[Editor’s Note: this is hexmurda’s ode to Sean Price. Since he abhors editing, we decided to edit – ok, there is no edit. Despite this notion, hex still managed to spell “subdural hematoma” correctly in this piece. Go figure. RIP SEAN PRICE and thank you to hex for this touching, honest dedication. Click here for part 1]
I’m not gonna sit here and run down his resume to you. I’m not a f###### history teacher.
If you don’t know who SEAN P is then you’re on the wrong site. You should be on TMZ.com reading about Tyga & Kylie.
If you don’t know about SEAN PRICE & his 20 YEARS in the game with the BOOT CAMP CLIK as a member of HELTAH SKELTAH with ROCK and as both a solo artist and as a member of RANDOM AXE along with GUILTY SIMPSON & BLACKMILK, you definitely clicked on the wrong s###.
Fam, if you’re wearing pants that make it hard for you to wear socks then please exit to the left in an orderly fashion.
If you think that Drake is a little too hardcore at times and you’re holding out hope that P.M. DAWN will make a comeback then this piece IS NOT for you. Take your f###### TrapperKeeper & your VanityFair mag with BruceJenner on the cover and GET THE F### OUT OF HERE.
S###.
OK, now that it’s just us, I can speak freely. Saturday the 8th was f##### up. One of the worst days of my f###### life. My dog Ruck passed. 8/8/15.
Fam, I don’t know how, I don’t even give a f###. He’s gone, that’s the bottom line. His funeral was today.
Today, my dog is in the ground.
Man, I’m so f###### sick of writing these kinds of f###### pieces. I wrote one for PROOF & DILLA, & one for BAATIN from Slum Village. Now here goes another one. I procrastinated all day Sunday as to how to approach this. I let my phone battery die while I watched “THE WALKING DEAD MARATHON”. I didn’t want to write this s###. I didn’t want to write a piece eulogizing my friend. I tried every plausible distraction I could without just saying “F### it, I won’t do it.” I posted on IG. I returned texts. I checked my email. I straightened up my shoes.
I straightened up my f###### shoes.
That’s how u know I was on some b#######.
I’ve been in a wheelchair the last 6 years.
Why do I even have shoes?
I watched some of the NFL game. Pretty soon it was just me & my dumb ass HTC M8. & thoughts of SEAN P. There’s a lot of pressure on me.
The entire borough of Brooklyn is like, “SON, U BETTA GET THIS RIGHT, NAHMEAN”. I wanna write some s### that Elijah Price & Shaun Price ( yup, this fool named his daughter “SHAUN” so he could call her Lil Shaun P ) can read in the future & say “NAIL MEET HEAD”. Plus I’m sure those BCC cats are going to be very interested in what I have to say. Last but certainly not least I have to face the wrath of BERNADETTE PRICE. If Bernadeezy hates this s### I’m f#####. Then I realized,I can tell how I met Ruck & how RandomAxe was formed, & a few stories about Ruck’s crazy-ass. I can’t f### up by telling a few PG-13 stories. I’m gonna start this trip down memory lane and you muthafuckas are coming with me.
Bear with me ya’ll, this ain’t easy. I could tell you a thousand stories about Ruck, but I’ll stick with three tour stories. Everybody who knew him has a story about him. He was like Proof in that aspect. If u met him u weren’t going to forget him, because he was sure to do something unforgettable.
Ok, where do I start?
The beginning is probably as good a place as any. I’m not starting back in ’93 when Buckshot dropped “WHO GOT THE PROPS”, I’m starting in ’05 when SEAN P dropped “MONKEY BARZ”.
In a roundabout way, SLUM VILLAGE is responsible for my relationship w/ Ruck, & therefore they’re sorta responsible for RANDOM AXE.
It went down like this…
THE ALPHA
It was 2005 & I was SLUM VILLAGE’s road manager at the time. We were in New York doing press & retail promo for their upcoming self-titled lp. The promo dudes we were with were BIZ & BROADWAY. I have no idea what we called Broadway back then but it sure as f### wasn’t Broadway. He picked that up when he moved to the Chi. So any f###### way it was time to leave NY & do the EastCoast run. First stop, Delaware. Biz gets the rental, he’s driving, & he’s banging some of the most brutal s### I’ve ever heard. This muthafucka’s bars were harder than adamantium. I didn’t say s###, I just listened. The f###### music was talking to me. It was saying, “Go f### somebody up.” Then all the way to D.C. from Delaware Biz got this dude in the deck barking at me. It was like there was a dog whistle in the beat, something only I could hear. Me & whoever the f### this was were on the same frequency.
