Robert Ross, the rap artist known as Black Rob, died yesterday (April 17th) at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, the New York Times reports. The cause of death was cardiac arrest, Ross’s friend Mark Curry told the Times. He added that before his death, Ross faced a number of health problems, including lupus, kidney failure, diabetes and multiple strokes. Ross was 52 years old.
The former Bad Boy signer, best known for his 2000s song “Whoa,” recently shared a video that was filmed while in hospital paying tribute to the late DMX. At the time of his death, a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for his medical expenses had not yet achieved its goal.
Ross started rapping as a child and formed his first group, the schizophrenics, when he was in his early 20s. He experienced a brief jail term in the late 1980s before invading Bad Boy Records in the following decade. Although his star rose when he contributed verse to a number of other artists on the label in the ’90s, Ross wouldn’t put his time in the spotlight until 2000 when his debut Life Story was finally released.
Life Story and their hit single “Whoa!” would help revive Bad Boy for a short time, and Ross would later appear on P. Diddy’s 2001 hit single “Bad Boys for Life”. although subsequent Black Rob releases are not that high. He later signed with Duck Down for his third album Game Tested, Streets Approved in 2011.
Ross suffered a stroke prior to the release of his fourth and final album, Genuine Article, in 2015.
