In 1992, Christopher Wallace, aka Notorious B.I.G., was on the his way to becoming a superstar: he was praised in the Unsigned Hype section of The Source, was signed to Uptown Records by A&R and record producer Puff Daddy (Diddy), and was on the hit remix of Mary J. Blige's “Real Love”.
Things were looking good but Biggie couldn’t ignore the call of the streets and was arrested that year for weapon procession.
This was the second strike for the street hustler who did a 9 month bid in a North Carolina jail just years prior.
Fortunately for Biggie though, his friend Damion “D-Roc” Butler was willing to take the fall for him. D-Roc went to jail just so his friend would be able to go on a do big things in the rap game (Side Note: D-Roc also did a 8 year bid starting in 2001 for his involvement in a shooting outside of a Manhattan radio station – the same incident that L’il Kim was charged for conspiracy and one count of perjury for lying about her friends' involvement).
Fast forward to this year: rapper T.I. and his wife were arrested on drug charges in Los Angeles on September 1. Last week T.I. began his 11 month sentence for probation violation in an Arkansas prison.
T.I. just ended a one year stint in jail for federal weapon charges less than a year ago. When he got arrested all I could think was “Why was there no one else in the car besides him and his wife? Where’s the dude to take the fall?”
I personally felt he should have gotten 10 years for being dumb enough to get caught. I’m not condoning his drug usage but if he felt it necessary to get high outside of his house (and home state for that matter), he should have made sure there was someone there to take the rap for him. Like a D-Roc or even Shyne.
Rapper Shyne may not have been able to prevent Diddy from being charged, but to this day he hasn't broken the street's code of silence and hasn’t spoken a word of what happened in that New York City club shooting in December 1999. He even did a 9 year bid because of the event.
Popular rapper Lil Wayne has plenty of “fall” guys, each were even willing to take the rap for the four felonies he was charged with in 2008, however evidence still caused him to be convicted (he just got probation for these charges).
T.I. should have never been caught in a situation where there was no one around that could take the fall. D-Roc did it twice and I'm sure T.I. could find some poor soul with no ambitions that would have done the same for him.
Every celeb involved in illegal activities should have a few. The “take the fall” guy is crucial to their existence – outside of prison.
