BREAKING NEWS! Proof was shot to death overnight here in the D. At a club on 8 Mile, no less. Needless to say, Proof is a hip-hop artist, because otherwise he’d have a name like Bob Smith. He was DOA at the hospital, so I guess it’s safe to assume he wasn’t shot in the fleshy part of the thigh, which was last week’s comic relief on “The Sopranos.”

I recommend that link, which at this moment has the rushed, get-me-rewrite tone of a reporter breathlessly dictating a hot scoop from the cop shop. And there are priceless details: Proof was Eminem’s best man at his cursed January wedding, already defunct. He served as Em’s “on-stage hype man,” whatever that is. And this is the second Eminem posse shooting in recent months; Obie Trice was shot while driving on the Lodge freeway on New Year’s Eve.

Amazing: Proof’s Wikipedia entry already has his date of death on it. By my estimation, he’s been dead barely five hours. The amazing internet.

Please don’t take my somewhat sardonic tone for a lack of appreciation for the finality of death. Every man’s violent death diminishes me, etc. But when you participate in a culture that lionizes violence and gun-toting and all the rest of it, a certain amount of this is, how you say? Inevitable. This is one reason part of me roots for Eminem, who seems to be trying to be a grown-up. I doubt he was in that club, but what do I know?

IMMEDIATE UPDATE: Some sources claim we’re having a rap war. Oh, joy.