Stupor in the world of South African hip-hop.
Rapper Costa Titch collapsed on stage Saturday night during a concert in the suburbs of Johannesburg.
The musician was pronounced dead a few days later, his family said in a statement posted to Instagram on Sunday.
An investigation has been opened to clarify the circumstances of the disappearance of this figure from the South African rap scene, police told AFP on Sunday.
The 28-year-old artist
"collapsed while performing in concert"
on Saturday evening in the suburbs of Johannesburg, police said, who have not yet established the cause of death.
An autopsy is expected to take place shortly.
The death of Costa Tsobanoglou, his real name, comes a month after the assassination of another popular rapper in South Africa, Kiernan Forbes or AKA.
The latter had been shot by two men at the exit of a restaurant in Durban, in the south-east of the country.
The case is still ongoing.
A figure of the amapiano
Costa Titch was known for his amapiano title
Big Flexa
, which received 45 million views on YouTube.
He recently released a remix with American-Senegalese rapper and producer Akon.
Derived from house, the amapiano was born in the townships of South Africa before enjoying worldwide success in recent years.
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On videos of the Saturday evening concert widely shared on social networks, the white rapper, microphone in hand, collapses for the first time, seeming to make a simple fall.
He continues to sing but once again collapses further upstage, with the artists performing with him then rushing to pick him up.
A flood of tributes flooded social media on Sunday.
“Great talent gone too soon
,” tweeted South African rapper Da LES Leader of the radical left-wing EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters) party Julius Malema posted a broken heart with the name Costa Titch.
The music rights society in southern Africa, meanwhile, said it was
"saddened"
.
