RIVER NORTH — Emerging Chicago rapper Mello Buckzz was celebrating the release of her mixtape Wednesday night in River North when a drive-by shooting left four people, including her boyfriend and best friend, dead and 14 injured.
Mello Buckzz, born Melanie Doyle, had just hosted a release party for her debut album “HollyHOOD” at Artis Restaurant, 311 W. Chicago Ave., when a dark-colored car went past and someone inside shot at a crowd of people standing outside just after 11 p.m. Wednesday.
Police have video of the shooting, and said they recovered two different types of shell casings but no arrests have been made. Officials said they were pouring over the case, including looking to see if the shooting was in retaliation to another recent shooting.
Two women, 26 and 27, were shot in their chests and taken to Northwestern Hospital, where they were pronounced dead, police said.
A man who was shot in his head and a man who was shot in his chest were taken to Stroger Hospital, where they were pronounced dead, police said. The men were identified by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office as Leon Andrew Henry, 25 and Devonte Terrell Williamson, 23.
Two of the dead include the rapper’s boyfriend and best friend, Mello Buckzz shared on Instagram.
“My heart broke into so many pieces,” the rapper wrote in an Instagram post hours after the shooting, asking for prayers. “I don’t wish this typa pain on nobody.”
She posted a series of messages mourning the slain. “My heart breaking into so many pieces rn ts unbelievable,” she wrote.
Who Is Mello Buckzz?
Mello Buckzz is a drill rapper from the East Side of Chicago, hailing from the same neighborhood as Chicago rapper G Herbo. In an earlier interview with DGB Media, she described her neighborhood as “over East, No Limit.” “No Limit” is a name associated with drill rappers from the area and the NLMB gang faction.
The 24-year-old rapper released her first song “Damn Buckzz” in 2021 and has been “on the verge of” a breakout moment since, said Jabari M. Evans — a media scholar, assistant professor of race and media at the University of South Carolina and Chicago rapper known by his stage name Naledge.
She has nearly 400,000 followers on Instagram and over 200,000 on TikTok, where she’s amassed about four million likes. She’s also collaborated with big hip hop artists like Latto on her song “Boom Pt. 2” — which the duo performed at Coachella in 2023 — New York drill rapper Murda B and Chicago artist G Herbo.
“She’s somebody who could take the mantle so to speak of Chicago [and drill] rap from the female perspective,” Evans said. “She’s someone who has a presence, just period. Some people, when you see them interact with people in public and you just say, ‘I don’t know what this person does, but they’re a star.’ She has that star quality.”
She’s a prolific social media creator, making TikTok videos about her life and her music. In a Sunday post on TikTok, she raved about her upcoming mixtape and release party.
“I’m super excited. I’m dropping my first ever body of work. My first ever EP. My first ever mixtape. I have never dropped a body of work before. Multiple songs,” she said.
“I’m just so excited. People have been asking for this for so long. I have only been rapping since, what, 2021? People been asking for this s— since 2023, that I can remember.
“I’m just so happy that it’s now finally available. So come out, I can officially give you a release date. It’s July 3.”
The 8-track mixtape, “HollyHOOD,” is on the No More Heroes label and features a cover photo of her posing in front of JoJi Gyros on 79th Street, although the restaurant’s name is changed to HOLLYHOOD.
Mello Buckzz has been involved in past controversies, including an Oct. 2023 incident where the rapper was arrested for allegedly assaulting Amari Blaze, or Bri’onne Dade, who she had previously collaborated with on the song “Boom (Mouskatool),” the Sun-Times reported.
“She has been mixed up in some of the same things that you see happen with drill rappers, which is beef. She’s had very public beefs online,” Evans said. “She’s had, you know, physical altercations with other artists that have been publicly talked about. But I don’t know if this incident in particular is related to her music or something [else].”
A Look Into Chicago’s Drill Rap Scene
Drill rap was born out of Chicago’s South Side around 2010 — with names like Chief Keef, Lil Durk, G Herbo and more leading the hip hop sub-genre as it catapulted into the mainstream.
Drill is the first genre “that’s very much specific to Chicago’s gang culture,” Evans said.
Back in the early 2010s, there was already talk about violence on Chicago’s south and west sides, and drill artists put faces, names and scenery behind what was in the news, Evans said.
“Drill rap exposed, in many ways, parts of the city that hadn’t been talked about before,” Evans said. “We’ve had rappers and we’ve had artists, but this was really unearthing a different side of Chicago, and it humanized what was going on in the news.”
The genre is just as much nestled into Chicago and Chicago street culture as it is the internet and social media platforms that lend to its virality, Evans said. What makes the genre so “enticing, intriguing and energetic” is the way it uses social media platforms, he said.
“Sometimes subgenres of hip hop are almost certainly stubbornly tied to the era for which they were birthed,” Evans said.
“I like to tell folks that we get the iPhone around 2008 and we get drill around 2010, right? And because we’re in such a digitized network [and] media environment, what we see is that when technology trickles down from the haves to those were considered to be the have-nots, then we see sort of disruptions and innovations that maybe were unexpected by those who design certain technologies.”
While the drill rap scene is “very creative and very innovative,” it’s also embedded in Chicago’s gang culture and “this understanding that you can get rich and famous by doing this performance of toughness and violence,” Evans said.
“That’s the thing with drill, specifically just Chicago drill. … I think the artists that came from Chicago didn’t necessarily have a formula,” Evans said. “I think they really were just trying to express themselves and express their realities, and then the press made it into a genre of music.”
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