In the same way that Southern cities occasionally generate musicians who bear the burden of their surroundings in every bar they write, Jacksonville, Florida gave birth to Lil Poppa, Janarious Mykel Wheeler. When he was still a teenager in 2014, he began recording music. In 2018, he gained widespread recognition with “Purple Hearts,” a song that hit with the kind of emotional directness that doesn’t need a marketing strategy to find its audience. The RIAA awarded “Eternal Living,” which was released in 2019, a gold rating. There was a plausible argument that the best years of his career were still to come by the time he was in his early twenties, signed to Interscope, and developing a catalog that combined Southern hip-hop with something more candid. Eight days before turning twenty-six, on February 18, 2026, he passed away in Fulton County, Georgia. Three-year-old PJ was the boy he left behind.
PJ was born in June 2022 to Lil Poppa and Toie Roberts, a pairing that united two very different worlds without any public discussion. Toie is the CEO of her own beauty company, Ashanti Beauty, and the oldest daughter of Rick Ross, one of the most well-known celebrities in hip-hop. When Ross announced his grandson’s birth on social media and referred to himself as “Grandpa Gucci” in a post that elicited the kind of positive reaction that occurs when a well-known major personality announces something really tender, the family relationship briefly came to light. The moment was more noteworthy for what it implied than for what it disclosed about Lil Poppa’s relationship with Roberts: that PJ was part of a family network that went well beyond his parents, that his arrival was being noticed, and that his grandfather intended to be present in whatever way that implied.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Janarious Mykel Wheeler |
| Stage Name | Lil Poppa |
| Date of Birth | March 18, 2000 |
| Date of Death | February 18, 2026 |
| Age at Death | 25 |
| Place of Death | Fulton County, Georgia |
| Cause of Death | Suicide by gunshot |
| Son’s Name | PJ |
| Son’s Birth | June 2022 |
| Son’s Age | 3 (at time of father’s death) |
| Son’s Mother | Toie Roberts (daughter of Rick Ross, CEO of Ashanti Beauty) |
| Notable Songs | “Purple Hearts” (2018), “Eternal Living” (2019), “Love & War” (2021) |
| Label | Collective / Rule #1 / Interscope |
| Reference Website | lilpoppa.com |
Throughout his life, Lil Poppa kept his kid mostly hidden from the public, which was a conscious decision rather than a practical mishap. The majority of his followers admired but didn’t fully get the domestic nuances of his life, such as where he lived, who he loved, and what his day was like outside of studios and stages. He was the type of artist who wanted to let the music bear the public weight of his identity. Although the rapper’s typical seclusion over family matters means certainty has its limitations, PJ appears in biographical documents as his only confirmed child, and the consistency of that information across various sources shows it’s accurate.
The public lacks a definitive response to the subject of Lil Poppa and Toie Roberts’ relationship prior to his passing. As is frequently the case when two individuals with public personas have a child together without their status being publicly confirmed, there was conjecture. The fact that they were co-parenting, that both were active in PJ’s life, and that Toie publicly expressed a sadness that was more nuanced than the term “ex” could adequately describe in the wake of Lil Poppa’s passing are all more obvious. Their son was being raised by her. He has vanished. The majority of the weight is in the space between those two facts.
Lil Poppa was discovered dead in Fulton County on February 18, 2026, after crashing his vehicle on a roadway close to Hapeville, Georgia. A self-inflicted gunshot wound was determined to be the cause of death by the Fulton County medical examiner. He was twenty-five years old. Meek Mill, Yo Gotti, Boosie Badazz, Nardo Wick, and other musicians paid tribute to him in response, a list that demonstrated both his financial success and the sincere love his peers felt for him as a person rather than just an artist. In the days following his passing, “Eternal Living,” which had received its gold certification years prior, became popular once more with the unique bittersweet character that a song title takes on when the creator is no longer living to hear it performed.
PJ is three years old. He won’t have direct memories of his father as he grows up, which is a different kind of sorrow than what you can explain to someone who asks. He would grow up with a mother starting her own company, a grandfather who went by Gucci Grampa when he was born, and a record catalog created by a guy who was only starting to realize his own potential. Sitting with all of this, there’s a sense that those left to continue the story are doing so cautiously and discreetly, which is precisely how Lil Poppa would have wanted it.
