"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 s###, 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."
