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VALLEJO
Rapper Mac Dre slain in Kansas City
There had been rumors of his death -- but he was killed in a freeway shooting
When Wanda Salvatto heard Monday that her son was dead, she didn't trust the news. After all, Andre Hicks -- better known as Vallejo rapper Mac Dre -- had been slain three times before, according to rumors. But at 4 p.m., Salvatto learned the latest buzz was true: Hicks, 34, was gunned down early Monday in a freeway shooting in Kansas City, Mo., where he was performing at a concert, police there said. No motive was immediately revealed, but Hicks' death -- like his life -- seemed to befit his lyrics, as well as the rumor-filled lore of hard-core rap and the history of Vallejo's vaunted hip-hop scene. "V-Town" produced stars like E-40, Young KYOZ, Mac Mall and Coolio Da Unda Dog, but its music scene also has been linked to, and touched by, violence. Police say Hicks was once part of Vallejo's northside Romper Room Gang, which was suspected of committing a series of bank robberies and pizza parlor stickups in the early 1990s. When his career was interrupted by a five-year prison stint for conspiring to rob a bank in Fresno, Hicks released a single he recorded on a jailhouse phone, taunting the police officers who put him behind bars. But Salvatto said her son's story had changed after his 1996 release. He recorded album after album -- more than 20 in all -- and recently broke through on hip-hop radio stations, including KMEL, which Monday mourned Hicks by playing his tunes and airing pained calls from fans. Hicks moved from Vallejo to Sacramento for a "fresh start" about four years ago, his mother said. He started a record label, Thizz Entertainment, and dreamed of hiring and mentoring teenagers he could steer away from the trouble he knew so well. His albums -- like this year's "Ronald Dregan: Dreganomics" -- began mining political themes. "He wouldn't want his legacy to be that," Salvatto said of her son's legal problems. "He got through that and had been living a healthy, clean life. ... He started in the streets, and he got himself out." "The part that hurts the most," she said, was that Hicks was killed after years of trying to reclaim his career after prison. "He was about to blow up again. It took him to this point to catch up. But he was determined." Kansas City police officer Darin Snapp said investigators weren't sure who had killed Hicks or why. At 3:30 a.m. Monday, Hicks was the passenger in a white van heading north on Highway 71 through Kansas City when someone in a second vehicle opened fire. "The driver said he heard shots and started ducking," Snapp said. The van swerved across a grass median and four southbound lanes, then crashed into a ditch. The driver ran down the highway to a store to call 911, Snapp said. Paramedics found Hicks dead from a gunshot wound. Snapp said investigators were looking into Hicks' performance schedule to find out whether he could have met his killer there. Bay Area rappers are popular in Kansas City and often perform there. Hicks was a successful rapper while he was still in high school. He first found the radio airwaves with a song titled, ironically, "Too Hard for the Radio." It spoke of Vallejo's "Romper Room kickin' on Leonard Street/Mac Dre full of the Hennessy." He soon lost his friend and fellow rapper Michael Robinson -- a.k.a. The Mac -- who was shot dead in Vallejo while sitting in his car with his pregnant girlfriend. Hicks' most recent album pays tribute to Robinson. Hicks is "one of the pioneers of Bay Area rap and one of the guys who put Vallejo on the map," said Ryan Miller of Alameda, who operates rapbay.com, an online music seller that received a flurry of interest in Mac Dre on Monday.
RIP Andre "MAC DRE" Hicks
July 5, 1970 - November 1, 2004
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