Heavy D, the self-proclaimed overweight lover and former leader of the hip-hop group Heavy D and the Boyz, has sadly passed away at the age of 44 due to a heart attack brought on by breathing difficulties.
If you, like I was, a teenager growing up in the late 80’s, chances are you would have been seduced by the sounds coming out of New York at the time. Hip Hop was changing rapidly and morphing from one genre to another as this sample heavy music started to find a more mature voice. Hev was one of hip-hop’s major players at this time as his ‘new jack swing’ style of rap was starting to rule the airwaves as well as the clubs. The music still hadn’t become afrocentric - or thugged out. The Native Tongues had yet to be born and Hammer wasn’t touching anything .That was all to follow.
Heavy D, born Dwight Arrington Myers, broke into the music industry with
Living Large, his first record with the Boyz, in 1987. He went on to even greater success with his second album ‘Big Tyme’ in 1989 and the world-wide hit "Now That We Found Love" in 1991.
While the Hip Hop community continues to wrap its collective mind around the fact that one of its best loved sons has passed, his final words via
twitter offered a simple but heartening message to his die-hard fans.
On Tuesday, Heavy D first responded to the reports of boxer
Joe Frazier’s passing:
“SMOKIN JOE FRAZIER..RIP.. truly one of the best heavyweight champs that ever lived.. GODS SPEED,MR FRAZIER!”
What got me most was Heavy D’s final (and very simple) tweet to his followers less than 20 hours before he was pronounced dead in a Los Angeles hospital.
“BE INSPIRED!”
