Namewee Confirms His “Death Announcement” on 1 Apr is Fake & Says It’s to Share a Message

Ah, 1 April, or April Fools’ Day; the day of elaborate trickery.

Not so much here in Singapore, except a stupid blue cat announcing that he’s getting banned due to the extensive use of Singlish, which leads to cheers all over Singapore until they realised that it’s a joke:

Nevertheless, there isn’t any controversial joke in Singapore, but still, we don’t have to look much further than our neighbours in Malaysia when it comes to absurdly shocking people.

Because notorious 40-year-old rapper Namewee briefly shocked the world by announcing his “death”.

What Happened?

Just two minutes after midnight on 1 April 2024, a black-and-white picture was shared across Namewee’s official social media feeds, with the caption “1983 – 2024”.

Even his Wikipedia page was updated with his “death date”, on 1 April 2024.

To top it all off, he uploaded his “obituary” at 4:52am, calling himself “The Ghosician”.

Ghosician, which is the name of his 2022 album, also means “only a ghost would make music” in Chinese.

The “obituary” even gave details on a wake that would be held at Kuala Lumpur’s Nirvana Center from 2pm to 10pm, along with a farewell ceremony held between 7pm to 10pm.

Attendees were encouraged to don all-white.

It seems Namewee really committed to his publicity stunt, as around 2:52pm, there was another picture of his flower-decorated coffin placed in front of a memorial video.

Netizens were reeling with emotions all at once, with some commenting their condolences, while others felt (understandably) suspicious, questioning the authenticity behind Namewee’s posts.

If you took a scroll through his comments section, you’d most likely see comments split into a few camps:

1. Those who genuinely believe the “death”
2. Those who think it’s an April Fools’ joke
3. Lots of haters.

Following his realistic-looking posts, Malaysia newspaper Sinchew Daily tried reaching out to Nirvana for verification, but didn’t get a response.

Adding fuel to the fire, a Facebook video was posted at noon, capturing an extremely passive aggressive confrontation between a journalist and Namewee’s representative, whereby the journalist insisted on knowing whether Namewee is indeed dead or not as it’s a “waste of resources”.

You can watch the video here:

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But perhaps not all ghosts are just hungry. Some of them are multi-talented too; specialising in both music and pranking.

The Plot Twist (That Everyone Saw Coming)

In a turn of events, the hubbub was extinguished when Namewee took to the virtual podium and debunked his “death”.

You might be wondering, why go through so much trouble and effort, just to bait fellow fans?

It turns out Namewee wanted to make a point about “pre-death planning”, reflecting on how he was able to “experience his funeral”.

The Johorean shared how he went through many losses in recent years–feeling particularly “caught off-guard” by his pet and close friends’ passing.

He also opened up about his personal health matters, citing pressure affecting his well-being, which has led to several instances of hospitalisation.

He continued justifying his controversial actions, explaining how everybody, regardless of how well they’ve done in life, “faces death” at the end of the day.

In typical Namewee fashion, he defended the extremeness of his antics.

He then followed his statement up with an announcement about his upcoming documentary, which was supposed to document this experience, and a new music video, slated to be released at 4:44pm on 4 April.

It is no coincidence that Namewee has chosen a time and date with the number 4 in it. In Chinese culture, 4 is pronounced as si, which sounds phonetically similar to the character for death.

In addition, he highlighted that this “death announcement” was done on 1 April due to April Fools’ Day, but it’s not a laughing matter. Instead, it’s to coincide with Qingming Festival, which takes place on 4 April 2024, too.