A Swedish rapper who last month was named the country’s hip hop artist of the year has been killed in a gang shooting in Gothenburg, Swedish police said on Wednesday.
Masked 26-year-old rapper C.Gambino — whose real name is Karar Ramadan and is not to be confused with American rapper Childish Gambino — was the victim of a shooting in a parking lot on Tuesday evening, police said.
“Police have launched a murder inquiry… No one has been arrested in the case,” police said in a statement.
The killing “is linked to a gang conflict”, a police spokeswoman told AFP, adding that the rapper “was known to police”.
Images from the scene showed a spray of bullet holes in a glass door in the parking lot.
C.Gambino’s most recent track, “Sista Gang” (Last Time), was released on May 31 and has been streamed 700,000 times since then on Swedish site Spotify.
According to the site, C.Gambino’s songs attract around a million listeners a month.
“He was one of Swedish hip hop’s greats,” Swedish rap expert Petter Hallen told news agency TT, adding that his death was “a heavy blow to the rap scene in Gothenburg and all of Sweden”.
“What’s even more tragic is that he had recently moved away from just the dark criminal stuff, towards more expressions of relationships and feelings,” he said.
Another award-winning Swedish rapper, Einar, was shot and killed in Stockholm in a gang conflict in October 2021.
The Scandinavian country has struggled to contain surging gang violence in recent years, with shootings and bombings now weekly occurrences across the country.
The gang violence was originally linked to control over the drugs market, but has increasingly spread to rivalries and personal vendettas, among other things.
