At about 10pm on Saturday, October 17, A-Q stepped out for a walk in East Legon, Accra. About ten masked men on five motorcycles surrounded him, the riders trying to box him into a corner while the men sitting behind them swung machetes. One blow landed on his elbow, and he says it was meant for his head.
He broke away and ran across the road, where, in his words, “a good Samaritan picked me up and rushed me to hospital.” He went straight into surgery. The attack has been reported to the Ghana Police Service, which is investigating. The rapper, born Gilbert Bani, says he is now “in a safe place while the police work to establish who was behind it and why.”
He kept the whole thing off his timeline for five days. The account came this morning, in two plain text cards on X and one photo of the wound.
“I ask that you don’t speculate about who was responsible or direct anger at anyone,” he wrote. “Let the police do their work, and if you have any information, please share it with them.”
Some people had a theory ready anyway. A few of the first replies joked that the beef had left the booth, which is the kind of line A-Q’s own history invites. When The NATIVE profiled him in 2020, it described a young rapper who dove head first into anything that didn’t sit right with him, with beefs “a huge part of his brand,” and an older one who now “picks and chooses what to speak about.” His post picks no one. It thanks the stranger who stopped and the doctors and nurses who treated him, and it tells fans he is “well by God’s grace.”
The days in between were quiet, though his feed was not empty. On the morning after the attack he was reposting fans who had dug up a bar from “Note to Self,” his letter to his future self on 2025’s God’s Engineering 3 (The Beginning), where he guesses that by 2032 “they should’ve made flying cars,” and who were calling him a prophet for it. He reposted praise for Blaqbonez’s new album, NOMADINHO: The 4th Prime. The same song the fans were quoting also carries this wish for the older A-Q: “Hope the nightmares of losing everything don’t get to you.”
He has been at this since 2005, when he pressed his debut himself and sold it on university campuses. God’s Engineering won Best Rap Album at the Headies, and in August he marked ten straight years of Headies nominations, with God’s Engineering 3 up for Best Rap Album this year.
He signed off this morning’s post with four words: “Peace and love always.”