I just felt like it was the greatest s### I ever heard & I was having a hard time keeping my composure. No melodies or muthafuckas sounding like Cylon robots & s###. Just straight primal beats & bars dipped in acid & dripping blood. Everybody else in the vehicle nodded their heads to the music but I could tell that they weren’t hearing it the way I heard it. The dude sounded kinda familiar, but I KNEW I hadn’t heard any s### like this before. Dog sounded like a feral animal trapped in a cage trying to get the f### out before the lp ended. This was some savage s###. I think on the way to Philly from D.C. I finally asked who the f### it was. “SEAN PRICE”, came the reply. Well, I KNEW that. He had said his name a million times. “Dude that use to be in HELTAH SKELTAH. Ruck.”
RUCK.
That’s where I heard that voice before. Fab5.
“LEFLOUR LEFLAH ESHKOSHKA,” HeltahSkeltah’s “NOCTURNAL” & “MAGNUM FORCE”. All joints I f##### with in the 90’s. I bad heard Rock’s unmistakable voice but i thought he was just doing cameos on some new dude’s s###.
“THAT’S Ruck? Let me see that cover.” He handed it over, a cover that had a cartoon rendering of Ruck in an astronaut suit fighting some apes with two bubbles that said “SEAN PRICE”.
I decided right then that I was was gonna find Mr.Price. One of my oldest friends & client, Guilty Simpson, had begun working on his debut LP w/ J.Dilla & I planned for Ruck to be on it. As I recall, I got at my man Dan Green over at Clockwork Music & asked him to connect me with DruHa who in turn told Sean P about my request. After he familiarized himself with Guilty’s music, be agreed to do the record. At some point during the coordinating to actually get the song done I started to talk to Ruck. It was like finding a long lost brother. Me & this guy would be on the phone talking s### for hours. Now this is where s### goes kinda left. I’m pretty sure Ruck sent the vocals for “RUN”, fairly quickly . I can’t recall when “MONSTER BABIES” got done or why. In 2006 both Proof & Dilla died so Guilty’s lp ended up being pushed back. We already had the “RUN” record in the can but I continued to talk to Ruck almost daily.
EPISODE I
Somehow or the other we got the bright idea to go on a European tour together. Guilty, BlackMilk, Ruck & Ruste Juxx as his hypeman. I was the road manager / DJ for this run. Basically it boiled down to babysitting, collecting money from the promoters & European tour manager, making sure we got everything we were promised, overseeing technical & stage s###, all around problem solving, and pushing play on the CDJ. Simple. Well, right from jump s### didn’t go as planned. First of all Ruck had like four CD’s for his set. Two for him, Ruste did two joints so he had a disc, & Black had “RUN” on a separate disc. And his disc wasn’t in order for the set he wanted to do. The songs were all over the place. I was jumping between discs & changing discs through the course of the show. I didn’t sign up for this s###. I was supposed to just push play & drink. Ruck had me up there like I was f###### DJ Q-Bert. We streamlined the show as we progressed & got it closer to the order on the disc. Also, Ruck HATED soundcheck. He NEVER went to soundcheck. It was usually just me & Black. Ruck would say, “F### that soundcheck s###, hex. The s### is gonna sound like it sounds. F### soundcheck.” He hated soundcheck so much he would try to stop me & Black from going. He didn’t give a f### about soundcheck because he was closing the show & he knew that any technical problems would be remedied by the time he got on.
So first show is Austria & its PACKED.
G.S. then Black, then Ruck. It’s going great. No mistakes. Ruck gets down to the last two songs, “PSYCHO WARD” & “RUN” is the finale, where all three emcees are supposed to are supposed to perform that joint together.
When “PSYCHO WARD” ends & G.S. & Black are about to get on stage, Ruck abruptly jumps off the stage like Spiderman into the already frenzied crowd & elbows his way through the mass of people trying to grab him, to the dressing room, giving out black eyes, chipped teeth & subdural hematomas along the way.
