It’s just eight days in to the New Year and the Canadian hip-hop scene has already been hit with some tragic news.
At around 7:30 a.m. this morning, Ottawa Police were dispatched to an Airbnb rental between Lyon and Kent after reports of a multiple shooting. At the scene, they found three males (15, 19, and 20) suffering from gunshot wounds and one male (18) who had already succumbed to his injuries.
At first the identities of the victims hadn’t been disclosed, but social media activity quickly revealed that the 18-year-old man who had died was West End Ottawa rapper FTG Metro from Ritchie Street.
FTG Metro
As reported by the Ottawa Citizen, FTG Metro, real name Manyok Akol, was once named one of the top 90 youth football players in Ontario. In 2014, Metro was a provincial champion in the Ontario Varsity Football League with the Myers Riders Bantam Football Team.
More recently, Metro had been focusing on his music, releasing the song “Rainy Days” this past October with frequent collaborator YSL Reggie. Ben Telford was enlisted to direct the super-clean video which has been viewed over 125K times to date.
Before “Rainy Days,” Metro and Reggie teamed up with Toka Dinero for “Klout.” The song has been streamed over 150K times to date on Spotify, and the supporting video has put up another 170K+.
Prior to “Klout,” the same trio were promoting arguably their biggest record to date with “Meant to Be.” The touching banger has been streamed close to 148K times and the video has over 275K views.
While his catalogue wasn’t the biggest, FTG Metro was just getting started and only really gave us a glimpse of what he was capable of. The tracks he did release were well-received and we’ve been told he had a lot more in the works.
Truly a sad day for the Ottawa and Canadian hip-hop communities. Metro is the third Canadian rapper (that we know of) to pass away from gun violence in just over two weeks.
Our condolences go out to FTG Metro’s family and friends.
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