Rico Wade of the foundational Atlanta production team Organized Noize has died. He was 52. Organized Noize is the soul of the Dungeon Family collective (OutKast, Goodie Mob, Killer Mike and more). Wade was one of the central imagineers and builders of Southern hip hop and modern Southern pop.
And that’s far from all.
Wade and his Organized Noize cohort also co-wrote and produced TLC’s Hot 100-topping, Record of the Year-nominated smash “Waterfalls,” one of Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
in fact, per Rolling Stone:
TLC’s T-Boz was in part responsible for the formation of Organized Noize, as revealed in a 2016 documentary The Art of Organized Noize. Other hits crafted by the production team include En Vogue’s “Don’t Let Go.”
And as per Billboard:
Without Rico Wade, the world may have never experienced The Dungeon Family, OutKast, Goodie Mob, Future and many more. Rico left an indelible mark on music and culture around the world and for that, the South will always have something to say.”
In late 2009, VIBE was still being published on paper, but just because the magazine’s issues were getting thinner, and the print media business was starting to implode, and there was a feeling that VIBE itself was coming to the turning point we’d feared, the VIBE staff still got amazing work done. In the late Spring/ early Summer of 2009, Linda Hobbs, along with the senior editors, and senior art and fashion teams, planned and executed an Organized Noize reunion. Below is the story. Photos by Jessica Hatter. In this era, paper archives are everything.
The dek (as we called it/spelled it, internally) ⬇️
Twenty years ago, an Atlanta teenager named RICO WADE handpicked a bunch of friends — rappers, artists, and producers — to form the Dungeon Family. From OUTKAST and GOODIE MOB to ORGANIZED NOIZE, Rico and his fellow Dungeon dwellers transformed hip hop. They lived the fly life until a spiral of greed, drugs, and envy threatened to tear the family apart. In Part One of this epic, two-part saga, LINDA HOBBS investigates the rise and early struggles of the legendary crew that put the Dirty South on the map.
also: this was the cover of the issue:
No official cause of death has yet been cited for Rico Wade, but 52 years old is very young to die. So many people associated with hip hop — mostly Black men — have died ahead of their time. I tell their stories in this New York Times Magazine essay (gift link). A sample below.
…this grim data set begins with Scott Sterling of the Bronx, better known as DJ Scott La Rock, who was shot to death in 1987 at age 25, and stops with De La Soul’s David Jolicoeur of Brooklyn, a.k.a. Trugoy the Dove, who died in February of heart failure at 54. Near the midpoint is Lord Infamous — Ricky Dunigan — who in 2013 had a heart attack in his sleep. His half brother and fellow Three 6 Mafia founder, DJ Paul, born Paul Beauregard, painted a desolate picture. “He laid his head in his arms at the kitchen table,” Beauregard told the website Hip Hop DX the day after Dunigan died. “When his momma came home, he was sitting at the kitchen table, passed away.” It was 2021 when moans of woe about Black men in rap music dying young erupted into a panic of calls to action. In that year alone, we lost eight artists, ranging in age from 28 to 57. Twenty of the 57 Black men here died in their 20s. The oldest two died at 59. Twenty-seven were born in the state of New York, and most of those in the five boroughs. A dozen of Brooklyn’s sons went to early graves.
In music,
Danyel
🙏🏾 RIP
RIP to the dungeon master ✨✨✨52 is so young! hip hop turning 50 is many stories, many triumphs but also a lot of this kind of grief ❤️🩹