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"I

almost burst into tears," says Karla Turner, a

Harlem bred fan of Jamaal

"Shyne" Barrow, who was sentenced

to 10 years in jail after being convicted

for charged with first-degree assault, gun possession

and reckless

endangerment. "I had to go to the bathroom at my

job to get it together." Unfortunately, the lengthy,

perhaps unfair, sentence of Shyne is certainly another

situation in a string of tragedies within the hip hop

community.

Destroy Evil from Brooklyn based duo, The Infinite Rise

& Shine, said that he learned of the 10 year sentence

through the Allhiphop.com wireless service. "I

was heartbroken when I received the news alert,"

he said. "The fact that Shyne was sentenced to

ten years was very disappointing. I was expecting him

to get about a year and a half.. Sighting specific

inconsistencies, Destroy Evil said, due to lack of concrete

evidence, it appeared that Shyne was merely a fall guy

for the district attorney and is a microcosm of a far

larger problem. "(The verdict) should be expected

because this system does not work and I doubt it ever

will."

Slick Rick, who also

spent time in jail for shooting his cousin, was sympathetic

to Shyne’s plight. But he said that it is time for hip

hop to change its course. "Its just something that

has to be fixed about hip hop," he said. He insisted

that Shyne represented a prevailing mentality among

rappers and fans alike. "First of all, you gotta

have order in life. And the mentality that we are falling

into it’s like we against the order."

Mogul Russell Simmons

added saying, "I think that they are young like

the rock-n-rollers. People talk about dumb shit, sometimes

its promoting it and sometimes they do it."

Another vet, New York

Kiss FMs Kool DJ Red Alert, had a different view on

the issue. "I’m not taking up for (Shyne), but

there’s been trouble in the music industry for years

– before hip hop." Red Alert said that rappers

do positive things in the community yet never receive

public credit. "Why don’t

(media outlets) take time out and show all the good

that these individuals are doing?," he said, "That’s

not grabbing no public interest."