Body Count guitarist
Dennis “D-Roc” Miles passed away yesterday morning (August 17) after
a battle with a disease that attacked his lymph nodes and skin.
Miles, a member
of the group fronted by veteran rapper Ice-T, was suffering with mycosis fungoides,
a disease that has no known cure.
He passed away
at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte California. According to Ice-T,
death has been visiting the group often and is what has stopped Body Count from
producing albums.
“Body Count
stopped because of death,” Ice-T told AllHipHop.com in December of 2003.
“Beatmaster V, the drummer died of leukemia and Mooseman the bass player
got killed in the hood just standing on the corner. He was in his neighborhood
and n*ggas just rode up and blasted because he lives in a gang area and was
at just wrong place wrong time. Having lost the two members we couldn’t get
that chemistry with new players, so it just took a while and then also the world
got kind of complacent. The war kind of brought back that energy we needed for
Body Count to exist. It’s an aggressive band and I’m singing about sh*t . When
everybody happy and bling blinging and spinning their rims we sound a little
angry.”
The band has replaced
Miles with Bendrix Williams, who has worked with such acts as Macy Gray and
Pitch Black.
Body Count is working
on Murder for Hire, their first album in seven years, titled Murder for
Hire.
