Friends and family are mourning the loss of rapper MoneySign Suede.
The California native, born Jaime Brugada Valdez, was killed at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad on April 25, according to a press release issued by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. He was 22 years old.
Correctional Training Facility (CTF) officials are investigating his death as a homicide.
Suede's attorney, Nicholas Rosenberg, told NBC News that the musician was stabbed in the neck in a shower.
"There's an investigation, but at this point the motive remains unknown," Rosenberg told NBC News on April 27. "Suede was a very popular guy, very mild-mannered. Everybody loved him."
According to the CDCR, a search for Suede was launched after he was unaccounted for during a routine institutional count. Correctional officers found him unresponsive in another area of the housing unit with "injuries consistent with a homicide."
"Staff quickly initiated life-saving measures and summoned emergency services to transport Brugada to an on-site medical facility for treatment," the release explained, adding he was "pronounced deceased at 10:00 p.m."
He had been serving a two-year and eight-month sentence for possession/owning firearm by felon or addict as a second-striker and a one-year, fourth-month sentence for possession/owning firearm with conviction of a violent felony (to be served concurrently), according to the CDCR.
Suede, who began rapping at the age of 16, dropped his breakthrough song, "Back to the Bag," in 2020. Shortly before his conviction, he opened up about the journey behind his music career.
"After I dropped my first song, it just felt good," he said during a September 2022 interview with Tapped In. "It just kept me motivated, I just kept wanting to get that feeling."
His death comes nearly one month after he released the video to his latest single, "Lost Hope."
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