F##### some Austrians up.
The rest of us just stood on stage & watched him fight his way through the crowd. At one point I asked Ruste, “Is that n**** coming back?” Ruste just shrugged his shoulders. Eventually we made our way back to the dressing room & Ruck was sitting there calm as f### drinking a water. I asked him what the f### that was. He said, “I forgot about ‘RUN’, & I was tired of being on stage.”
SEAN PRICE, ladies & gentlemen.
EPISODE II
As a trio of underground artists, touring overseas is truly planes, trains, & automobiles. U might do three days in a van then take a flight. Then get back in a van for four days, then get on a ferry. Then take a train. All of this s### happens early as f### in the A.M.
It’s stressful & taxing & u don’t get much sleep. On top of all that s### the artists have to pull it together & perform that night.
It’s under these types of conditions that the next story takes place. We hopped on a train in France. Just us five. We were going somewhere else in France & it took 6 or 7 hours to get there and we were all looking forward to the opportunity to get some rest. It didn’t work out that way. Our tickets had all five of us packed in together like sardines. Ruck & BlackMilk decided to upgrade their seats because although most of the passenger cars were full there were some open seats in FirstClass. The seats were contingent on whether or not the people who had purchased them came on board during one of the train’s stops. Ruck & Black decided to take their chances & purchase the upgrade. They spent the whole train ride being awakened from their sleep & having to move to a new seat every time the train stopped. And we weren’t on an express train so we stopped 3 or 4 times. What was extra funny is that by Ruck & BlackMilk moving it gave me, Guilty, & Ruste a lot more room & we were comfortable in our seats.
When we finally reached our destination & disembarked from the train, Ruck was HOT. He was cussing up a storm & telling me to call DruHa to get him a plane ticket, he wanted to go home. I looked at him like he had a basketball for a head. He was CLOWNING. The French dude who came to pick us up walked over to us & just stood there w/ a stupid smile on his face while me & Sean P argued. The French guy didn’t speak any English but he could figure out that me & Ruck weren’t talking about soccer. We finally ended up getting in a (‘nother) van & I finally talked Ruck down off that ledge & convinced him to stay. He said that he would be cool, he just needed some sleep before that night’s ( early ) show. After we talked the guy drove, & everyone was dozing (it was about a 40 minute ride) before our driver made a turn & stopped quickly, jolting us all awake. He put the car in park, nodded, smiled, & unbuckled his seatbelt, indicating that we were at our destination. We all got out like zombies, not even looking at our surroundings. Then I heard Ruck yell, “THIS AINT THE F###### HOTEL!” I looked up, and we were in front of a graffiti covered building. The venue. It was about 4pm. The French dude spoke his first words, two sentences in broken English.
“No hotel. Ezz zoundjeck.”
Ruck f###### howled. “SOUNDCHECK?? F### SOUNDCHECK!!!! CALL DRU!!! I’M GOING HOME!!! F### THIS!!!!”
Everybody tried to keep a straight face & we got our s### & walked in the club, while Ruck was still outside cussing.
EPISODE III
Ok, last but not least we were in a club/bar in Germany, not that big, less than a 300 person capacity. The stage was low & the crowd was pretty close. Intimate setting. Lots of energy. The crowd was really into it. When the show was over, Ruck & I headed to the bar area & in less than a minute he was surrounded by fans wanting him to sign different items. Caps, shirts shoes, napkins, anything they could get their hands on. Ruck smiled & started signing. I’m black too so they also wanted my autograph. They don’t know. It soon became obvious that Ruck wasn’t signing “RUCK” or “SEAN P”. He was taking too long I took a peek & began to follow Ruck’s lead as we tried to out do each other. Patrons left that gig with items signed “BEN VEREEN”, “GREGORY HINES” “IDI AMIN”, ” SHERMAN HEMSLEY”, etc. Very few fans left w/ a “SEAN PRICE” autograph that night.
They could read English.They just didn’t give a f###.
Ruck was a f###### tool.
I’m gonna miss that guy.
I know you’re peeking.
See you tomorrow for Pt.III if your pants haven’t strangled u yet.
