“Artists are more valuable when they’re dead,” remarked Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson during a TCA press conference for a new documentary series he executive produces, Hip Hop Homicides. Over the past 2 decades there have been nearly 100 hip hop artists murdered, with nearly 90% of cases unsolved. In the new weekly series, premiering Thursday, November 3rd at 9/8c on WE tv (part of AMC Networks), viewers can get to know the ins and outs of each story. “Everyone is greater in their absence than they are in their presence, and that’s one of those things that we’ve seen take place with [Nipsy Hussle], obviously, because I’ve had the opportunity of meeting him and knowing him prior to. But what happened as he passed away was incredible. Like, that was a whole nother thing. So I think just hip hop in general, I’m protective of it. I wouldn’t mean anything without it. You know what I mean? So when we get to the investigative side of things, I think it’s just getting to the bottom of how everyone feels about it in the close proximity of the artist that they actually do, and you find out so many different things in that process that it becomes extremely entertaining.”
(WE tv)
“Hip hop is shining a magnifying glass on certain aspects and certain dysfunctions that exist in certain communities all over America,” explained series host and executive producer Van Lathan, one of the most respected journalists in the Black community. “We're talking about the people that we loved that fell victim to violent ends, but for every person that we're talking about like Pop Smoke or Chinx, or Mo3, there are scores of other people involved in those cases sometimes that came before or even after, that aren't famous and get toe tags and nobody except for their families ever talks about them again. While what we're talking about is special, I don't think it’s special because they're rappers. I think it’s special because of the set of circumstances that in a lot of times American society has turned their back on. And I think one thing that we didn't think that we would do in the show that we ended up being able to do in the show was to shed a light on just how some of these kids at some of these places are living. We were in Chicago on O block, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods purportedly in the entire country. And we were there and we were able to see the community and talk to people who were trying to change it.”
“The sad part about it is that there were so many stories for us to look at,” added executive producer Mona Scott-Young, explaining that social media interest in these cases helped the series. “People are super passionate about these icons, these artists and they wanted answers as well. So there was a ton of information out there on the internet. And so for this first season, it was part geographic, but it also was where we felt there was a sense of urgency with the fans, with the family, because that was a big part of it. We had engagement across the board from the friends, from the family, from the loved ones, because they wanted to participate and help us get to the bottom of this. So it was a combination of those elements, right. The fan interest and fervor. The families that were anxious to participate and help us tell these stories. And then geographically what we were able to capture within our production timeline.”
“You wind up covering these stories a bit more than you want to,” shared hip hop journalist Vanessa Satten, who also serves as an executive producer on the series. “Dialing into them definitely takes you to a deeper place when you speak to the family members and the people close by. But we do lose artists more regularly than any other form of entertainment, you know especially in these tragic ways. So, you don’t get used to it ever but there is something about a repetitiveness that’s sad… What we want to do is shine light on those cases so they don’t get lumped together as just another rapper is dead, that an artist or a person is dead. And you see a lot of headlines in news, a lot of mainstream news that trivializes rappers killing each other when it really doesn’t work that way, and often something interesting we saw with the show was that it wasn’t really rappers killing each other, it was a lot more stories of theft, of robbery, of bad situations or circumstances, and I think over the years rap has gotten a reputation of these rappers are killing each other, or there’s rap beef, and that really wasn’t what happened. But at the same time, you have a genre where we do lose a lot of people, and sometimes when you're close to it, you get used to having the conversations about it, unfortunately. This gave us the opportunity to look at those people a little bit more deeply on their stories, in particular their families and how it affected them in the long-term, how it affected their estates, how it affected the children they left behind. I think that was the saddest part to connect to because it’s very easy to say ‘Rapper Killed.’ We see that often and this gave us an opportunity to make more of that.”
Not on is Hip Hop Homicide shining a light on these cases and trying to help families find closure, but the show’s concept is also rooted in the genre's DNA. “The hip part of hip hop is connected to youth culture and they love things that are damaged,” explained 50 Cent. “It sounds beautiful when the music sounds correct. But the experience itself leaves them interesting enough to watch and entertaining for the broad strokes of humans in general. The biggest unknown thing to entertain them is death. So when the artist is doing things that would attract a potential situation, could make it a life and death situation, it raises the stakes. It makes it more interesting. I'll just shoot a few titles to you like Biggie Smalls’ titles from his albums ‘Ready to Die,’ ‘Life After Death,’ and Tupac would use Makaveli who faked his death and returned. And then even my album title, which was the largest debut in hip hop album selling 13 million records, is ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’. So they're saying that the part of death is the unknown which is entertaining to everyone at that point because we don't know our fate.”
Catch new episodes of Hip Hop Homicides on Thursdays at 9/8c on WE tv. Episodes will be available to stream the Monday after they air on ALLBLK.