Published: Thursday - May 3, 2007
Words by Bear Frazer
It was a cold night in Fire & Ice in Charlotte, North Carolina that December. It was one of those venues that should only seat one hundred people, but by the hands of God (and some money-hungry club owner who could care less about the fire hazard), about 350 people packed into this mini-vacant strip of a nightclub.
I parked the Durango a few feet away in the side parking lot and proceeded to the door, where I was patted down because most white people are packing heat, carrying knives and sharp Mach 3 razors. So I go on in with my friends and we decided to take over the abandoned couch in the corner. While I'm wait for some the local artists to arrive, I light up a Camel and walk up to the bartender to order a Bud Light.
After sitting back down to watch the fight on the surprisingly, yet sparingly used, plasma that dawn from the ceiling, I spoke to Pauly Snubnoze, who not only promoted the event, but one of the few other crackers in the place. While he was working the mic check, he made it a point to introduce me to Knotty.
For those who don't know (which I'm sure there is many), there is this group called Nasty Fruit who come from Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Lyrically, they are very similar to The Roots. That's just their style. Knotty was one of the emcees in the group.
Knotty
I was familiar with Nasty Fruit several months prior to this meeting. So Knotty wasn't on the bill that night, but wanted to make the trek out because I was really trying to immerse myself in the scene and help the talent rise. Since the place was still dead, we went out to his car and I met his team. Turns out they were getting their shit together. They comprised a DVD of live performances, they had their mixtape out and were on top of things. For 20 minutes, we were just watching the flick on the portable televisions in the car, which was cool.
We exchanged contact info as I carried the music back to my Durango. We walked inside the venue, grabbed a drink and that was it. They had to get back to Raleigh and I was meeting up with other local artists/producers like Kaze, Shelly B, Marshall Law and a few others.
Little did I know or even imagine that was the last time I would actually see Nasty Fruit all together for the last time. I received a phone call the other night from Snubnoze and it's one of those calls when you know something is wrong, mainly because he said, "Bear man, I got some disturbing news. Very disturbing news."
Knotty was murdered in his apartment on April 27th. There are a few different versions of the story floating around, but he was shot repeatedly at his home during the daytime. The funeral was recently, but since I don't live in Carolina, I couldn't make it. Still, it was a gloomy day and if you lived in Virginia, the torrential storm only re-enforced it.
It's never cool when someone dies. Yeah, we all have to go sooner or later, true, but it's just sad when someone goes at such an early age. I only met Knotty once, but we made sure to keep tabs on each other. He was a very polite, kind guy and seemed to have it together.
Whether Knotty is another causality to the ever growing violence in the project of Raleigh-Durham is something I can't answer and it isn't necessarily my place to do so. The only things I know is that this could be a Nasty Whirl from time to time and this is a loss for the city of broken dreams.
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