Artist: Heavy D & the Boyz
Best Album: Big Tyme
Best Song: Now That We Found Love
This Letter Could Have Been About: Nobody I can think of right now. Heems, who I actually just discovered last week.

Why I’m Writing About This Artist: Because Hev was the guy I could always trot out when I was arguing with basically anyone about whether hiphop was some sort of brain-wasting swear-word-having evil cesspool, an argument that I feel like I must have been having weekly in middle school and high school.  Half of the Boyz were backup dancers, and there’s something exuberant about even the group’s slower songs that I still love decades later.  Heavy D & the Boyz were about fun to a degree that a lot of rap at the time simply wasn’t, and I’ll always love them for that.  That said, backup dancer Trouble T-Roy’s untimely death at the age of 22 was the inspiration for one of hiphop’s first funeral songs, a thing that has practically become a subgenre by now; They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.) is the second video below.

Hev himself passed away of a coronary thrombosis in 2011.  I miss you, brother.

Have a video!:

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