As previously reported,

Takeoff was shot and killed very early Tuesday morning in Houston.

The rapper, a member of the popular hip hop group Migos, was only 28 years old.

According to various reports, he had been playing craps in a bowling alley with a group that included his friend and fellow musician Quavo when an altercation broke out and someone brandished a gun.

Two people were killed in the shooting, while Takeoff was pronounced dead at the scene.

Houston Police Department Chief Troy Finner confirmed at a news conference this afternoon that Takeoff had been killed.

“I got a lot of calls from Houston and out of Houston, and everyone was talking about what a great young man he is, how peaceful he is, what a great artist (he is),” Finner said, later adding that Takeoff was highly respected and non-violent:

“I wouldn’t expect him to be involved…

“We have no reason to believe that he was involved in anything criminal at the time.”

Migos formed in 2008 in Georgia and reached the top of the Billboard chart in 2016 with “Bad and Boujee.”

Following this fatal incident, several celebrities and members of the music community reacted in shock and sadness through social networks.

rapper gucci manewho recently collaborated with Takeoff and his uncle and bandmate Quavo on the song “Us vs. Them,” shared a photo of the rapper on Instagram and wrote that the news left him devastated.

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the boss on Twitter: “Rip Takeoff…this has to STOP…sending love to friends and family.”

Rapper Ugly God later analyzed Migos’ influence on hip-hop, writing online that the trio’s 2015 debut album Yung Rich Nation changed the genre.

“Don’t they realize these ns changed the whole rap cadence when they came out? rip Takeoff,” she wrote.

“This man has stayed on the sidelines, keeping it to a minimum and minding his own business. [sic] from the beginning. If that’s not enough for them to leave him alone, then I don’t know.”

Journalist Jemele Hill also weighed in on the loss via a Twitter thread that expressed his frustration with how often young black men are shot to death:

I was in college when Biggie and ‘Pac were killed and I thought there was no way we were going to experience anything remotely like that again.

It happens so often now that you barely have time to recover before someone else kills. RIP Take off.

Here comes another pointless conversation about how the real problem is that we need to better navigate our lives around gun violence. There are 400 million guns in this country, twice the number of people we have. There is no navigation around that.

Black people should be allowed to wear expensive things they’ve worked hard to buy, stay out late, have petty arguments, without getting killed.

We continue to blame everything but the people who recklessly pull the trigger.