More than any other musical genre, it seems like the world of rap is a particular magnet for tragedy. Sadly, all too many stars of hip-hop have died far too early, many at the peak of their fame and influence. Here are a few of the rappers who died tragically. The Notorious B.I.G, Biggie Smalls, Christopher Wallace, whatever you want to call him, there's no doubt that he was by far the dominant figure of the 1990s East Coast rap world. Biggie's two studio albums, 1994's Ready to Die and 1997's Life After Death, sold many millions of copies and rank among the most acclaimed hip-hop albums of all time. He had a hypnotic, eloquent, and inimitable flow which brought to life many canonical, catchy, and catchphrase-generating smashes like "Juicy," "Big Poppa," "Hypnotize," and "Mo Money Mo Problems." And that's to say nothing of his affiliation with Junior M.A.F.I.A. or his star-making work with close friend and producer Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs. After leaving a music industry event in the early hours of March 9th 1997, Wallace was riding in the passenger seat of a Chevrolet Suburban when another vehicle drove up and opened fire. While no one was ever arrested or held accountable for the killing, the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office released their autopsy report 15 years later. According to the document, Wallace was shot four times. When Wallace arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, he was suffering a cardiac arrest event related to the shooting trauma and was soon pronounced dead. The Notorious B.I.G. was just 24 years old.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00More than any other musical genre, it seems like the world of rap is a particular magnet
00:05for tragedy.
00:06Sadly, all too many stars of hip-hop have died far too early, many at the peak of their
00:11fame and influence.
00:13Here are a few of the rappers who died tragically.
00:17The Notorious B.I.G., Biggie Smalls, Christopher Wallace, whatever you want to call him, there's
00:22no doubt he was by far the dominant figure of the 1990s East Coast rap world.
00:28Biggie's two studio albums, 1994's Ready to Die and 1997's Life After Death, sold many
00:35millions of copies and rank among the most acclaimed hip-hop albums of all time.
00:40He had a hypnotic, eloquent, and inimitable flow, which brought to life many canonical,
00:46catchy, and catchphrase-generating smashes, like Juicy, Big Papa, Hypnotize, and Mo Money
00:52Mo Problems.
00:54And that's to say nothing of his affiliation with Junior Mafia or his star-making work
00:59with close friend and producer Sean Puff Daddy Combs.
01:02After leaving a music industry event in the early hours of March 9th, 1997, Wallace was
01:08riding in the passenger seat of a Chevrolet Suburban when another vehicle drove up and
01:12opened fire.
01:14While no one was ever arrested or held accountable for the killing, the Los Angeles County Coroner's
01:18Office released their autopsy report 15 years later.
01:22According to the document, Wallace was shot four times.
01:26When Wallace arrived at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, he was suffering a cardiac arrest
01:31event related to the shooting trauma, and was soon pronounced dead.
01:35The notorious B.I.G. was just 24 years old.
01:38"...we look at death from the selfish side, like, you know, that guy died, oh it's so
01:42sad, why is it sad, he's away from all this bad stuff that's here on Earth."
01:47In the 90s, the East Coast had Biggie Smalls, and the West Coast had Tupac Shakur.
01:53After cutting his teeth with Digital Underground, Tupac went solo, releasing four classic albums
01:58during his lifetime that showcased not only his guttural voice and his hard-as-nails views
02:03on the world, but also his versatility.
02:06Shakur released tons of music, but expressed himself with acting, too, appearing in movies
02:11such as Juice, Above the Rim, and Poetic Justice.
02:15On September 7th, 1996, Shakur went to Las Vegas to see boxer Mike Tyson fight Bruce
02:21Seldon at the MGM Grand.
02:23After a scuffle with a gang member in the casino, he got into a BMW with Death Row Records
02:28boss Suge Knight.
02:30On the way to a club where Tupac was to perform, a white Cadillac pulled up alongside the BMW,
02:36and a still-unknown assailant fired 13 rounds into the car.
02:41Four of them hit Shakur.
02:42At a local hospital, the rapper endured several life-saving surgeries, including the removal
02:47of a badly damaged lung, and was placed on a ventilator and respirator.
02:52After a brief resuscitation, Shakur succumbed to his injuries and died six days later.
02:57He was 25.
03:00After hip-hop had ventured into more psychological, introspective territory courtesy of the stars
03:05of the 2000s, Nipsey Hussle brought back a lot of what made gangster rap so captivating
03:10in the 90s.
