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Hip-Hop Is Old But Your Favorite Rapper Is Too Young to Die
Reckoning with the mortality of music gods
In the span of two weeks in April, hip-hop lost DMX, Black Rob, and Shock G. Their ages were 50, 52, and 57, respectively. Fans could barely show proper respect for one fallen rapper before the next one passed. I won’t belabor the specific details of their deaths here, as the circumstances behind them are only now becoming fully documented—but also because the telling of them is painful. Besides, this isn’t a eulogy. It’s a plea.
For a time, the fatal shootings of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. seemed to have a chilling effect on hip-hop, drawing a line at what was an acceptable cause of death for iconic, game-changing rappers. But when you die before the age of 60, there are no acceptable causes of death. There are causes, but we cannot reason with them. They make no sense.
As fans, in our hearts, we fix our idols at an age based on their album covers; in our minds, we know that if we’re aging, they must as well.
This is probably why conspiracy theories about the aforementioned deaths in the hip-hop community are so abundant. Those who knew the deceased want to believe that they could’ve saved them with a phone call or an intervention or letting a down-on-their-luck icon sleep on their couch for a week. Those that didn’t know them refuse to believe that someone so much larger than life could have been felled by the same thing that took out their co-worker last year. Like the death of anyone else who’s had an influence on our lives, we don’t want them to go away. Even if we weren’t always thinking about them while they were living, we subconsciously hoped they would at least grow old.
Despite the now common (if misguided) parade of conspiracies after hip-hop deaths — claims that Diddy is responsible for Black Rob’s death, that Eazy-E contracted HIV via tainted acupuncture needles—there’s no actual rhyme or reason to who dies when. There are, however, indicators. Every year, one or two rappers of some note die a violent death, yet, contrary to their reputations, hip-hop artists are not by and large dying in a hail of bullets. The real causes are more…
