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Rich Homie Quan, the Atlanta rapper known for his hit songs “Type of Way” and “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh)” and his collaborations with Young Thug, has died, Rolling Stone and TMZ report, citing members of the musician’s family. A cause of death has not been announced, and a representative for the Fulton County medical examiner’s office declined to comment to Pitchfork. Rich Homie Quan was 34 years old.
Rich Homie Quan was born DeQuantes Devontay Lamar in Atlanta, Georgia. Growing up, Quan excelled at baseball, eventually starring at DeKalb County’s Ronald E. McNair High School, where he also learned to write creatively. In a 2018 essay for Talkhouse, he specifically credited his teacher Miss Butch for inspiring him. “She’d be like, ‘I just want you to write. Close your eyes and just think about what you’re writing about,’” he wrote.“ And every time I would close my eyes, they would turn to poems.”
Quan ended up in jail after high school and, while incarcerated, he focused on reading, writing, and making himself into a legitimate rapper. “When I got locked up, I started to think about everything I was good at,” he told XXL, in 2014, after being named to the publication’s vaunted Freshman Class. “When I was a kid I loved to read. Literature was my favorite subject. I loved creative writing classes. So when I got locked up, I read my first book in jail. I have been reading for years, but I read my first book in jail with understanding. When I learned how to really read a book, it took my mind to another place. So after that, then I started writing poems, and after that my poems didn’t sound like poems, they sounded like rhymes. I was like, ‘Let me see if I can put it on a beat.’”
Rich Homie Quan released his first mixtape, I Go In on Every Song, in 2012, and he quickly followed it with Still Goin In and Still Goin In – Reloaded. The latter project housed his breakout hit, “Type of Way,” an irresistible slice of melodic Atlanta trap that reached No. 50 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“Type of Way” showcased the richness and texture of Rich Homie Quan’s voice, at once triumphal and dripping with pathos. And, in just a few words, he captured the oft-indefinable feelings at the heart of many great songs: “Some type of way, make you feel some type of way.”