Yesterday the music world lost another one. Media Take Out confirmed that 28 year old R&B singer B. Smyth passed away, and the cause of death for the otherwise healthy Black man was sudden heart and respiratory failure.
The R&B singer’s older brother Denzil confirmed the tragic news with a video posted on B. Smyth’s Instagram page Thursday, saying the “Win Win” singer, whose real name was Brandon Smith, “passed away this morning from respiratory failure after a long battle with pulmonary fibrosis.”
“On behalf of my brother and my family we want to say thank you to all of you for all of your love & support throughout the years,” Denzil wrote in the caption of the post. “We also want to say thank you for all of your prayers. #RIPBSMYTH Love you bro! 🙏🏾☁️”
In the video, he noted that his brother often talked about how he loved his fans and had been watching dance challenges for his latest released single “Twerkaholic, Pt.2” three weeks ago while he was in the intensive care unit at the hospital.
B. Smyth is the latest in a growing number of Black men who have died suddenly, with inexplicable heart failure as a contributing factor in their death.
Around the western world, physicians are ringing alarm bells – saying that for some inexplicable reason, many more people are dying than expected under normal circumstances. This phenomenon is called excess mortality. It’s the number of deaths beyond what would be normally expected. An observation of excess mortality can be a signal that something is wrong.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported excess mortality almost every week since mid-May 2022, and during the second half of 2022, the weekly number of deaths in the U.S. represented an excess of 5 to 12% above the expected mortality.
The US Centers for Disease control does not break down the excess deaths by race, so it’s not clear whether what it is killing people is disproportionately effecting Black Americans.