03:11A former member of the Rollin' 60 Crips gang in Los Angeles, he documented and worked through
03:16those experiences on a slew of mixtapes, a couple of dozen singles, and just one studio
03:21album, Victory Lap, a platinum seller and Grammy nominee for Best Rap Album.
03:27Hussle was just as devoted to ending L.A.'s violent street culture as he was to documenting
03:32it.
03:33The rapper owned a strip mall located in the somewhat rough Crenshaw Boulevard area where
03:37he'd grown up, and he had plans to build homes and stores to reinvigorate and change
03:42the area for the better.
03:44The area was home to Marathon, Hussle's clothing store, and while standing outside of it one
03:49day in March 2019, he was killed in a drive-by shooting.
03:53The rapper and anti-violence advocate was 33.
03:57Just as rap was earning mainstream appeal and approval via a slew of talented but widely
04:02palatable 80s acts, along came N.W.A.
04:06The group virtually invented gangster rap, a subgenre that detailed the shocking and
04:11often violent world of inner-city Los Angeles, in which the group's members were born and
04:15raised.
04:16N.W.A. brought a new kind of storytelling and a fresh point of view to popular music
04:21with albums like Straight Outta Compton, and also launched its members to stardom, and
04:26Eazy-E was among them.
04:28Otherwise known as Eric Wright, the gang member-turned-musician possessed N.W.A.'s most distinctive voice and
04:35contributed to some of the group's most iconic works.
04:38After an ugly feud split N.W.A. in the early 90s, Eazy embarked on a highly successful
04:43solo career.
04:45In February 1995, Wright, who'd long suffered from asthma, checked into the intensive care
04:50unit of Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Hospital.
04:54He assumed he was suffering from a worsening bout of asthma, but he was wrong.
04:58Shortly after, doctors diagnosed the rapper with AIDS.
05:02Ten days later, complications from the disease took his life.
05:06Eazy-E was 30.
05:09In 2010, Mac Miller made an auspicious debut with the Mixtape Kids when he was just 18
05:15years old.
05:16That spawned the hit Knock Knock, and in the following year, his first studio album proper,
05:21Blue Slide Park, topped the Billboard album chart.
05:24For the rest of the decade, Miller was among the most popular and prolific voices in hip
05:29producing for other rappers, starring on his own TV series, and releasing four more albums
05:35and many, many singles.
05:37But Miller's life was sadly struck down right at the peak of his fame.
05:41On September 7th, 2018, a friend found Miller in his home in California's San Fernando Valley.
05:47Paramedics arrived to address what was believed to be a cardiac arrest and pronounced the
05:52rapper dead at the scene.
05:54A toxicology report from the Los Angeles County Coroner ruled that Miller died from an accidental
05:59overdose of cocaine, alcohol, and a powerful painkiller, fentanyl.
06:04He was just 26 years old.
06:07There were plenty of pop-savvy R&B trios around in the 90s, but TLC stood out from the rest,
06:14thanks to the distinct and charismatic personalities of its three members.
06:18The L in TLC was Lisa Lefty Lopez, the rapping complement to her singing cohorts T-Boz and
06:25Chili.
06:26Lefty performed memorable, acrobatic raps on almost all of TLC's many hits, including
06:31on Ain't Too Proud to Beg, Waterfalls, and No Scrubs.
06:36Lopez was also outspoken and assertive off the stage, and famously spoke out against
06:41the exploitative nature of the music industry on an episode of Behind the Music.
06:45This is how a group can sell 10 million records and be broke, and everyone, get ready to do
06:50your math.
06:52Lopez maintained a home in rural Honduras, and was driving an SUV while visiting the
06:56country one day in April 2002.
06:59Tragically, she lost control of the vehicle and it ran off the road and turned over multiple
07:04times.
07:05There were seven other people in the SUV, including Lopez's two siblings, the R&B trio
07:10Egypt, and two producers working on Lopez's documentary.
07:14All were treated at a hospital and released, but the accident killed the TLC rapper.
07:19Lopez was 30 years old.
07:22Back in the early 80s, the Beastie Boys were a group of New York rockers so taken with
07:27the city's burgeoning rap scene that they abandoned their punk rock sound to become
07:31a hip-hop group, but kept their hard rock backbone.
07:34Adam Horovitz, Mike Diamond, and Adam Yauch exposed suburban audiences to rap for the
07:39first time, and in doing so, became one of the genre's earliest and most successful acts.
