MTV is reporting that Def Jam VP Shakir Stewart committed suicide on Saturday in his Atlanta home. Reports say he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, though no further details were available.
Stewart was best known as the guy who succeeded Jay-Z after the rapper resigned his post at Def Jam last December. Stewart, an Oakland, California native, took over operations in June with the goal of developing “new, young executives … the hot executive who’s 21, 22 years old and has a serious passion for music and the desire to work 27 hours a day. That’s where I was at that time in my life.”
Previous to his brief tenure at Def Jam, Stewart worked as an A&R man at LaFace Records from 2000 to 2004, and at Hitco Music Publishing, where he signed Beyoncé.
In other, sunnier news… contrary to a bogus BBC report circulated this weekend, Lil Wayne is still very much alive. According to the false report, the New Orleans rapper was shot six times by a “9mm Smith & Wesson handgun” after an “altercation” with a bunch of Crips following a performance in his hometown. “Paramedics rushed to the scene and attempted to resuscitate the rapper,” the BBC goes on. “However were unable to prevent colossal blood losses and Dwayne Carter was pronounced dead at 02:36 Am.” The article claims that New Orleans Police Chief Warren J. Riley is appealing to “witnesses to come forward with any information about the 4 gunmen.” (You’d think the "BBC"’s wretched sentence structure and poor use of AP style would raise a few doubts in peoples’ minds about the article’s provenance, but no matter…)
Apparently, this isn’t the first time perverse pranksters have gone after our boy Wayne. Back in August, rumors circulated that Carter’s 8-year-old daughter, Reginae, died in a car accident. Lil’ Wayne’s MySpace page was bombarded by condolences from fans before the rapper released a statement squashing the rumors.
Could all this malicious rumor mongering have something to do with jealousy over Wayne’s million-dollar birthday parties? We wonder…
