In the Summer of 1995, the Cleveland-based hip-hop quartet, Bone Thugs and Harmony put out their first full-length

album, East 1999 Eternal.

That August, I got a copy for my 10th birthday.

The group had made a name for themselves just a year earlier when their debut EP

creeping on a come-up, but garnered some mainstream success, spawning hit singles like Thugge Shruggish bone and for the love of money.

These are already staples of the homemade mixtapes my friends and I made.

We'd wait patiently every Monday night with a blank cassette and our tape deck and our fingers

resting eagerly on the record button.

When our local hip-hop DJ's 8-ball and the chicken man queued up a favorite, we capture it for posterity.

Both records were produced by hip-hop mogul Eric E.E. Ride of NWA, the controversial

LA-based hip-hop group that had some years earlier drawn the ire of the federal government

with the not so subtly titled song

Fuck the Police. Creeping on the come up was a short but intense exploration of

the gritty realities of growing up on the streets of Cleveland.

But there was something about it that was new to hip-hop, a distinct spiritual undertone.

The album begins with a track called Mr. Weigia, which depicts the brother's bone consulting

the wisdom of the mysterious title character, presumably the personification of the notorious weig. the the streets before. Dear Mr. Weja, I want to know my future.

Well I die of murder, a bloody bloody murder, come again.

By the time East 1999 Eternal Drop, EZ had already passed the apparent result of complications

from a particularly aggressive case of HIV AIDS infection.

His rapid deterioration made his demise in the tantalizing material for conspiracy mongers.

One prominent theory suggests that Wright was the first in a series of three high-profile murders

...