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.
"We look at death from a selfish side, like, you know that guy died.
Oh, that's so sad.
Why is it sad?
He's away from all that bad stuff that's here on earth."
In the '90s, the East Coast had Biggie Smalls, and the West West Coast had Tupac Shakur.
After cutting his teeth with Digital Underground, Tupac went solo, releasing four classic albums
during his lifetime that showcased not only his guttural voice and his hard-as-nails views
on the world, but also his versatility.
Shakur released tons of music but expressed himself with acting, too, appearing in movies
such as Juice, Above the Rim, and Poetic Justice.
On September 7th 1996, Shakur went to Las Vegas to see boxer Mike Tyson fight Bruce
Seldon at the MGM Grand.
After a scuffle with a gang member in the casino, he got into a BMW with Death Row Records
boss Suge Knight.
On the way to a club where Tupac was to perform, a white Cadillac pulled up alongside the BMW,
and a still-unknown assailant fired 13 rounds into the car.
Four of them hit Shakur.
At a local hospital, the rapper endured several life-saving surgeries, including the removal
of a badly damaged lung, and was placed on a ventilator and respirator.
After a brief resuscitation, Shakur succumbed to his injuries and died six days later.
He was 25.
After hip-hop had ventured into more psychological, introspective territory courtesy of the stars
of the 2000s, Nipsey Hussle brought back a lot of what made gangsta rap so captivating
in the '90s.
A former member of the Rolling Sixty Crips gang in Los Angeles, he documented and worked
through those experiences on a slew of mixtapes, a couple of dozen singles, and just one studio
album: Victory Lap, a platinum-seller and Grammy nominee for Best Rap album.
Hussle was just as devoted to ending L.A.'s violent street culture as he was to documenting
it.
The rapper owned a strip mall located in the somewhat rough Crenshaw Boulevard area where
he'd grown up, and he had plans to build homes and stores to reinvigorate and change the
area for the better.
The area was home to Marathon, Hussle's clothing store, and while standing outside of it one
day in March 2019, he was killed in a drive-by shooting.
The rapper and anti-violence advocate was 33.
Just as rap was earning mainstream appeal and approval via a slew of talented but widely
palatable '80s acts, along came N.W.A.
The group virtually invented gangsta rap, a subgenre that detailed the shocking and
often violent world of inner-city Los Angeles, in which the group's members were born and
raised.
N.W.A. brought a new kind of storytelling and a fresh point of view to popular music
with albums like Straight Outta Compton, and also launched its members to stardom, and
Eazy-E was among them.
Otherwise known as Eric Wright, the gang member-turned-musician possessed N.W.A.'s most distinctive voice,
and contributed to some of the group's most iconic works.
After an ugly feud split N.W.A. in the early 90s, Eazy embarked on a highly successful
solo career.
In February 1995, Wright, who'd long suffered from asthma, checked into the intensive care
unit of Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Hospital.
He assumed he was suffering from a worsening bout of asthma, but he was wrong.
Shortly after, doctors diagnosed the rapper with AIDS.
Ten days later, complications from the disease took his life.
Eazy-E was 30.
In 2010, Mac Miller made an auspicious debut with the mixtape K.I.D.S., when he was just
18 years old.
That spawned the hit "Knock Knock," and in the following year, his first studio album
proper, Blue Slide Park, topped the Billboard album chart.
For the rest of the decade, Miller was among the most popular and prolific voices in hip-hop,
producing for other rappers, starring on his own TV series, and releasing four more albums
and many, many singles.
But Miller's life was sadly struck down right at the peak of his fame.
On September 7th 2018, a friend found Miller in his home in California's San Fernando Valley.
Paramedics arrived to address what was believed to be a cardiac arrest and pronounced the
rapper dead at the scene.
A toxicology report from the Los Angeles County Coroner ruled that Miller died from an accidental
overdose of cocaine, alcohol, and the powerful painkiller fentanyl.
He was just 26 years old.
There were plenty of pop-savvy R&B trios around in the '90s, but TLC stood out from the rest
thanks to the distinct and charismatic personalities of its three members.
The "L" in TLC was Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, the rapping complement to her singing cohorts
T-Boz and Chili.
Left Eye performed memorable, acrobatic raps on almost all of TLC's many hits, including
on "Ain't 2 Proud 2 Beg," "Waterfalls," and "No Scrubs."
Lopes was also outspoken and assertive off the stage, and famously spoke out against
the exploitative nature of the music industry on an episode of Behind the Music.
"This is how a group can sell 10 million records and be broke.
And everyone get ready to do your math."
