In an interview with DJ Akademiks only days before his murder, The famous rapper PnB Rock discussed a recent run-in with Los Angeles gang members. On Monday afternoon, the Philadelphia rapper was shot and died during a heist at Roscoe's House of Chicken & Waffles in Inglewood, California (September 12).
The 30-year-old was with his girlfriend at the restaurant when an armed suspect approached them and demanded jewelry before killing and shooting the rapper. At 1:29 p.m. local time, Rock was pronounced deceased.
DJ Akademiks posted an interview he had with Hip hop world star PnB Rock earlier this month for his Off the Record podcast, during which he mentioned getting attacked by gang members while out shopping alongside his girlfriend and kid on Fairfax.
“Somebody tried me on Fairfax, like, mid-pandemic,” he began. “N-ggas was talking loud as shit wanting me to hear their conversation and it’s like, ‘I’m with my peoples — my daughter and my girl. Why are they talking about this gangsta shit? What the fuck is going on?’
“So I’m like, ‘Man, we outta here.’ My girl like, ‘Nah, we ain’t — what’s wrong?’ I’m just going off of the vibes. She ain’t peep it, she be thinking I’m tripping. She peeped that I’m serious so she’s like, ‘Alright, we out.'”
Rock and his girlfriend got in the car to leave, however his girlfriend pulled over a few blocks away because she saw a business she wanted to visit. That's when he noticed the gang members had followed them in a car that was substantially veiled and emitting "heat," as Rock called it.
“I ain’t go in the store for two seconds, the same people come from out the car, hop in the store hype as shit, say some gang banging shit,” he continued. “I recognized the energy. He started talking to me on some gangsta shit. I’m like, ‘Bruh, do you know me from somewhere?’ He like, ‘N-gga, yeah I know who you is!’ Trying to get me to,like, get into some shit.
“So I flagged him off and just walked out the store ’cause I already know where this shit ’bout to go … You don’t want to be nervous and make it seem like something ’bout to happen. You want [your girl and your kids] to be as calm as possible to make it seem like everything is cool, ain’t nothing about to happen to us.”
He added: “So I just kept it cordial like, ‘Come on, baby. We out. These n-ggas on some real shit.’ When they got to the car, that’s when I let n-ggas know like, ‘I’m not on that.’ And I ain’t gonna say what happened, but n-ggas know that I’m just not on that.”
PnB Rock also addressed the rising trend of violent crime in Los Angeles, where fellow rappers Nipsey Hussle, Pop Smoke, and Drakeo The Ruler have all died in recent years, noting that he avoided areas where he was likely to be targeted.
“I never got robbed, never in my life. I ain’t gon say never ’cause I’m not superstitious or nothing like that, but I haven’t been robbed,” he said.
“I don’t really be outside like that to be in the mix of the dumb shit. I’m going to the shop, I’m going to get some drip, I’m going probably to the bank. I’m at places where n-ggas probably ain’t really gonna be at on no gangsta shit.”
He added: “N-ggas be getting they shit took and it don’t be spoken about … It’s just the new generation. Everybody on some demon shit. ‘Demon time,’ this, ‘demon’ that.”