IT'S NOT JUST BAD BOYS
Wednesday,February 28,2001
By CATHY SCOTT
WHILE Sean "Puffy" Combs, kingpin in the bicoastal rap war,
stands trial for one fracas, a wild shootout two days ago may b
centered on another hip-hop feud, this one between the girls.
Cops think Sunday's shooting outside Hot 97's radio station
capped a rivalry between rap queens Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown.
If true, it means rap wars are no longer just East Coast vs. West
Coast. It's often record company against record company,
rapper against rapper, no matter which coast they call home.
Though Foxy and Kim are both from Brooklyn, their cat fight is
based on ego, fueled by their rival record labels. Foxy is with
Def Jam Records; Kim with Bad Boy Entertainment.
Hatred between the sexy divas has cemented in the past few
months, and rap insiders say a violent bust-up was just waiting
to happen.
Now investigators believe the shootout was the result of a
cameo appearance by Foxy on a recent album recorded by Kiam
"Capone" Holley and Victor "Noreaga" Santiago, who make up
the rap duo Capone-N-Noreaga.
On the album, Foxy bashes Kim and her relationship with
Biggie Smalls, who was murdered four years ago. Kim had
began slinging the insults in her album in which she said to
Foxy, "You ain't a star."
On Sunday, Kim had appeared as a guest disc jockey at the
radio station Hot 97. Outside the Greenwich Village station
were about 20 members of her entourage, as well as members of
the rival Capone-N-Noreaga posse, police say.
The groups exchanged heated insults, then bullets. Both groups
fled before police arrived and no arrests have been made. Efrain
Ocasio, 31, an associate of Holley's, was shot once in the back.
Kim fled in a limo when the shooting began.
•F•OXY, also known as Inga Marchand, is considered a
superstar diva who records for Def Jam. The label is home to
top artists such as L.L. Cool J and DMX.
Lil' Kim, whose real name is Kimberly Jones, also is a top
hip-hop star who came of age on the streets of
Bedford-Stuyvesant, rapping in the group Junior M.A.F.I.A.
with Smalls, whose record producer was Combs.
It's not the first time Brown's name has been mentioned in
connection with a rap-related shooting. Rapper Kurupt, her
fiancé at the time, was recording in October 1998 at the Echo
Sounds studio in Los Angeles when a gunman opened fire
inside the building.
Kurupt's bodyguard was killed. Rappers Jevon "Realistic" Jones
and Willard "Act Da Fool" Givers, were injured.
Speculation arose that the shooting may have had something to
do with a beef between Kurupt and DMX because of sexual
overtures DMX made toward Foxy. The crime was never
solved. They both denied their connection to the shooting.
Combs' New York studio was shot up the same month. No
arrests were made. Combs' name has long been associated with
the East-West rap war between Tupac Shakur and Smalls.
Shakur and Smalls had the bitterest rivalry in the rap
community, with Shakur in the West and Biggie in the East.
Tupac and Biggie publicly criticized each other's music. The
violence started in 1994 when Tupac was gunned down at Quad
Studios in Manhattan, where Smalls and Combs were recording
at the time.
Tupac, who survived, blamed Smalls and Combs for setting him
up. Two years later, in 1996, Tupac was fatally wounded in Las
Vegas. Six months later, in March of 1997, Smalls was
murdered in Los Angeles in a shooting eerily similar to Tupac's.
•S•OME say Small's murder was in retaliation for Tupac's
death. Others say both were simply gang related. Both remain
unsolved. Police in Compton, Calif., arrested Crips gang
member Orlando Anderson and held him for questioning.
Anderson was released a day later and was never charged in
Tupac's murder.
Anderson was murdered in 1998 in what police say was a
dispute over money. Then there's the very public verbal feud
between white rappers Eminem and Everlast, which started in
1998 when they began criticizing each other's songs on their
respective albums.
This rivalry, too, hinges on record labels. Eminem records
under Interscope Records with Dr. Dre as his producer.
Interscope financed the West Coast-based Death Row Records.
Everlast records under Arista Records, an East Coast-based
label.
If Sunday's shooting does turn out to be the result of a
record-label rivalry, investigators say they won't be surprised;
it's all part of the industry.
Cops were questioning Holley and Ocasio, who was released
from the hospital Monday.
Lil' Kim told police she did not see or hear anything.
NYPOST.COM Regional News: IT'S NOT JUST BAD BOYS By CATHY SCOTT