The rise and fall of youth talent in the Chicago drill scene has always been a narrative stained by tragedy, but the recent, public downfall of 20-year-old rapper Blood Hound Q50—government name Mikqually Cooper—has captured the world’s attention as a visceral, real-time spectacle of self-destruction. Since the brutal, daylight murder of his closest friend and musical collaborator, Lil Jeff (Jeffrey Lamar Harris Jr.), Q50 has been on a trajectory so steep and reckless that observers, from the streets of Chicago to the highest echelons of the music industry, fear they are watching another young star overdose before he can even hit his prime.

This is not a story of casual indulgence; it is a raw, heart-breaking account of trauma, grief, and a full-blown, public addiction to prescription pills and cocaine, tragically fueled by the kind of violence that would break men twice his age.

The Defining Catastrophe: June 8, 2024

To understand Q50’s reckless path, one must return to the day his world fractured: June 8, 2024.

Q50 and Lil Jeff were more than just fellow rappers in the Blood Hound Drill City faction; they were day-ones, brothers in the streets and in the studio. Their chemistry on tracks like “BH4L (Blood Hound for Life)” spoke to a deep, unbreakable bond forged in the unforgiving crucible of the Southside. Yet, in Chicago, brotherhood and loyalty often mean nothing when the cyclical nature of violence—fueled by beefs with rival factions like Trap City, Risky Road, and STL EBT—comes due.

Jeff, only 17, was the more volatile of the pair, moving with a recklessness that seemed to invite the very fate they both rapped about. On that fateful evening, around 5:14 p.m. on the 6600 block of South Rhodes Avenue in Woodlawn, Jeff’s luck ran out. What was reportedly intended as a retaliatory action turned into a savage ambush. Surveillance footage later confirmed the chilling details: Jeff fired first, but was instantly overwhelmed by a barrage of automatic fire that erupted from a nearby porch.

In the ensuing storm of bullets, Jeff was hit 19 times; 45 shell casings littered the ground. He didn’t stand a chance.

But the real trauma was reserved for Q50, who was in the getaway car. He caught a bullet to the leg, close enough to hear every shot, close enough to know his partner was being “overcooked,” in the chilling vernacular he would later use to describe the gruesome sight of Jeff’s body. What separates Q50 from many others in that situation is the heroic, yet ultimately damaging, decision he made next: he stayed. While bullets were still echoing, risking his own life, Q50 refused to leave his brother’s body on enemy soil, a profound act of loyalty that has haunted him ever since.

He drove Jeff to the hospital himself, his hands and clothes soaked in his best friend’s blood, his mind reeling from a trauma so severe it immediately triggered an emotional dissociation. Jeff was gone, another teenage statistic in a city that consumes its most promising youth. Q50 survived, but a part of him died on that Woodlawn street.

The Spiral: Trauma Self-Medicated and Broadcast

The immediate aftermath was a period of chilling numbness for Q50. The tributes, the spiking streams, and the vows of revenge from Jeff’s family meant nothing against the void left by his brother’s absence. Without the option of therapy or a healthy coping mechanism—which are often seen as signs of weakness in the unforgiving street code—Q50 sought solace in chemicals. He was looking for any substance to make the pain stop, to allow him to sleep without seeing his friend’s final moments, and to wake up without the crushing reality of his loss.

This search for oblivion soon transformed into a public spectacle of addiction, escalating from bad to outright suicidal.

The first major public incident occurred in July 2025 during a live stream with a personality named Convi. On camera, Q50 appeared to be crushing and snorting what was widely believed to be Percocet, making no effort to hide his actions. The moment of truth, and the tragic authenticity of his addiction, arrived when his girlfriend at the time walked into the frame and directly confronted him.

The argument that followed was raw and deeply personal. She was animated, gesturing, and expressing her frustration with his drug habits, while he leaned back, defensive and evasive. For anyone who has witnessed a loved one battling addiction, the desperation and helplessness in her eyes were unmistakable. Fans in the comment section immediately recognized the reality of the situation, urging someone to “get Q50 some help before it’s too late.” The claim he’d previously made in an April 2025 interview with DJ Vlad—that an earlier video of him snorting powder was just “capped,” a troll for clout—was utterly invalidated by the raw, unscripted confrontation that unfolded live. This wasn’t a stunt; it was a consequence.

The Line of Defiance: A Near-Death Experience and a Death Wish

If the July incident was an alarm, what happened next was a declaration of war against his own life.

On August 18, 2025, Q50 survived what could only be described as a professional assassination attempt. His vehicle was ambushed in St. Louis and shredded by over 60 rounds of automatic fire, reportedly stemming from a $60,000 theft dispute. Q50’s tires were flattened, his car riddled with holes, and four people, including himself, were critically injured. By all accounts, he should have been dead. He was a survivor of a brutal ambush, a victim of the street war that claimed his best friend.

