More sad news out of the Hip Hop community. Tame One, tenured graffiti artist and MC, passed away earlier this week. Initially, no cause of death was known, but his mother Darlene Brown Harris eventually broke her silence in a Facebook post and revealed the 52-year-old died of drug toxicity.
"I can‘t express this any other way,” Brown Harris said in the post. “My son, Rahem Brown, Tamer Dizzle, is dead. The medical examiner says the six pharmaceutical drugs that Trinitas hospital prescribed to him last Friday, combined with the weed he smoked over this weekend...his heart simply gave out. I will not be responding to all the posts for a bit, but the hardest words I will ever post or say is, my son, my heart, is dead.”
A graduate of Newark’s Vailsburg High School, Tame One came to prominence in 1990s with The Artifacts alongside El De Sensei. Their debut album, “Between A Rock and a Hard Place” arrived via Big Beat Records in 1994, which spawned the bona fide Hip Hop classic "Wrong Side of Da Tracks."
Around the same time news of Tame One's death started making the rounds on social media, Hip Hop fans learned Hurricane G—known for songs such as "El Barrio” and “Underground Lockdown"— had also passed away after a battle with lung cancer.
Erick Sermon, who shares a daughter with G, confirmed her death Sunday (November 6) in an Instagram post. G, born Gloria Rodriguez, rose to prominence in the 1990s after collaborating with rapper Redman on tracks such as “Tonight’s da Night” and “We Run N.Y."
“My heart is hardened today,” Sermon wrote in the caption. “One of my good friends…. my oldest daughters mother passed away today #HURRICANEGLORIA was also a legend in her own right in the Hiphop community. One of the first puertorican female rappers She rapped with me.
“She paved the way ... she was in all the Hip Hop magazines with all the top females at the time ... She will be missed all around the world. I can’t believe this. Pray for us. Beautiful blessings. She was a beautiful person a wonderful mother as real as they come. We love u G.”
Hurricane G and Sermon's daughter Lexus opened about her mother's Stage 4 diagnosis in May, writing on Facebook at the time, "I don't know how many of you understand what that means but even after 30 years of life I'm still trying to process it myself. I have never cried so much in my life I have never felt so disconnected from reality in my life. Yet my mom still manages to be the one to hold it together and say ‘dont worry baby everythings gonna be alright.’”
RAPstation sends our condolences to Tame One and Hurricane G's loved ones.
