No matter how Atlanta’s music community first learned, on 1 November, that Takeoff had been killed – whether via alarmed texts or social media posts – the overwhelming response was one of disbelief. Not just because one-third of rap superstar trio Migos had died at age 28 from a shooting at a Houston bowling alley, but also because the whole incident seemed so out of character for Takeoff in the first place.

“A lot of people are good people but get caught up and do bad things. Mistakes happen – I know that happens in life,” says Justin “Meezy” Williams, who manages rapper 21 Savage. “He’s not one of them. So it doesn’t hit me as something like, ‘Damn, where was he at? What was he doing?’ I know he wasn’t doing something he wasn’t supposed to do.”

In the immediate aftermath of Takeoff’s death, rap luminary Chuck D blamed the music industry for “normalising” gun violence, telling TMZ, “You have people who’ve grown up thinking that hip-hop death is a normal thing.”

Yet those who knew Takeoff best don’t want to paint his death as some cautionary tale for hip-hop writ large – not when the man himself so consciously avoided the public eye, and the troubles and antagonisms that can plague celebrities of his stature.

Instead they remember Migos’ youngest member, born Kirshnik Khari Ball, for his ambition, which was impressive even before 2013 breakout hit Versace. At 16, he was too young to drink when Migos were taking over Atlanta’s nightclubs, courting its DJs and buying sections to make a splashy impression before patrons had even heard a single verse.

Williams worked as a promoter at the 2,500 capacity club Mansion Elan, where the group’s hold was so strong – off the strength of performing early hits such as Bando and Jumpin Out Da Gym – that the club was nicknamed “Migos Elan.”

“Back when [Migos] were worth $30,000 or $40,000 for a club performance, we could get them for $15,000,” Williams said. “But even if you paid them $35,000, you’re gonna win. You’re gonna make your money back.”

Takeoff had established himself as a reliable performer, and he was content to let his bandmates – his uncle Quavo and Offset, Quavo’s cousin – network on the group’s behalf and claim the lion’s share of the limelight.

DJ Ray G, who spins for Cardi B on tour and hails from Migos’ native Lawrenceville, Georgia, linked up with the group during those initial club takeovers – from their first meeting in 2011 at Pink Flamingo, to Mansion Elan on Fridays and Obsessions on Saturdays.

“Sometimes [Takeoff] didn’t even go out,” he says. “We’d come back home and he’d still be awake – smoking, chilling, vibing. And you check the YouTube history and it’s Tupac and Biggie, shit like that. This kid’s 16, studying his craft – like, ‘I ain’t going out with you tonight. I’m going to stay here and listen to Big, Pac, Eminem.’”

Xavier Dotson, better known as Zaytoven, is a longtime fixture of Atlanta’s production scene who collaborates closely with Future and Gucci Mane. He remembers the first time Takeoff and Quavo visited his basement studio in Atlanta’s east side: “You didn’t even notice [Takeoff] until he started rapping,” he says.

Takeoff got his moniker from how he’d be able to record a verse in a single take, with no flubs or fouls. “Everybody else can go in the booth, and they’re piecing their verses together, thinking of a line,” Zaytoven says. “You ain’t gotta worry about [Takeoff] taking too long or none of that ‘cause he got his stuff together. Every time I seen Takeoff get in the booth, I know he’s gonna knock out his part real quick.”

In the early days, when Migos were stationed at Quavo’s mother’s basement in Lawrenceville, the trio would record their verses separately. “Takeoff would make a song when Quavo was running the day’s errands, and it was like they were in competition with each other: ‘Oh, you gon’ leave this song? I’m going to go harder than you on this one,’” Ray G says.

And so Takeoff gave an early glimpse of what became the signature “Migos flow” in precisely that fashion, without warning. “He just played a song one day, and the flow was there. It was the triplets, and everyone went, what?”

The iconic Migos flow is a punched-up take on hip-hop’s staccato triplets, a lyrical style of delivery first popularised two decades prior by groups such as Bone Thugs-n-Harmony and Three 6 Mafia. The Migos flow first rose to public consciousness with Versace, which Takeoff and Quavo recorded over a Zaytoven beat immediately after that first basement studio session.

Hip-hop has never been the same since. The Migos flow is now fully mainstream, crisscrossing from one musical genre to the next (and notching up an SNL parody by Donald Glover along the way). “When they came out with Versace, everyone’s rap pattern changed – it was like, you gotta rap like this for people to even want to listen to you,” Zaytoven says.

And yet right up until his death, Takeoff was the sort of rapper who shunned the spotlight, preferring to make his presence felt through the kind of lyrical precision that – no matter how one felt about trap music going mainstream – gave Migos undeniable street cred as masterclass hip-hop technicians.

“Quavo, he’s going to talk. Offset, he’s going to talk. Takeoff, he’s going, ‘Hey, when I need to rap, let me know,’” Williams says. “When they’re not booked, I might run into Offset or Quavo at a bowling alley, just chilling or having fun. If Takeoff wasn’t working, me personally, I’d never really seen him. He was the team player. He was the glue: ‘Yo, what we doing?’ He was the youngest one, but he was the most chill.”

“I don’t think you’re going to hear anything negative about Takeoff,” Williams adds. “Honestly bro, if it wasn’t about some money, some business or his family, he definitely was the No 1 candidate for ‘That don’t got shit to do with me.’”

Hip-hop has had to reckon with a seemingly non-stop string of high-profile deaths in recent years, a fact that Zaytoven finds particularly bitter as this violence has touched many artists with whom he’s collaborated. He struggles to remember how many Instagram memorial posts he’s done, for past collaborators such as King Von, Lil Keed, Trouble and Young Dolph.

“To be honest with you, me being a music producer that produces rap music, it’s hard to listen to the music now,” he says. “The lyrics are street and some of it is gangster, but when people are really dying, it makes you not want to hear it. It’s not fun or exciting any more when someone like Takeoff dies.”

And yet this recent rise in gun violence is by no means exclusive to hip-hop. “I just got off the phone with my mom,” Zaytoven said. “Some kids had assault rifles four houses down from [her] house, just shooting at 3:00 in broad daylight. And it’s almost off a TikTok challenge or something.”

In the aftermath of Takeoff’s death, videos of the rapper’s body lying at the scene began to circulate. To Williams, it’s one more example of Black death going viral in the social media age. “We’ve grown numb. We try to mourn and move because it happens so much.” He hesitates to pathologise hip-hop culture for what happened.

“I want us to say that we gotta do better as a culture, right?” he says. “But in some of these situations, it’s not necessarily the culture. This could have happened anywhere, anytime. From what I’m seeing, Takeoff was just there chilling at a bowling alley, and it just happened to be late. It wasn’t like he was in a back alley or a trap house, that they were in a shootout and he was shooting back. The only thing you can tell people is – don’t celebrate success when you’re somewhere as a Black man. It’s unfortunate.”

By Friday, one Atlanta muralist had honoured Takeoff by painting his smiling likeness on the city’s public BeltLine trail. Ray G’s voice breaks when he mentions it. The violence from 1 November feels senseless.

“Doing shows, riding planes together – we had a lot of firsts together, because this was our first big break,” he says. “I cherish all the memories, the smile he put on a lot of our faces, the love he showed us, the unselfishness. I don’t know how I’m gonna be able to deal with this one.”