Down

In my not-too-extensive journalistic career, there is a man who — some seven years later — still registers as the most impactful and memorable subject I have ever had the pleasure to interview.

You'd have to know hip hop music fairly well to know and remember John Forte. Perhaps you'd remember his club hit "99" which — teamed with underground songstress Jeni Fujita — looped German one-hitter Nena's "99 Luft Balloons" into a likable, if not pop-y track that highlighted his debut solo album Poly Sci. Maybe you remember a smooth verse on Wyclef Jean's "Stayin Alive" or his production work on The Fugees ground-breaking The Score.

A name you may forget, a voice you'd remember.

I interviewed Forte for my student newspaper in the spring of 1998, a feather in my cap to do a one-on-one phoner with someone who had such an impressive resume in the hip hop industry despite not having been in it very long. In retrospect I have no idea what my expectations of the conversation were going to be but I know that afterwards I could not speak enough about the experience.

I kept the tape of that interview for years — unfortunately I no longer have it — and would frequently listen to it not to hear my voice engaging with a famous hip hop artist, but because I was taken with Forte's knowledge, his passion and, most importantly, his desire to treat the genre with respect, also respecting the importance of what the music holds. Few artists do that and I, a hip hop lifer, gladly took it all in.

Forte's first effort put up disappointing numbers in sales, more the product of poor promotion and a hip hop consuming public that seems all too unwilling to take in anything outside the pop realm. He really couldn't find a niche and his uneagerness to use his Fugee's background as a springboard left him without name power in an industry that craves it.

Fast forward to 2005 and a random internet search has me stumble across Wyclef's latest single "The Industry," (.wmv file), (lyrics) a bob-your-head winner that pines for the good old days of hip hop and sings with a melancholy for the death, incarcerations and beefs gone too far.

Imagine Refugees never needin a passport/And John Forte never at Newark Airport"

I had no idea what that lyric meant. I found out, though. I'll save the details and let you read Rolling Stone's thoughtful piece from August, 2002..

Peter Wilkinson's note that it "floored the hip hop community" is to say the least. I'm not sure if I'm more floored by the fact it occurred or the fact it took me four years to hear about it.

Regardless, the news of Forte's arrest was disheartening to say the least, but not in the "role model gone bad" sort of way. That's not what is at work here. I think the most distressing thing to me is the circumstances that dragged down a man who graduated from the presitigious Phillip Exeter Academy to the point he finds himself now.

I had a bunch of friends who used to love to party/When them dark days hit, I suddenly lost everybody.

The lyric, from "Been There, Done That" off Forte's second release I, John is perhaps not in reference to the slide Forte suffered before releasing that album in 2001, one month before his trial — after all it is actually a love song to a woman pledging his devotion to leaving the run-around life behind. Still, it is foolish to suggest that the lyric — and numerous others on that album — aren't a ballad to his life which plays like a tear-jerking movie script.

Hearing of Forte's incarceration was a depressing end to my day. There are a myriad rappers, artists and musicians who bring nothing to the table, who use their privilege to do nothing more than advance a self-serving and uninspired career. Meanwhile, one who took a high road of lyricism is locked away and balked at by the consuming public. Hardly seems fair.

Forte's circumstance was shocking, to say the least. As ludicrous as it sounds, because of that one interview seven years ago, I felt like it was a friend or family member whom I had just heard about.

I have likely interviewed more than 2,000 people in roughly 10 years of writing and radio and expectedly it's rare if any of them hold any sort of impression through 24 hours. If Forte in fact serves his full term, to 2013, when he's released I will still remember that interview from 1998 and still remember the feeling I got for weeks and months following when I listened over and over to that tape. I wish more people had gotten to hear that interview, heard the introspection and heard the wisdom of a guy who had nothing but good to bring to hip hop and music as a whole.

You'd then understand why I just spent two hours writing this letter to no one about a cassette tape that no longer exists.

And how I wish I had it with me now.

Lyric of the Day:
Lyric of the day is a link, to each lyric of Forte's I, John. Not all hip hop, but all of it worth the read.