West Coast rap icon C-Knight of Dove Shack dies at 52

C-Knight, a founding member of the West Coast rap group Dove Shack, has died at the age of 52. TMZ broke the news on Tuesday (November 7), which was later confirmed by his fellow Dove Shack member Bo Roc on Instagram.

The rapper, whose real name was Arnez Blount, was hospitalized on October 18 due to diabetes complications. He reportedly had a stroke that caused his heart to stop while he was in treatment. He was revived and put on life support, but his condition did not improve.

C-Knight’s father told TMZ that the family was hoping for a positive outcome from a crucial MRI scan, but it seems that their hopes were dashed.

Bo Roc expressed his grief and shock on Instagram, writing: “This is like [a] fucking nightmare I swear this shit hurt different and I don’t want to talk about shit to nobody so please just let me be and pray for us… On my soul I love you bro and I already don’t know what the fuck to do wit u being gone.”

Dove Shack rose to fame in the mid-90s, appearing on Warren G’s 1994 album Regulate… G Funk Era. Their biggest hit was “Summertime in the LBC”, which reached No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 1995. The song was featured on their debut album This Is the Shack and the soundtrack to The Show.

The group released another project in 2006. C-Knight also had a solo album, Knight Time, in 2001. The group was also instrumental in helping Snoop Dogg launch his career. In a 2022 interview with The 85 South Comedy Show, Snoop revealed that he used to borrow a typewriter from 2Scoops of Dove Shack to write his raps.

“Them the little homies,” Snoop said of the group. “2Scoops that was in the group, when I first started writing raps I used to use that n-gga typewriter… I was writing on paper cuz and I would lose my shit and this n-gga typewriter was organized. This n-gga had paper organized and shit so I was like, ‘I’m just gonna type my shit up’ and I used to type like 65 words a minute, n-gga.”

He added: “It was a skill I took up at a little white junior high school I went to. They gave a n-gga typing classes and I took it. I was one of them students that I took a wood class, a metal class, I took typing, I took home economics. I took classes that was like different.