Real name Nathaniel Glover, The Kidd Creole, 62, was found guilty of first-degree manslaughter on April 6 by a New York state court, with intent to kill not having been retained.
He was accused of having twice struck the victim, John Jolly, a 55-year-old homeless man, with a knife in the middle of the street in Midtown, Manhattan, after a verbal exchange.
The Kidd Creole – not to be confused with Kid Creole, founder of Kid Creole and the coconuts – was one of five rappers who accompanied DJ Grandmaster Flash in the band considered a rap pioneer
The ensemble was formed in the Bronx neighborhood in the 1970s, when hip-hop was still in its infancy.
Cult song, “The Message”, released in 1982, was ranked 59th by Rolling Stone magazine in its latest ranking of the 500 best songs in history in September 2021.
This track is the first hit in the history of rap to uncompromisingly portray the harsh living conditions in the New York ghettos of the early 1980s, when hip-hop was simply party music for the evening.
For their contributions to music history, the members of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were inducted into the prestigious Rock’n Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
This is the first rap group to have obtained this honor.