An up-and-coming Chicago drill rapper whose songs drew more than a million monthly listeners on Spotify was ambushed and shot to death outside a South Side gas station on Sunday, September 13, 2026, just weeks after he told a vlogger that he knew he could be a target.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office identified him as Mikquale Cooper, 22, of Chicago, known to fans as Bloodhound Q50. He was shot in the chest and shoulder while sitting in the driver’s seat of his white Tesla outside the BP station at 4248 S. Wentworth Ave. in Fuller Park. Paramedics treated him at the scene; police said he died there, while the Chicago Sun-Times reported he was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center and pronounced dead about half an hour later.
Police said two cars pulled up alongside the Tesla and that several people from each vehicle opened fire. Accounts of the timing differ: one police account put the attack just before 4 a.m., with the medical examiner’s office recording that Cooper was pronounced dead at 4:35 a.m., while another pinned the gunfire to the 4200 block of South Wentworth Avenue at roughly 5:58 a.m.
Dozens of Shots at the Pumps
Surveillance video circulating online shows Cooper walking out of the gas station and climbing back into the Tesla, where his pregnant girlfriend was waiting. A gunman in a hood then sprints toward the car and opens fire, blowing out the driver’s side window, before a second shooter plants himself directly in front of the vehicle and fires numerous more shots inside. Others were later seen shooting from a Honda parked at one of the pumps.
The footage appears to capture dozens of shots and shows at least two gunmen closing in on foot — a sequence that does not line up in every detail with what police first described. The driver’s side of the Tesla was left pocked with bullet holes, officers left dozens of gun markings at the scene, and the windows of a nearby Subway restaurant were shot out.
In a social media post, Cooper’s girlfriend said she urged him to drive away because men were circling the car and acting suspiciously, and that the Tesla would not move because of the seat belt as he tried to put the car in drive. Once the gunfire erupted, she said, she got out as fast as she could and ran screaming for help. She described Cooper as the father of her unborn child.
A woman who asked not to be identified told FOX 32 Chicago that she spotted the gunmen walking toward Cooper’s car and tried to warn him moments before the shooting began. She said she fled as the shots rang out and has since left Illinois.
No Arrests as Detectives Investigate
A preliminary Chicago police report counted six gunmen and more than 50 shots fired. The attackers fled in two vehicles — a black Acura sedan and a silver Honda Accord — toward the southbound Dan Ryan Expressway, police said, and an officer who reviewed the surveillance video described four of them dressed all in black, one in a green hoodie and another in a black hoodie.
Area One detectives are running the homicide investigation. Police are urging anyone who knows something about the attack to come forward.
A Chilling Interview Weeks Earlier
Weeks before he was killed, Cooper sat for a YouTube interview with vlogger DJ Akademiks and talked about surviving his beefs and staying alive in the city he referred to by its derogatory nickname, “Chiraq.” “I’m not chasing death but I’m not running from it either,” he told DJ Akademiks. “I know what I signed up for. One slip-up, you’re gone.”
Violence had already carved through his circle. His cousin, the rapper Bloodhound Zmoney, was shot dead in March 2023. Close friend Bloodhound Lil Jeff was killed at 21 in a Chicago shooting in June 2024, and an associate, Lil Scoom89, was killed the following month.
From “Big 3” to a Record Deal
Cooper started putting out music in 2023 and built a fast-growing audience with tracks including “Big 3” and “Coffin.” He signed with Signal Records by the end of 2024 and later performed at Rolling Loud in May, the festival that posted its condolences on Instagram after his death. His most recent release was “Get Back or Die Trying.”
The rapper also had his own gun case. In December 2024, he pleaded guilty to a weapons count and drew a one-year prison term, a case that grew out of a gun found in his backpack as medics tended to a wound he suffered in a September 2023 shooting.
His killing came during a bloody stretch in the city: three people were killed and 17 others hurt in separate shootings across Chicago from Friday, September 11, through Sunday, September 13. As of Tuesday, September 15, no one was in custody in Cooper’s death.
