The hip-hop community is in mourning after groundbreaking rapper Hurricane G passed away, it was confirmed Sunday.
“My heart is hardened today. One of my good friends… my oldest daughters mother passed away today,” wrote EPMD’s Erick Sermon on Instagram, describing her as “a legend in her own right in the Hiphop community.”
Hurricane G, born Gloria Rodríguez, rose to fame in the mid-1990s after appearing on Redman’s 1992 hit “Tonight’s da Night.” She followed with another Redman song, “Dare Iz a Darkside,” in 1994 while collaborating with Xzibit on the track “At the Speed of Life” before releasing her debut album, All Woman, in 1997. The artist, who was of Puerto Rican descent, rapped in both English and Spanish.
“She paved the way,” Sermon wrote. “She was in all the Hiphop magazines with all the top females at the time. She will be missed all around the world. I can’t believe this. Pray for us. Beautiful blessings. She was a beautiful person a wonderful mother as real as they come.”
No cause of death has been revealed but in May, Hurricane G’s daughter, Lexus, revealed her mother had lung cancer.
“My mom has stage 4 lung cancer,” she wrote. “I dont know how many of you understand what that means but even after 30 years of life Im still trying to process it myself. I have never cried so much in my life I have never felt so disconnected from reality in my life.”
On Facebook on Sunday night, the producer of Hurricane G’s debut album paid tribute to the “really funny person.”
“I have so many crazy stories from working with Hurricane G on her album All Woman,” Domingo Padilla wrote.
“We recorded that album in my apartment in Ozone Park Queens on a Tascam 388 and I took the whole reel machine to 78/88 studios and dumped the music to 2 inch reels…
“Gloria was a really kind hearted, funny person but when she was mad stay out her way… LOL. I saw her make a famous radio personality cry in a studio and when I drove Gloria home we argued about why she did that and she kept it real with me she said ‘Domingo that bi**h don’t fool me she is a 2 face.’”
Padilla said he was “gonna miss speaking to her on the phone and hear her say ‘Domingo you got that funky ass fire for me or what motherfucker.’”
Hurricane G’s death came almost immediately after unconfirmed reports that another hip-hop artist, “Jersey legend” rapper Tame One of Artifacts fame, also passed away. Tame, who is a cousin of Redman, also found fame in the 1990s but struggled to secure commercial success.
