Kanyva -- Wannabe Rapper, True Killer

Around March 2004, wannabe rapper Kanyva (real name Juston Michael Potts) entered into a loose business relationship with promoter Shani Renee Holloway.  The 31-year-old promoter was starting her own record label, All in 1 Promotions, and wanted the performer to record music designed to garner air play on local Pittsburg, California, radio stations.  Kanyva, however, demanded that his music not be presented in a way that would be considered mainstream.  On June 6, 2004, Holloway, her boyfriend, and the 18-year-old rapper discussed his career in a parked car in the 3300 block of Peppermill Circle in Pittsburg.  Incredulous that he would not want his music widely promoted on the radio, Holloway bluntly told the rapper that his prospects for stardom were not good.  Kanyva got out of the car and walked across the street to talk to the occupants of a parked black SUV.  He returned to Holloway's car, pulled out a handgun, and shot the woman twice in the head at point-blank range, afterwards fleeing the scene in the black SUV.  Holloway died five hours later.  Kanyva was arrested the next day and admitted quarreling with Holloway about his career.  Following a failed insanity defense, the rapper waived a trial by jury and was subsequently sentenced by a judge to a prison term of 50 years to life for first-degree murder.  An appeal in 2008 was denied.  Juston Michael Potts, Inmate #F57586, is currently incarcerated in the California Medical Facility at Vacaville.

Blade Icewood -- Wiped Out

Variously known by several rap names ("Ruler of tha Great Lakes," "Motor City's Finest," "Mayor of tha Mitten"), Icewood (real name Darnell Quincy Lyndsey) grew up on Ten Mile in the Detroit suburb of Southfield.  Rap styles and the concomitant rivalries in the Motor City are generally divided between the East and West sides of the city and are believed to have played a significant role in the murders of two rappers, Wipeout and Blade Icewood, who quarreled over the origins and use of a name claimed by the musical groups of both men.  Icewood (from the West side of Detroit) joined a rap group called the Street Lordz that laid claim to the name Chedda Boyz.  Rival rapper Wipeout (real name Antonio Caddell, Jr.) was a member of the gangsta rap group The East Side Chedda Boyz.  Tensions mounted as both groups claimed the name on the streets and in dueling rap lyrics.  Ironically, in mid-2004 Icewood headlined a "Stop the Violence" rally in front of Platinum Records (the Street Lordz label) in which he urged those young people in attendance to create their own non-violent way out of the ghetto.  On September 18, 2004, Wipeout, 32, an and innocent bystander were shot to death outside the Candy Bar nightclub at Woodward Avenue and John R in downtown Detroit.  Two days later, Icewood was in his apartment in Oak Park when it was invaded by AK-47 wielding gunmen.  The rapper was shot seven times, and although surviving the attack was permanently paralyzed from the chest down.  True to the code of the streets, however, Icewood refused to cooperate with authorities who credited violence to ongoing tensions over the right to use the Chedda Boyz name.

In 2005, the 27-year-old rapper formed Icewood Entertainment and signed Candi Cane, Balee, and Cash Out to his roster.  On April 21, 2005, Icewood was in a wheelchair inside his parked Range Rover at West 7 Mile Road and Faust when another vehicle pulled alongside and a shooter pumped multiple shots into his body.  The rapper was killed instantly.  The fatal attack took place less than half a mile from the site where he had headlined the anti-violence rally seven months earlier,  The week before his murder, Icewood had released a song targeting his murdered rival, Wipeout.  The rapper's CDs include Still Spinnin, Stackmaster, and Blood, Sweat, Tears.  To date, no arrests have been made in the killings of Wipeout or Blade Icewood.

Cavlar -- Fish and More, More, More

Leval (Cavlar) Lyde, a resident of the rough Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, honed his rap skills while serving time on an assault and weapons charge in the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility on Staten Island.  Released in the early 2000s, the aspiring rapper became associated with the independent label Earthquake Camp Records and the "Step Your Game Up" underground DVDs which featured interviews and videos with top hip-hop stars.  In 2004, he toured with Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins and was featured on WBLS' Wendy Williams Show.  Interestingly, Cavlar frequently appeared on homemade underground "beef" videos in which rappers engaged in a particularly noxious variation of the dozens in which threats are rapped to beat, rob, and kill one another.  Readily accessible on YouTube, one Cavlar video features the rapper and rival Uncle Murder in a heated exchange.  Whether such viral showdowns factored in the father of three's violent death on March 25, 2008, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, is pure speculation.  According to differing press reports, the 36-year-old Cavlar, a regular at Fish & Crustaceons Quality Seafood, left the restaurant around 5:00 P.M. eating a sandwich and was shot once in the chest as he walked to his parked car.  Another account had the rapper engaged in a confrontation on the street with a gunman and two of his friends who all fled after the shooting.  Cavlar died at Brooklyn Hospital Center.  One anonymous web poster to the "Save Brooklyn Now" blog wrote, "[Cavlar] ran across the same type of individual that he himself was and he got caught with a sandwich instead of a gun in his hand.  Don't get it twisted, it could easily have been the other three people who approached him that could've been left on the ground."  Tragically, Nancy Williams, a 27-year-old mother of three, was fatally shot on March 30, 2008, while handing out "In Remembrance of Cavlar" buttons at a makeshift memorial and Irish wake for the murdered rapper in an outside courtyard in his Bed-Stuy neighborhood.  The woman was struck when a lone gunman aimlessly fired 12 shots from an automatic weapon through the yards behind the Bedford Stuyvesant Garden Houses, a housing complex, into the public gathering.  To date, no arrests have been made in either case.

Bugz -- The Good Die Young

The MC Bugz (born Karnail Paul Pitts on January 5, 1978) was a highly regarded rapper in Detroit and an early member of the group D12 (Dirty Dozen) along with Proof  (shot to death on April 11, 2006).  Bugz, also known on stage as "Robert Beck," had just turned 21 and his future in the rap world looked bright.  D12 had recently signed with Eminem's label Shady Records and a debut EP was in the works.  On the evening of May 21, 1999, the group was set to perform in Grand Rapids, Michigan as part of the Eminem tour when the promising talent because just another victim in rap's bloody history.  That afternoon, Bugz, his cousin, and a female friend were picnicking on Detroit's Belle Island when a man sprayed the  woman with a high powered water gun.  She took offense, angry words were exchanged, and a fistfight broke out.  Bugz sought to intervene and a friend of the man with the water gun drew a rifle from a Ford Expedition and shot the rapper three times at close range, striking him in the neck and chest.  The assailants drove over Bugz as they fled the scene.  An ambulance was called, but due to heavy traffic on the bridge to Belle Island it took thirty minutes to reach the badly wounded MC.  Bugz died without regaining consciousness in a nearby hospital.  The deadly incident, captured on the park's security video and shown on local news, generated no leads and to date no one has been prosecuted for the murder.  Thanks to D12, material unreleased at the time of the young rapper's death was made available on These Streets EP.  The group's members and Eminem have "Bugz" tattooed on their wrists in remembrance of their fallen friend.  In the 2004 album, D12 World, the songs "Bugz 97" and "Good Die Young" honor his memory.