Brooklyn: What Did Sean Price Mean To You?

Hip hop lost its north star on Saturday with the untimely passing of rap extraordinaire Sean Price.

The unwavering 43-year-old Brownsville native and Duck Down Records veteran was one of the last remaining fixed points in a culture that in many ways has lost its course. Sean P. was like a landmark building that was covered in graffiti and refused to gentrify. He kept it grimy. 

Ruck—one of Price’s many aliases—was able to remain critical of and relevant in a scene that, to his dismay, is suffocating from political correctness, wearing skinny jeans and spitting shallow lyrics. “I love to rap, but hate the game,” famously said Price.

 

At High School of Graphic Communication Arts (located near then-seedy Times Square), Price joined the Decepticons, a widely feared NYC gang in the 1980s and ‘90s. It was there that he met legendary hip hop duo Smif-n-Wessun. Fiercely unapologetic about his past, Price said about Decepts in an interview:

“We did pretty much every type of crime in that school. None of the creep crimes though, no rape or nothing like that but but pretty much every other type of crime we did.”

When asked to explain the difference between Sean Price and his "old alias Ruck," in 2008 he said: “Sean Price is a man; Ruck was a wild boy. Sean Price has a family, he takes care of his family.” 

 A day after the father of three died in his sleep to due to unknown causes, former 5Pointz curator and graffiti artist MERES One painted a tribute mural to Sean Price in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Countless people have visited this week, to reflect on his life and pour out some Hennessy for him. On Monday, Price’s fans, Decepts, and hip hop fam including DJ Logic and O.G.C.’s Starang Wondah showed up to pay their respects.

Ratter had one question for them: what did Sean Price mean to you?