The hip-hop community continues to mourn the passing of King Von, who succumbed to gunshot wounds on November 6th, 2020 following an altercation with Quando Rondo outside of an Atlanta club. Members of the game and fans of his music alike grieved the loss of the young talent, but for Calboy, the loss of another family member was a feeling he knew all too well.
In an interview last year, the "Miseducation" hitmaker revealed he and King Von were cousins. Before Von's death, Calboy had suffered the loss of two of his other cousins to drug abuse and gun violence. While certainly traumatic experiences, the rapper explained in a new interview with HipHopDX how they fuel him to make songs that speak on the struggles of street life and being inspired by Von.
“That was a tough situation for me because even though I was successful, and I popped off before Von, I still looked up to him because of how he moved and how he just carried himself and the respect that he earned for himself,” Calboy said.
He went on to explain that while they were cousins, they were not as close as people might think. They began to connect in the same leading up to his murder. “We weren’t that close, we just cousins through family,” he explained to HipHopDX. “But his death definitely messed with my mental, especially after my cousin passed off popping an ecstasy pill and my other cousin got shot in the head.”
Calboy continued, “Now you see Von with his viral moment and I see all the memes and the videos and everybody got their own depiction of what went on. It’s tough just to see everything so I had to turn my phone off for a while and just sit back.”
The deaths of his family members affected Calboy in a major way, partially being the reason he is taking a different, more positive approach with his new music.
[via]