Jacksonville rappers Hakeem “Ksoo” Robinson and his cousin Leroy “ATK Scotty” Whitaker Jr. got hit with life sentences without parole yesterday October 1, 2025 for gunning down Charles “Lil Buck” McCormick Jr. back in 2020. It’s the end of a brutal, drawn-out saga that started with beef in the local drill rap scene and spiraled into a deadly ambush, all tied up in gang loyalties that run deep in Jacksonville’s streets.
McCormick, just 23 at the time, didn’t stand a chance. He’d wrapped up a job interview at a staffing agency and was walking through the parking lot of Dames Pointe Plaza in the Arlington area when the shots rang out on January 15, 2020. Gunmen jumped him out of nowhere, turning a fresh start into a tragedy.
A tweet from X.
This wasn’t random it was payback, prosecutors said, rooted in a vicious rivalry between ATK (where Robinson and Whitaker rolled with) and 6Block (McCormick’s crew). The spark? A diss track McCormick dropped, clowning the 2019 murder of Willie “Boss Goon” Addison, who was Robinson’s stepbrother. Addison got taken out in a drive-by right after performing at a Jacksonville club in January 2019, kicking off this bloody back-and-forth that’s haunted the city’s rap world ever since.
Fast-forward through arrests in 2020, indictments by a grand jury in 2022, and those separate guilty verdicts on first-degree murder from July 31 this year. Yesterday, Duval County Circuit Judge laid down the hammer life, no outs, no parole. Robinson, now 26, even got credit for the 1,666 days he’s already done behind bars, plus a $7,500 restitution hit to the Victims’ Crimes Compensation Trust Fund.
The trial was a gut-punch of evidence. Dominique “Butta” Barner, the wheelman for the getaway car, flipped for a plea deal and spilled how the duo plotted the hit. Grainy surveillance caught the chaos, and an off-duty cop tailed their ride till it wrecked out. Shell casings, phone pings, social media flexes like that Instagram post slapping “bye bye” on McCormick’s pic all piled up. And the rap lyrics? Prosecutors hammered them as more than bars they said Robinson was scripting his own confession in his tracks.
But the real knife-twist came from family. Abdul Robinson Sr., Ksoo’s own dad, took the stand against him ID’ing his boy as the triggerman and owning up to torching evidence like bloody clothes. Talk about a father’s nightmare. The judge didn’t mince words
“The jury spoke unanimous on July 31. First-degree murder means life, period no parole.”
McCormick’s mom, Perkins, laid her heart bare in court, her words echoing the raw ache of it all the family shattered, the plea to kids everywhere to ditch the glorification of beefs in songs and on corners.
“It doesn’t take away the pain,” she said through tears, “but knowing they can’t hurt anyone else… that’s something.”
This whole mess has folks fired up again about dragging rap lyrics into court is it art or a smoking gun? Defense teams cried foul, saying it’s a slippery slope from fiction to felony. Prosecutors? They fired back that when lines echo real bodies, it’s fair game. And that dad testifying against his son? It’s got people split heroic truth-telling or the ultimate stab in the back?
For Jacksonville, it’s a stark reminder of how these ATK-6Block wars bleed from beats into bullets, claiming lives and scarring the drill scene that pumps out so much of the city’s sound. State Attorney Melissa Nelson nailed it post-verdict
“Five years back, these two stalked and smoked a man in daylight. Today, justice locked ’em down.”
Life sentences seal the deal no freedom for Robinson or Whitaker. But as the gavel drops, the real grind is on the streets How do you unplug the fuse between music, gangs, and this endless revenge loop before it claims another soul?
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