22-Year-Old Rapper Killed In Prison After Riverside County Conviction

CALIFORNIA — Twenty-two-year-old Los Angeles rapper MoneySign Suede — real name Jaime Brugada Valdez — was killed in prison this week after being convicted of felony gun charges in Riverside County.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation confirmed the homicide at Correctional Training Facility in Soledad but did not comment on how Brugada died.

Instead, CDCR reported that at approximately 9:55 p.m. Tuesday, Brugada was missing from his cell. During a prison search, he was found "unresponsive in a shower area with injuries consistent with a homicide."

He was pronounced dead five minutes later.

Brugada was received into CDCR from Riverside County in December after he was sentenced to two years and eight months for being a felon/addict possessing/owning a firearm. He was also serving a concurrent one-year, four-month sentence for possession/owning a firearm, according to CDCR.

“People are very shocked,” Valdez’s attorney Nicholas Rosenberg told the Los Angeles Times following news of the death. “He was a very popular guy, very mild-mannered. People loved him.”

According to the attorney, Brugada was previously attacked while incarcerated.

An investigation was underway at the minimum/medium-security prison, according to CDCR.

The Monterey County coroner will determine Brugada’s official cause of death, although Rosenberg told the Times that his client was stabbed in the neck.

Tributes were pouring into MoneySign Suede's official Instagram account.

"Rest easy kid," one person wrote one person wrote.

MoneySign Suede had signed to Atlantic Records in 2021, and released his most recent album, “Parkside Baby,” in September.