melan8tr said:
LARadioRewind said:
AOL News headline, July 2 2013:
Chris Kelly Cause Of Death: Kris Kross Rapper
Died Of Drug Overdose, Medical Examiner Says
When Lenny Bruce, Janis Joplin and John Belusi died of a drug overdoses..was the reaction the same as this ?
My answer would stray somewhat from the 'NO' concession above. I was spinning Janis cuts every hour in college radio. The manner of demise not-with-standing, most were saddened, if not shocked by news of her death. And she did indeed catch some posthumous flogging, as did Jim Morrison and especially Jimmi Hendrix, though nobody tap-danced on their caskets. John Belushi's death by dumbness earned him plenty of reproof, even from close friends.
Putting Kelly's tragic death into context (he was only 34), his entertainment genre is marginalized by detractors as the celebration of dead-end cultural violence. That may seem unfair to him now, but compare his lyrical street parlance to the comparatively harmless whimsical banter of Jim, Jimmi and Janis. Those performers were teathered, if not by the recording studio, then certainly by most radio PD's to the constraints of censorship, the shackles of which would loosen considerably for later performers, like Kelly.
Even if misguided and drug-induced,
J, J & J's's lyrical messages were mostly nonviolent, though their hypocritical personal lives were anything but orderly. Perhaps their
do-what-I-sing-and-not-as-I-do messages have earned the legacies of
J, J & J something of a sentimental "pass" for living otherwise self-destructive lifestyles. Meanwhile, the jury may still be out on Kelly's legacy.
