Pretty Ricky member Baby Blue poses for photos at Pretty Ricky's Artist Portrait Session at JR Studio July 25, 2006 in New York City.

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Pretty Ricky member Baby Blue is in critical condition after being shot during an attempted robbery at a south Florida bowling alley on Monday night.

In a graphic video circulating on social media, the rapper, born Diamond Blue Smith, is seen lying still on the floor, his body bloodied, near the entrance of the bowling alley while a friend frantically screams out for help. After a few seconds, two other men rushed to help the rapper who soon became responsive and rolled onto his side.

According to the Davie Police Department, two suspects approached Baby Blue and another victim in the parking lot and fled the scene prior to police arrival. The police department is actively seeking information regarding the suspects.

Pretty Ricky -- made up of Baby Blue, Spectacular, Slick Em and Pleasure P -- saw widespread success in the early '00s with the Billboard Hot 100 hits "Grind With Me," "Your Body" and "On the Hotline." Their 2007 album Late Night Special topped the Billboard 200 and was gold-certified that same year. Shortly after the shooting on Wednesday (April 21), the rapper's new single, "Jerry Rice," premiered on YouTube and his personal Instagram account.

NoLifeShaq, Zias & B.Lou, ScruFaceJean, and many more have turned on The Boy.

No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.

 

Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.

The Reaction Community Drags Drake's Lawsuit Through The Mud

Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.

In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...

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