“Lifestyles of the rich & shameless/some die wit the name/some die nameless/it’s all the same game/it’s all the same pain” –Lost Boyz.

Continuing the sad stereotype in “lifestyles of the hip-hop rich and famous”– in which hip-hop artists fall prey to the same violence their art sometimes exposes– Lost Boyz MC Freakie Tah was fatally shot early Sunday morning outside a nightclub in his native Queens.

It was only a month ago that veteran NYC lyricist Big L was gunned down, shocking an underground movement that was finally prepared to accept L’s rise to mainstream recognition with his brilliant single “Ebonics.” And no one has forgotten the Left Coast murders– and subsequent martyrization– of hip-hop’s two greatest modern icons, Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.

With the passing of Tah, this epidemic of violence now seems to permeate an unprecedentedly wide segment of hip-hop culture. Tah and the Lost Boyz– too early really to be part of the current “hip-pop” phenom– had been relatively quiet since the release of their gold album Legal Drug Money in ’96 and Love, Peace & Nappiness in ’97. Though Tah did not die ‘nameless,’ in the sense of individual obscurity, his musical future was unclear as the details surrounding his death.

A couple of darkly ironic notes in all of this are that Big L and Tah have recorded together, and that with Love, Peace & Nappiness The Lost Boyz had moved so decidely toward the positive (if not afrocentric) and away from the criminal-minded Legal Drug Money.

This tragedy rings out sharply with the message that the state of inner city living is not all ice-downed medallions and Moet. It continues the blurring of art and life– and their cycle of imitation of each other. Moreover, the murder sheds light on why the pop success of someone like Jay-Z (who was actually once Big L’s understudy) represents so much for city youth of today. Jay-Z’s image defines the success of someone who has fought for everything, cheated death, and relied on cunning and humor to get over. No matter how much the work of newly platinum artists may benefit from airbrushing and the bright lights of a Hype Williams video, it still functions, ironically and grippingly, as what Chuch D calls the “African American CNN.”

The parting shot here is that despite the cushy state of the American economy, black-on-black violence continues to plague most urban communities. So we can only hope that as hip-hop culture endures the violent loss of its artists, more lyricists and musicians who are holding the attention of kids on the block and now in the shopping malls, are also raising up voices against the madness and in support of life.