BASHAR JACKSON, better known as POP SMOKE, had a low, gravelly voice that skated with a kind of anxious grace across the surface of spare beats, weighed down by low-frequency kick drums and even lower bass notes, that echoed in perfect sympathy with him. There was space in the music and darkness in the lyrics. He was 20. "He sounds like he's 60. He sounds like his vocal chords are made of scorched asphalt and ground-up glass," STEREOGUM's TOM BREIHAN wrote exactly one week ago in a column that suggested he could be the first major star from Brooklyn's burgeoning drill scene. Brooklyn drill is a variation of Chicago drill—dark, raw, sometimes menacing—filtered through the sonic innovations of UK drill. He had been rapping for less than two years. A onetime prep school basketball player, he had been sidetracked by both a heart murmur and what profiles of him tended to refer to as "trouble." Trouble, in various forms, was always there. It followed him into his lyrics, too; in "PTSD," from his first mixtape, released seven months ago, there are a hundred gang members standing on someone's lawn saying, "open the door... I know you home." It's hard, maybe impossible, to listen to those ominous lines today. There were real-life run-ins with the law, and a desire to leave a more hopeful legacy. His music, he told the NEW YORK TIMES last year, was for people like him who “got to carry their guns to school because it ain’t safe, but they still got to make sure they get they diploma ’cause they mom could be happy.” (In the same interview, reporter JON CARAMANICA described Pop Smoke and an entourage driving on the BROOKLYN-QUEENS EXPRESSWAY in a shifting, "defensive" formation that seemed like "the type of behavior exhibited by those who are mindful that something unexpectedly awful could happen at any moment." More omens.) Pop Smoke's early songs were made with beats cribbed, without permission, from the London producer 808MELOBEATS. The rapper and producer eventually found each other and started working together properly, and fruitfully. The sonic synergy was immense. "WELCOME TO THE PARTY," a moody and minimalist three-minute wonder that is but also sort of isn't a party song, blew up in New York, and eventually everywhere else, last summer with the help of remixes featuring NICKI MINAJ and SKEPTA. There was a music video with TRAVIS SCOTT at the end of 2019. A second mixtape, MEET THE WOO 2, came out two weeks ago and debuted at #7 on the BILLBOARD 200. A major tour was scheduled to begin in two weeks in Washington, D.C. A 2020 star was being born. Exactly what happened Wednesday morning in the Hollywood Hills, and why, is still being pieced together. What's known is that a group of people, one wearing a mask, broke into a house Pop Smoke was renting from a REAL HOUSEWIVES star, and from where he had been posting INSTAGRAM pictures the night before, and fatally shot him. As of Wednesday night, the suspects were at large. Police suspected the murder was gang-related, though they didn't suggest a motive. They also told the LOS ANGELES TIMES that "homes being rented by musicians have been the targets of several home invasions" in recent years. New York is in deep mourning today. "Death wasn’t in the cards," PITCHFORK's ALPHONSE PIERRE, who grew up in Canarsie, the same neighborhood as Pop Smoke, wrote on Wednesday. "Pop Smoke made it, he got out, it was supposed to be different." RIP... Go-go is the official music of Washington, D.C., by law... BONE THUGS-N-HARMONY are officially, um, boneless. Except for LAYZIE BONE, who has opted out of this promotion... There are now two JUDAS PRIESTs... RIP also BUZZY LINHART and NAOKI IIJIMA.