As we head into the new millennium,1999 is shaping up to be a troubling year indeed. It wasn't that long ago that my headlines blared about the tragic killing of Big L who was down with the Diggin' In The Crates Crew. A few weeks prior to that, the headlines blared about the tragic love triangle shooting of Bay Area rap pioneer MC Ant. Now we have to unfortunately add Freaky Tah of the Lost Boyz aka Raymond Rogers to the list.

Early Sunday morning, Tah was leaving a hotel somewhere in his native Queens, New York when he was accosted by a ski masked gun man who shot him in the head. He died of his wounds late yesterday. At the time of this writing there was no information regarding why this happened and no arrests have been made. Hip Hop has again experienced another sad day.

When we add this tragedy to the list of troubles experienced by Ol' Dirty Bastard and take into account the recent gun point robberies against Busta Rhymes and Guru, one has to really take a long hard look as to what's really happening within hip hop. There appears to be a pattern. Either rap stars who come from the streets are not neccessarily leaving their street life behind them or rappers are rapidly becoming the new targets for criminals to jack. Historically rappers were always plagued with the unsavory activities of their arch nemises the 'stick up kid' who used to show up at all the jams and rob kids of their sheep skin coats or Quaterfield jackets. He was the guy who used to stick up the gig and rob the gate receipts for the night and even more sinister, he was the one who would rob crews of their equipment and records. I know cause I was a victim of this years ago. It appears this ugly indiviual is rearing his head again and this time he's taking lives.

Freaky Ty's killing ironically comes days after I had an indepth conversation with the late Notorious Big's mom Viola Wallace. During our conversation, I asked her if she felt that people had learned any lessons since her son's death. She emphatically said she thought people were clear that this is not the way to go. She felt that people were ready to move foward. Over the past 4 years numerous artists have met an untimely demise at the hands of another. That includes, Oakland's Seagram who was signed to Rap A Lot, JoJo White of San Francisco's Bored Stiff, Santa Rosa's DJ Caravan of FunkSoulJaz, Oakland's Plan B, Ray Luv & Mac Mall's Vallejo based DJ Cee, SF's Mr Cee of RBL Posse and Karizma of Stones Throw records. If you include, Biggie, 2Pac, MC Ant, Big L and now Freaky Ty, you sadly still have a short list which doesn't include the long list of artist who have been assaulted and the even longer list of artists who either had run ins with the law or have gone off to jail.

It's hard to gage what all this means. I'm not quite sure if people are getting the message or if they even care. I don't think these are isolated or coincidental occurrances. Right now rappers get major props for being ruthless and hard. These on stage personas have put a lot of kids in positions where they have to 'represent' by either living up to their reps or make sure they are 'credentialed' by not completely divorcing themselves from the streets that they should ideally be escaping. Personally I think it's high time that rap artist move away from being so called street reporters who merely reflect what's happening in the hood. They have to move into more pro-active positions and start challenging themselves and their communities. They ideally have to move in a direction of helping bring about change in the hood both on a physical and mental level. RIP Freaky TY.. Let this be the last time we have to put RIP in front of someone's name this year.