His response to this near-fatal brush with death was not gratitude, sobriety, or reflection. It was a brazen, defiant act of self-destruction.

He went directly to Instagram Live and, in front of a horrified audience, prepared and snorted a line of white powder, widely believed to be cocaine. Video footage showed him in a kitchen, using his phone or a counter to prepare the line, then bending down to inhale it. After rubbing his nose and flashing a sinister grin at the camera, he declared, “Blood Hound Q50 is alive.”

Let that sink in: a young man survives over 60 bullets from an automatic weapon, and his immediate, unfiltered response is to get high on camera. This is more than just recklessness; it is a profound expression of a death wish, a suicidal bravado wrapped up in street credibility. It’s the behavior of a soul so steeped in pain that even the most terrifying experience imaginable—a near-death ambush—cannot shake him back to reality. He was essentially telling his enemies, and perhaps death itself, that he was already beyond caring.

The Looming Specter of Fentanyl

The tragedy is compounded by a deadly reality that permeates street-level drug use in 2025: fentanyl.

Commentators in the know have pointed out the chilling distinction between the pills Q50 was using and pharmaceutical-grade medication. The Percocet being used in the streets is almost certainly cut with fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has become a national epidemic, killing thousands across all demographics. The margin between getting high and overdosing on fentanyl is razor-thin, turning every pill and every line into a game of Russian roulette.

The addiction Q50 has publicly displayed is not recreational—it is a full-blown fentanyl dependency risk. The drugs are not a source of fun; they are a necessary chemical cushion against the weight of his un-processed trauma, a dangerous and temporary fix for a broken spirit. With his losses multiplying—including the death of fellow Drill City affiliate Lil Skume in July 2024, less than two months after Jeff’s murder—Q50 only found more reasons to pick up the powder and try to make the world go away.

The Warnings That Fell on Deaf Ears

The most devastating element of Q50’s story is the fact that people, with clear experience, tried to throw him a lifeline.

In his April 2025 interview, long-time hip-hop journalist and cultural commentator DJ Vlad delivered a searing, personal warning to Q50. Vlad, having seen this deadly movie play out countless times, explicitly raised the specter of Juice WRLD, one of Chicago’s brightest stars who died at 21 from a pill overdose after police arrived to search his plane.

Vlad pointed out the chilling synchronicity: Q50 was signed to Signal Records, an imprint under the same Columbia umbrella where Juice WRLD’s Grade A label resided. Q50 was literally walking the same path as a star who died from the exact drug abuse he was now publicly engaging in. Vlad explained how Juice was taking ten pills for every one pill others were taking, illustrating the rapid escalation that precedes tragedy.

Beyond the industry warning, Vlad shared a personal anecdote about a close friend who OD’d on cocaine at 23, explaining how that funeral convinced him to never touch the drug. He then brought the issue home, suggesting that Q50’s immense trauma—Jeff’s death, Scoom’s death, the shooting—demanded professional help. Vlad, speaking from years of personal therapy, urged Q50 to unpack his grief with a counselor, offering a vision of an alternative future: one where he lived to 51, enjoying the wealth and success his music was bringing, instead of following his friend into the grave.

Q50’s fatalistic mindset, however, seemed to reject the help, seemingly reinforced by a belief he’d already expressed: that he, Jeff, and Scoom were all going to hell anyway. If the ultimate consequence is already sealed in his mind, what is the value of fighting for his life now?

Q50’s grief has been channeled directly into his art, fueling the success of his album, “Long Live My Bruda He Probably Killed yo Bruta,” which has been praised for its raw emotion. His tracks, featuring posthumous verses from Lil Jeff, keep their collaboration alive, even in death. But the success is predicated on the pain—he is destroying himself to create the art that pays for the very drugs that are killing him. It is a vicious, tragic cycle of self-cannibalization.

As of late 2025, Q50 is still moving recklessly, still making music, but the trajectory is undeniably troubling. His highly publicized drug use, the confrontations, and the sheer recklessness of his post-ambush behavior have ignited an urgent discussion about Chicago Drill’s drug culture and the tragic connection between street trauma and substance abuse.

Unless Blood Hound Q50 finds a reason to fight for his life, the way he desperately fought to save Jeff’s on that Woodlawn street, this story can only end one way. He risks becoming another name on the ever-growing, sorrowful list of young drill rappers whose talent got buried alongside them, a final, heartbreaking casualty of a culture that glorifies violence and drugs until the bill comes due—and the bill always comes due.