Monday, March 16, 1998
Media Assassins?
One day, journalists will face the reality that they can provoke
deaths of stars
By Kevin Powell
University Wire
My phone began ringing at 5 a.m. It rang demandingly for another
hour before I flipped over in bed and answered it: "The Notorious
B.I.G. was shot dead in Los Angeles," a wailing voice – was it male
or female? – said on the other end. Silence, a click, a dial tone.
I thought someone was playing a very bad joke on me, especially
since I still had jarring memories of being in Las Vegas on the day
Tupac Shakur was pronounced dead. And especially since I had spent
much of the previous two years covering the life and times of Tupac
for Vibe and, in essence, covering The Notorious B.I.G., since
Tupac had very publicly made Biggie his enemy.
But how could Biggie be dead, too? What had he done to deserve
this? To be shot as he was leaving a party. On the eve of his new
album. Just as he was turning that corner where things are supposed
to be, uh, better …
– Scribbled onto a legal pad on Sunday, March 9, 8:03 a.m.-
I could not not watch MTV’s remembrance of The Notorious B.I.G.
the other day. Consequently, I could not helping thinking about the
fact that I, as a Vibe staff writer, had been in the middle of a
storm that began in late 1994 when Tupac Shakur was shot five times
in a New York City recording-studio’s lobby area. Tupac would, via
Vibe, brazenly implicate Biggie and his mentor Sean "Puffy" Combs.
From there things would escalate out of control and Tupac, then
Biggie, would be killed. By who I do not know, and if I did know I
would not say in this space. Yeah, it is like that.
– End notepad scribbling. –
What I do know is that a certain guilt has followed me: a guilt
born of the knowledge that we in the media (Vibe, The Source, MTV,
BET and any and everyone else you can think of) helped to shape –
due to haste, poor judgment, and a greed for magazine sales and TV
ratings – the tension between Tupac and Biggie, which became the
tension between Bad Boy Entertainment and Death Row Records, which
became the East Coast versus West Coast "beef."
And the fans of Hip-hop were not that far behind …
When the ’90s ends, I think many of us are going to have to
really look at ourselves, and ask ourselves as journalists, music
fans and thinking human beings, "How did I contribute to the
turmoil so closely associated with my youth? With my generation?
With me?"
Casual and/or outside observers will probably dismiss this
argument and say, tongue-in-cheek, that the rappers’ art was
imitating life anyway, and "If you live by the sword, you die by
the sword."
Oh, but what a naive assessment that is, for only a fool would
criticize that which he or she does not know. Just like it would be
foolish for me to dismiss Kurt Cobain’s suicide and Elvis Presley’s
demise and not take into account how much their working-class
backgrounds, their struggles with fame, identity and drugs all
contributed to their deaths. There is, finally, a context for
everything.
As I watched The Notorious B.I.G.’s old videos, the vintage
backstage interviews and his verbal acumen on stage, I cried
because it was evident that he had been a dreamer his entire life,
that he was, in fact, fulfilling a dream, and it was the
fulfillment of that dream that had led to his death, in ways most
of us will never know. Or could ever fathom.
On the tribute cover to The Notorious B.I.G., Vibe asked, "When
will it end?" or something to that effect.
I laughed when I saw that, not because death is funny, but
because each of us who participates in the madness has blood on our
hands.
And it will only end when we want it to end.
And not a moment sooner.
(Rest in peace, Biggie, and keep representin’ Brooklyn, wherever
you are.)