Lopes maintained a home in rural Honduras and was driving an SUV while visiting the
country one day in April 2002.
Tragically, she lost control of the vehicle, and it ran off the road and turned over multiple
times.
There were seven other people in the SUV, including Lopes' two siblings, the R&B trio
Egypt, and two producers working on Lopes’ documentary.
All were treated at a hospital and released, but the accident killed the TLC rapper.
Lopes was 30 years old.
Back in the early '80s, the Beastie Boys were a group of New York rockers so taken with
the city's burgeoning rap scene that they abandoned their punk rock sound to become
a hip-hop group, but kept their hard rock backbone.
Adam Horovitz, Mike Diamond, and Adam Yauch exposed suburban audiences to rap for the
first time, and, in doing so, became one of the genre's earliest and most successful acts.
But tragedy struck in 2009 when Yauch noticed swelling in his throat.
Tests revealed this swelling to be the result of a cancerous tumor in his salivary gland.
The band canceled a slate of concert dates and delayed the release of the album Hot Sauce
Committee, Pt. 1.
In a YouTube video released at the time, Yauch reassured his fans that there was nothing
to worry about.
"They've caught it early and it's not anywhere else on my body.
So that's the good news."
Sadly, however, he didn't recover.
Three years later, Yauch passed away from complications of cancer, at the age of 47;
Horovitz and Diamond paid tribute to their friend when the group was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
Born in Jamaica and raised in New York, Dwight Myers took on the stage name Heavy D and,
with his group the Boyz, became the first act signed to influential R&B and hip-hop
label Uptown Records.
With and without the collective, Heavy D scored a slew of top-selling albums and pop radio-friendly
hits, and did a fair bit of acting, too, making appearances on a wide number of '90s sitcoms,
chief among which was The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
He also scored a recurring role as the operator of a restaurant frequented by the main characters
in Bones.
In November 2011, however, Myers collapsed at his Los Angeles home, and paramedics rushed
him to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
The hitmaker died in the hospital hours later at the age of 44.
A month later, a Los Angeles County Coroner investigation revealed the cause of Heavy
D's sudden and mysterious death: a pulmonary embolism brought on by deep vein thrombosis.
A blood clot had likely formed in his leg during a long-haul flight from London to Los
Angeles, and it migrated to a lung, which held back blood flow and put pressure on his
heart.
Big Punisher's career was only getting started when his life came to a tragic end.
After his first verse in 1995 on a couple of Fat Joe tracks, Big Pun released his debut
studio LP Capital Punishment in 1998, and a year later, he was all over collective Terror
Squad's The Album.
Big Punisher also had a series of solo smashes like "I'm Not a Player," "It's So Hard," and
"How We Roll," and crossed over to pop radio with guest spots on Jennifer Lopez's "Feelin'
So Good" and Joe's "Still Not a Player."
Born Christopher Rios, Big Punisher was a large man, with his size reflected in his
stage name, and that, sadly, is what led to his fatal health problems.
The rapper started to rapidly put on weight in his late teens, and press materials claimed
he ended up around 400 pounds.
In the summer of 1999, he lost 100 pounds via a Duke University program but left early
and returned to old habits, and the weight soon returned.
In February 2000, authorities were summoned to his hotel room in White Plains, New York,
after being told that the rapper was struggling to breathe.
He was transferred to a hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
Rios weighed 698 pounds at the time of his death, and his heart had expanded to three
times that of a normal, healthy, size.
Big Punisher was 28 when he died.
Staten Island's own Wu-Tang Clan is arguably the greatest collective in rap history, boasting
nine full-fledged members who each brought their own unique contributions to the enterprise.
They're also responsible for all-time classics like Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and Wu-Tang
Forever.
Russell Jones, otherwise known as Ol' Dirty Bastard, is likely the most famous Wu-Tang
rapper, what with his distinctive vocal range, wild style, and flair for both the dramatic
and comical.
Also known by the stage names Dirt McGirt, Osirus, and Big Baby Jesus, ODB shined on
Wu-Tang standards like "Protect Ya Neck," along with his solo singles such as "Got Your
Money."
In 2004, however, ODB was at a New York recording studio, working on his fourth solo album Osirus,
when he suddenly collapsed without warning.
By the time medical authorities arrived, the rapper was already dead.
A few weeks later, the NYC medical examiner released the results of an autopsy.
A toxic combination of cocaine and Tramadol, a prescription painkiller, had caused a heart
attack.
ODB died just a few days before his 36th birthday.
If you or someone you know is struggling with addiction, please call the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Administration's 24/7 National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
That's 1-800-662-4357.