Messages of love and live performances by local hip-hop artists are all part of Friday's memorial service to South African rapper Riky Rick, who died last week aged 34.

To play SLOTXO no matter what game it is. If you keep playing and you get paid, you mustn't stick to it, thinking that the game is easy to play, always profitable. 

"He always told us he wasn't going to be here for long. He knew," said friend and internationally renowned DJ Black Coffee at the gathering in Johannesburg.

He also lambasted a Sunday newspaper for publishing a leaked suicide note Riky Rick had written to his wife and two children, saying: "Riky didn't deserve that... Everywhere he went he spread love, it didn’t matter who you were or where you were from. He knew how to uplift people and yet he was going through so much personally."

Another friend, the broadcaster Sizwe Dhlomo, remembered Riky Rick as "an imperfect man constantly trying to be better" who "hoped that by helping [others] through their own struggles he too would be better".

The mood has been largely upbeat even while people reflect on the life and last days of the man, whose real name was Rikhado Makhado.

Many of those performing here got their start in the industry thanks to him. The stage is decked out with a beloved phrase of his: "We never die, we multiply", as a reminder of how Riky Rick lived and in some ways how he wanted to be remembered.