Kiernan Jarryd Forbes, affectionately known to South Africans as AKA, was born on the 28th of January 1988 in Cape Town to Lynn and Tony Forbes.
AKA emerged onto the hip-hop scene with a group called Entity which consisted of Kiernan, Vice Versa, and Greyhound who were his two friends. The group received a nomination in the KORA Awards for Best African Hip-hop but sadly the group disbanded in 2006 and this saw Kiernan venture into studying Sound Engineering.
In the same year that saw the end of Entity, AKA teamed up with two other members to co-found a production collective called, The I.V League. The I.V League was a collective that made production credits for artists such as Khuli Chana, JR and Pro-Kid to just name a few.
Kiernan Forbes was not just a rapper or record producer, he also was an actor, singer, songwriter and audio engineer which means he was able to also produce his own music which he boasted about on Twitter weeks before he passed.
AKA will be remembered for his hit songs, Congratulate, Run Jozi, Composure, The World is yours, Jealousy, Caiphus song and most recently Lemons (Lemonade) in which he featured Nasty C.
Kiernan was shot dead outside a night club in Florida, Durban when a hooded gunman ran up to him and a group of his friends as they were leaving the club and shot him in the head while another gunman released more gunshots which claimed the life of his manager Tebello Motsoane.
Both Forbes and Motsoane were pronounced dead on the scene.