Only one train goes to Canarsie. Private houses with driveways and backyards line most blocks in the remote Brooklyn neighborhood, nestled in the southeast corner of the borough, overlooking the waters of Jamaica Bay. Late 20th-century white flight turned this 19th-century suburban getaway into a predominantly West Indian lower-middle-class neighborhood. Perceptively “boujee-er” than New York’s average hood, by the 2010’s Canarsie got its nickname the “Flossy” or “the Floss” for its residents’ reputation of being flashy and showing off. On the night of February 19th, 2020, the children of the Flossy painted the town blue. On an otherwise quiet, residential street, a crowd of young people gathered by the hundreds to the sounds of melodic growls and 808 drum beats. Candles burned on the corner beneath gold balloons that spelled out “O92,” a reference to the block East 92nd Street. A few young men in puffer jackets, elevated above the crowd, documented the scene from the roofs of their cars for their Instagram stories. Their audience saw hundreds of young people packed together in the street forming clouds with their breaths and stars with their iPhone flashlights. The scene was scored by breakout hits from the past year like “Dior” and “Welcome to the Party.” High-pitched “woo’s” echoed through the night amidst exclamations of “Long Live Pop Smoke!” and “RIP bro!,” the voices behind the cameras cracking occasionally. Earlier that morning, around 4 a.m, Bashar Barakah Jackson, the Canarsie native known as rapper, Pop Smoke was shot and killed in LA during a rental home invasion. It occurred at a Beverly Hills AirBnB owned by Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, Teddi Mellencamp. Prior to the incident, Pop Smoke and his childhood friend Mike Dee had accidentally revealed details about their location while posting on Instagram. Celebrity crime reporter, Mark Ebner says in episode one of 50 Cent’s Hip Hop Homicides that these signals may have tipped off the “knock knock” crew, an underground network of criminals in Los Angeles who routinely break into rich people’s homes and rob them at gunpoint.
Editor’s picks The perpetrators were a group of five young Black males — three adults and two minors. The one who fired the fatal shots was 15 years old. “I don’t think any of these young perpetrators went into this situation thinking that someone was going to get… dead, least of all their victim,” Ebner says. Four men were charged in connection to the crimes. Two-faced arguably brief juvenile charges. Tragically, Pop Smoke was only 20 years old at the time of his murder. He had made it out the hood, flew to LA to further the career he had built in record time, and suddenly, before reaching the climax, his story was over. Basketball court in Seaview Park. Courtesy of Sofia Mareque The video for Pop Smoke’s debut single “Welcome to the Party” has over 195 million views to date. In it, he’s riding along Flatlands Avenue in a bright red Ferrari, dancing with his friends and local children in front of “Peppa’s,” the jerk chicken spot. Gathered in a local pizza shop, Originals on Avenue L in Canarsie, his close friend recalled that this was a second version of the video. The original was filmed at a not-so-PG-13 house party. Canarsie, Brooklyn, a once relatively unknown neighborhood in NYC had officially been put on the map. Pop’s mother, Audrey Jackson, is a 62-year-old, church-going, Jamaican woman who moved to Canarsie in the nineties with her Panamanian husband and first-born son. S shortly after the move, came the birth of her second son whom she raised in Canarsie his entire life.