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Source: Al Pereira / Getty

A jaw-dropping and rather uncomfortable statistic emerged as a result of new research conducted by XXL.

In a newly published article titled “The Current Status of Every Murdered Rapper’s Case,” the publication found that 69.2% of rappers’ murders remain unsolved to this day.

XXL looked at 52 rappers who had been killed during the 28 years since the murder of Scott La Rock in 1987, the killing many fans and spectators consider the first murder in Rap’s history.

“Of those 52 murders, only nine have been definitively solved; four additional cases have seen arrests with defendants awaiting trial, while still three others are either unclear or still disputed. That leaves 36 MCs cut down before their time whose murders have never been solved by the police, just a 30.7 percent resolution rate.”

A staggering statistic.

“To put that number in perspective,” XXL’s report continues, “NPR reported this March that the national ‘clearance rate’ for homicides in the United States stands at 64.1 percent. Those numbers are so far apart they’d almost be laughable if they weren’t so sobering.”

There have been five rappers murdered in 2015 alone, the most recent being Meek Mill affiliate Dex Osama, who was shot and killed during the early hours of September 7 in Southwest Detroit. Out of those five slain artists, zero charges have been filed.

XXL also provided background context and in some cases followed up on the current status of each of the cases regarding those 52 slain rappers.

Tupac

“A possible suspect by the name of Orlando Anderson had been identified by the LAPD though never arrested after reportedly being involved in a fight with Knight and Shakur earlier in the evening of his murder—’Pac’s mother had filed a wrongful death suit against him—but Anderson himself was killed in 1998,” XXL writes.

The Notorious B.I.G.

“Detectives believe witnesses didn’t come forward out of ‘intimidation’ due to the ‘reputations’ of some of the people involved,” the publication says.

Big L

“Gerard Woodley, a childhood friend of Big L, was arrested in May of 1999 for the crime,” XXL writes. “However, Woodley was later released due to lack of evidence and the murder case remains unsolved. In 2010, Donald Phinazee, Big L’s older brother, spoke on his L’s passing saying that he was not the one supposed to be targeted, that the killers were looking for their other brother Lee but killed Big L by mistake, who was reportedly wearing his brother’s chain at the time of his death. Lee was killed three years later.”

To read the full report, please visit XXL.

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