07:45But tragedy struck in 2009, when Yauch noticed swelling in his throat.
07:50Tests revealed the swelling to be the result of a cancerous tumor in his salivary gland.
07:54The band canceled a slate of concert dates and delayed the release of the album Hot Sauce
07:59Committee Part 1.
08:01In a YouTube video released at the time, Yauch reassured his fans that there was nothing
08:05to worry about.
08:06"...and they've caught it early and it's not anywhere else in my body and so, so that's
08:11the good news."
08:12Sadly, however, he didn't recover.
08:15Three years later, Yauch passed away from complications of cancer at the age of 47.
08:21Horovitz and Diamond paid tribute to their friend when the group was inducted into the
08:25Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
08:29Born in Jamaica and raised in New York, Dwight Myers took on the stage name Heavy D, and
08:34with his group The Boys, became the first act signed to influential R&B and hip-hop
08:38label Uptown Records.
08:40With and without the collective, Heavy D scored a slew of top-selling albums and pop-radio-friendly
08:46hits, and did a fair bit of acting, too, making appearances on a wide number of 90s sitcoms,
08:51chief among which was The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
08:54He also scored a recurring role as the operator of a restaurant frequented by the main characters
08:59in Bones.
09:01In November 2011, however, Myers collapsed at his Los Angeles home, and paramedics rushed
09:06him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
09:09The hitmaker died in the hospital hours later at the age of 44.
09:13A month later, a Los Angeles County coroner investigation revealed the cause of Heavy
09:17D's sudden and mysterious death, a pulmonary embolism brought on by deep vein thrombosis.
09:24A blood clot had likely formed in his leg during a long-haul flight from London to Los
09:28Angeles, and it migrated to a lung, which held back blood flow and put pressure on his
09:33heart.
09:35Big Punisher's career was only getting started when his life came to a tragic end.
09:39After his first verse in 1995 on a couple of Fat Joe tracks, Big Pun released his debut
09:45studio LP Capital Punishment in 1998, and a year later, he was all over Collective Terror
09:51Squad's The Album.
09:53Big Punisher also had a series of solo smashes like I'm Not a Player, It's So Hard, and
09:59How We Roll, and crossed over to pop radio with guest spots on Jennifer Lopez's Feeling
10:03So Good and Joe's Still Not a Player.
10:07Born Christopher Rios, Big Punisher was a large man, with his size reflected in his
10:11stage name, and that, sadly, is what led to his fatal health problems.
10:16The rapper started to rapidly put on weight in his late teens, and press materials claimed
10:21he ended up around 400 pounds.
10:24In the summer of 1999, he lost 100 pounds via a Duke University program, but left early
10:29and returned to old habits, and the weight soon returned.
10:33In February 2000, authorities were summoned to his hotel room in White Plains, New York,
10:38after being told that the rapper was struggling to breathe.
10:41He was transferred to a hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
10:45Rios weighed 698 pounds at the time of his death, and his heart had expanded to three
10:50times that of a normal, healthy size.
10:53Big Punisher was 28 when he died.
10:57Staten Island's own Wu-Tang Clan is arguably the greatest collective in rap history, boasting
11:02nine full-fledged members who each brought their own unique contributions to the enterprise.
11:08They're also responsible for all-time classics like Into the Wu-Tang 36 Chambers and Wu-Tang
11:14Forever.
11:15Russell Jones, otherwise known as Old Dirty Bastard, is likely the most famous Wu-Tang
11:20rapper, what with his distinctive vocal range, wild style, and flair for both the dramatic
11:25and comical.
11:27Also known by the stage names Dirt McGirt, Osiris, and Big Baby Jesus, ODB shined on
11:33Wu-Tang standards like Protect Your Neck, along with his solo singles such as Got Your
11:38Money.
11:39In 2004, however, ODB was at a New York recording studio working on his fourth solo album, Osiris,
11:45when he suddenly collapsed without warning.
11:48By the time medical authorities arrived, the rapper was already dead.
11:52A few weeks later, the NYC Medical Examiner released the results of an autopsy.
11:57A toxic combination of cocaine and Tramadol, a prescription painkiller, had caused a heart
12:02attack.
12:03ODB died just a few days before his 36th birthday.
12:07If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance Abuse
12:11and Mental Health Administration's 24-7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
12:18That's 1-800-662-4357.