Rapper C-Knight, one of the founding members of the Long Beach-based G-funk collective Dove Shack, is reportedly on life support after having a stroke.
C-Knight, whose legal name is Arnez Blount, was hospitalized Oct. 18 due to complications from diabetes, the rapper’s father, George Lee Washington Blount Jr., told TMZ. According to the outlet, Arnez Blount suffered a stroke while receiving dialysis and went into cardiac arrest, which resulted in him needing to be resuscitated.
Blount’s father said that his son was in an unresponsive state and that the family is awaiting results from further testing to assess brain activity.
Dove Shack group member Bo-Roc remarked on C-Knight’s health troubles in an Oct. 22 Instagram post.
“I’m literally begging all who see’s this post to pray for my brother from another mother and one of my closest friends in the world Arnez a.k.a C Knight from the Dove Shack,” he wrote. “He’s the founder of the Dove Shack and the reason I had the opportunity to make #summertimeinthelbc for the world so please please send him positive energy and healing prayers.”
The Dove Shack, whose third member is 2Scoops, first broke through when the group was featured on Long Beach rapper and G-funk staple Warren G’s debut 1994 album “Regulate … G Funk Era.” The group was fittingly spotlighted on the track “This Is the Shack.”
In 1995, Dove Shack released its debut LP, also titled “This Is the Shack,” which featured the hit single “Summertime in the LBC.” The song — also included in the soundtrack of the 1995 hip-hop documentary “The Show” — peaked at No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and hit No. 11 on Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs chart.
The group reconvened in 2006 to release their sophomore album, “Reality Has Got Me Tied Up,” which featured the late Long Beach singer and rapper Nate Dogg. As a solo artist, C-Knight released the 2001 LP “Knight Time.”
C-Knight said his talents were first noticed by Warren G.
“We grew up in the same neighborhood, we grew up around each other … along with Nate Dogg … and Snoop [Dogg] too,” he told Canada’s Outlaw Radio in 2020. “I was discovered by Warren G during a rap battle. He had just did the song with Mista Grimm [“Indo Smoke”] … he said he liked the way I was speaking, he liked what I was spittin’ and, s—, we was in the studio about four days later after that.”
C-Knight said Dove Shack’s biggest hit “Summertime in the LBC” was all about having fun.
“We wrote that track in 15 minutes, man … it was like low effort,” he said during the Outlaw Radio interview. “It’s basically just us reflecting on our growing up in Long Beach … just that whole element of having summer barbecues and things like that, having fun.”
