Uptown’s Finest: Remembering Heavy D

Last week after being disappointed by a lackluster Puff Daddy piece, I reluctantly stayed tuned to catch a glimpse of BET‘s new series Inside The Label. The series was billed as a profile of some of the most successful labels in urban music history. For the premier, they chose to start off with Uptown Records and their exuberant young leader, Andre Harrell. I was pleasantly surprised with how well done the program was and how intricately they delved into the history of a label that I knew about but didn’t know a lot about.

One particular story that caught my eye was that of Dwight Myers, aka Heavy D. Being a west coast native, Heavy D wasn’t somebody that was spoon fed to my psyche at a young age by my father as was California legends; 2 Pac, Ice Cube, and Suga Free. Actually, other than the internationally known, “Now That We Found Love” which was in every TV show and movie, I had never heard anything by the man until maybe high school when I started getting curious. While his flow was always something I could always respect, being that I was such a lyrical junkie (Rass Kass, Mos Def, & Common all had multiple songs on my MySpace page) his discography wasn’t something that I bumped on the regular.

I still don’t bump Heav on the regular but after watching the program last week, I instantly understood why everybody loved him so much. While Heavy D would tell you himself – rest his soul- that he’s not a pure wordsmith, he was far from musically challenged. Heavy was a genius.

Taking Harrell’s budding idea of New Jack Swing and adding his own suave flavor to it, Heav created a genre of Hip-Hop that people still attempt to replicate today. Heavy is also credited with helping take Uptown into the next era once his style was becoming outdated by convincing Harrell to sign boy wonders Jodeci. He’s even rumored to have pushed him to allow Puffy to intern. He was somebody that was ahead of his time musically and was somebody that seemed very selfless. In today’s era of “Me! Me! Me!” attitudes from artists, even towards label mates, many artists want the spotlight on them 24/7 as opposed to letting their teammates eat. Heavy seemed completely at peace with taking seat and letting Uptown stars Guy, Al B Sure!, and even Puffy get some shine and limelight. With such a smash hit, and being an Uptown veteran, Heavy could’ve exhibited a me first attitude but instead helped innovate Uptown into the legendary hit factory it became to be. Heav even decided to let a young snot nosed Notorious B.I.G. get some shine giving his first major appearance on “A Bunch of Niggas”

So with all that being said, Happy 49th Birthday and rest in peace to a pure legend. To fellow sleepers like me, take peek at his discography and see how much he influenced your favorite rapper’s flow.