However, after meeting Joe Fatal at a show, Chapman was convinced by the MC to get back into rap. While in jail, Chapman began reading the work of Malcolm X and upon his release he entered community college with the intention of studying black history he was still interested in hip-hop, but he wasn't planning on pursuing music as a career.
He recorded some tracks for Marley's 1988 album, In Control ("The Rebel," "Live Motivator"), but before he could see their release he was sent to the Elmira Correctional Facility for three years, at just 16 years old. These caught the ear of Marley Marl, who eventually ended up encouraging Chapman to split from Hot Day and join his influential group, the Juice Crew. Calling himself Jadeski, he hooked up with DJ Hot Day and, as the Superkids, they self-released a couple of songs in 1986. It was when he heard LL Cool J's "Rock the Bells," however, at a community function in Astoria that Chapman knew that he wanted to rap, too.
When he was nine years old he first heard hip-hop, which itself was just beginning to develop in the South Bronx and other New York neighborhoods. First making records as Intelligent Hoodlum before changing his name in 1997, Tragedy Khadafi stayed on a consistent grind of new material that spanned several important eras in the development of rap and hip-hop culture.īorn Percy Chapman in 1971 to a single mother in the projects of Queens, New York, Tragedy Khadafi grew up surrounded by music.
Working under a variety of different monikers, the music he made and his presence in New York's hip-hop circles would be highly influential for the wave of artists that included Mobb Deep, Capone, and Norega. Still a child in the late '70s, he lived in the infamous Queensbridge Housing Projects and witnessed some of the earliest days of rap's incubatory phase before getting into it himself as a teenager. A veteran of New York hip-hop, Tragedy Khadafi was there from the start.
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