Tributes have poured in for rap legend Gangsta Boo, who died yesterday (Jan. 1, 2023) at age 43. Fox 13 reported on Sunday that Boo (Lola Mitchel) was found dead at around 4 pm in Memphis. No official cause of death has been determined.
Boo started in 1995 on Three 6 Mafia's groundbreaking album Mystic Stylez while she was still a teenager. She went on to appear on some of the group's most popular albums, including 1997's Chapter 2: World Domination which spawned the hit "Tear Da Club Up '97," initially featured on Mystic Stylez and remixed to include every Three 6 member.
Boo achieved solo success with tracks like "Where Dem Dollas At?" from 1998's Enquiring Minds. She's worked with everyone from Run The Jewels, OutKast, Foxy Brown, Eminem, Gucci Mane and The Game, to newer rap stars like GloRilla and Latto, who she recently collaborated with on "F*** the Club Up," late last year.
“Gangsta Boo is so Southern,” Latto said in a 2022 interview with Nardwuar. “I don’t know why the fuck they don’t give Gangsta Boo her props, you know she paved the way for a lot of Southern rap.”
Gangsta Boo echoed the sentiment in a recent interview with Billboard. "I hear my cadence in a lot of men and female rappers," she said. "I am the blueprint and I wear that badge proudly as f-ck. I used to run away from it. I used to didn’t want to even give myself flowers because I’ve been so low-key and humble, but I’m on some f-ck that sh-t. It’s time to claim what’s mine. I’m one of the main b-tches. And it feels fun to still be able to look good and be relevant in a place where I don’t have this million-dollar machine behind me and I have all my natural body parts, no shade to the ones that don’t. But it just feels great to stand in yourself and look in the mirror and be like, 'Wow, you did that.'"
