Bay Area rapper Lil Yase, who was known for his mixtapes and singles including "Get It In" and "No Diss," was shot and killed early Saturday near the East Dublin/Pleasanton BART station under mysterious circumstances.
The shooting happened just before 1 a.m. on Saturday, and Yase was either driven or drove himself to Valley Care Medical Center in Pleasanton where he arrived with multiple gunshot wounds. According to Dublin police, he was then transported by ambulance to Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, where he succumbed to his wounds.
Police say they identified a crime scene on the 5100 block of Iron Horse Parkway, near the BART station, and an intense search turned up no suspects.
Lil Yase's real name was Alexander Mark Antonyyo Jr., and he was either 25, according to most internet records on his music career, or 26, according to Dublin police. He was born in San Francisco's Sunnydale projects, and still lived in San Francisco, as KPIX reports.
Friends tell TMZ that they're baffled about what happened, and that Yase had no enemies and no one saw this coming. He was reportedly hanging out with friends at a recording studio in Marin County Friday night when he left on his own around 11:30 p.m. saying he'd be right back. The shooting occurred over 50 miles away about an hour and a half later.
Yase helped to found Highway 420 Productions, and the label released a new video for his track "Top Dog" on Saturday, after his death became known.
Lil Yase started rapping and making videos on his iPad in 2013, when he was 18 years old, and had his first big recognition in 2015 for "Get It In," for which there was a later all-star remix with appearances from Nef the Pharaoh, G-Val, and others. He came up with other Bay Area rappers Yatta, Sage the Gemini, and Llama Llama, and he launched the Highway 420 label with business partner Justin Miranda.
As Miranda tells the Mercury News, Yase was "a tall, goofy kid with a silly laugh, always smiling and really nice to everybody." And he adds that no one close to him knows what he was doing in Dublin Friday night. "We don’t have any idea what he was doing out there. Everybody is confused, no one knows what the hell is going on, or what happened."
"There are so many people in the music industry who have beefs with people," Miranda tells the paper. "He was universally loved and respected by everyone, didn’t matter what city or neighborhood, everybody loved him, from LA up to here."
The full posthumously released video for "Top Dog" is below.
Dublin police are asking that anyone with information about the shooting should contact them at (925) 833-6670.