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Heavy D VibeZ

Twenty-seven tracks from a rapper who called himself the Overweight Lover, meant it as a joke, and turned out to be one of the most consequential figures in hip-hop history.

Heavy-D

Heavy D (1967–2011)

Dwight Arrington Myers was born in Jamaica, raised in Mount Vernon, New York, and was the first artist signed to Uptown Records — Andre Harrell's label, the institution that essentially invented the fusion of hip-hop and R&B that dominated the following two decades.

That position matters more than his hit records. Heavy D was not just Uptown's first act; he later ran the label as its president, and he was the person who brought in a young intern named Sean Combs. A remarkable proportion of nineties Black music traces back through him.

As an artist he was a genuine anomaly: a large man who danced superbly, a rapper whose records were unfailingly good-humoured at a moment when the genre was turning hard, and a Jamaican who kept dancehall audibly in his delivery. He died in 2011, aged forty-four.

What to listen for

"Now That We Found Love" with Aaron Hall is the record everyone knows — a cover of a Third World song, itself a cover of a Philadelphia International record, which makes it three layers of history at once.

"Nuttin' But Love" and "Got Me Waiting" are the mid-nineties peak, the latter built on a Luther Vandross sample and produced by Pete Rock.

"Peaceful Journey" is the most serious thing here, written after the death of his dancer Trouble T-Roy — the same loss that produced Pete Rock and CL Smooth's "They Reminisce Over You".

"Black Coffee" and "This Is Your Night" are the dance records, and "More Bounce" is the Zapp interpolation.

"Somebody For Me" and "Is It Good To You" are the deep cuts, and Levert's "Just Coolin'" is the R&B crossover that showed the Uptown formula working.

"Hotness" with Buju Banton is the late-career reggae record, and it is a reminder of where he actually came from.

Go deeper

Blue Funk (1993) and Nuttin' But Love (1994) are the albums; Peaceful Journey (1991) is the most emotionally complete.

The Uptown Records story is the essential wider context — Jodeci, Mary J. Blige, Guy, Father MC — and Andre Harrell's role in it deserves as much attention as anyone's.

Why the influence exceeds the hits: his records are cheerful enough that it is easy to underrate him, but the institutional story is the important one — first artist signed to the label that fused hip-hop and R&B, later its president, and the person who brought in the intern who would reshape the following decade. A great deal of nineties Black music runs through him.

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