this past weekend when Brazilian rapper, MC Daleste was gunned down on stage during a live performance.
According to Billboard, Daleste, born Daniel Pellegrine, was performing a free show in a public housing building in the neighborhood of San Martin in the Brazilian city of Campinas on Saturday night, July 6. While performing mid-song, Daleste was shot – witnesses say at least twice – in the abdomen, causing him to fall back in a sitting position before others on stage came to his aid.
After being brought to a nearby hospital, Daleste was pronounced dead the next day.
The violent murder was caught on video and placed on YouTube, where it has already received four million views. Police told Brazilian Media that the videos are the focus of the investigation.
Daleste was reportedly a member of the Sao Paulo-centered “Ostentatious Funk” scene, also known as Sao Paolo Funk, an offshoot of Rio’s Funk Carioca with a noticeably heavy focus on bling and violent raps over looped beats.
“This is one more sad event in a long history of urban violence in Brazil,” said Sao Paulo native Béco Dranoff, a New York-based deejay and producer. “Music should be the peaceful medium that connects us all for good times and for change.”
Police reportedly have no suspects in the case, but XXL recently translated an interview with Daleste’s father, Roland Pellegrine, with G1 News, in which the mourning dad claimed that his son was killed over envy and greed.
“It was envy. Jealousy kills,” Pellegrine told G1 News. “[He] was a very good boy, a charismatic boy, docile. He had no enemies … My son was the king of funk.”
Our condolences go out to Pellegrine’s family and friends, and as Deco said, we hope that this those in the music community, fans and artists alike, will work to stop the violence in hip-hop.
Check out some other senseless hip-hop murders below. – nicholas robinson
