A Sean Price Story by @ironsidehex
Sean Price, 3/17/1972 – 8/8/2015
365 days.
8,760 hours.
525,600 minutes.
3,153,6000 seconds.
That’s how long the great Sean Price has been gone. It took me a long time to come to grips with that. For months after he passed I just pretended he was overseas on tour & that was the reason I wasn’t talking to him. I just sorta ignored the fact that he wasn’t sending me any fucked up emails or saying any slick shit to me on social media. Sometimes I’ll say something about him on Twitter & his wife Bernadette ( who has access to his social media ) will retweet it from his account. Seeing “Gray Hulk Retweeted your Tweet” & the “@SeanPrice” handle always makes me grin.
I miss that guy.
He was a crazy muthafucka. Ruck kept you laughing, he was funny as fuck. He was “Eddie Murphy in the 80’s” funny. He could get mad pretty quick tho. 0 to 1000 in .02 seconds. That would be funny too. People that didn’t know him would be shook, & that would make the shit even funnier. When Ruck passed I did a three part tribute to him on All Hip Hop, detailed how we met & told a few stories. On this day, the first anniversary of his death, I was gonna post a sappy letter to him, just telling him what’s been going on & that we miss him, blah blah. Fuck that. I realized that shit would be more about me & some other folks ya’ll could give less than a fuck about. So I figured if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, I’ll tell another quick Sean Price story. I told this story before on Instagram but it was the Readers Digest abridged version. This is the whole shit. I’ll call this one, “CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT MURDER ON THE AUTOBAHN” or “DOG, YOU’RE TRIPPING”.
This shit is extra stupid, but it shows how Ruck could be furious & still hilarious at the same time.
It was 2007, the THREE THE HARD WAY tour, featuring Sean Price, Guilty Simpson, & Black Milk, pre-Random Axe. We were some-fucking-where in Germany & we had an early lobby call so we could head to the next city. It was about 6 or 7 am when everybody started to come down to the lobby, dragging their bags & their feet. I was already down there with our tour manager, Nils, this young German dude. I was sprawled on a chair, still drunk from the show the night before. We got up, went outside to the parking lot & started throwing luggage in the rear of the van. After Black’s slow-ass came straggling to the vehicle we were ready to go. Nils was driving, I was in the passenger seat, Ruck & Rustee Juxx ( Ruck’s ‘hypeman’ ) were directly behind me with Guilty & Black Milk having the last two rows of seats to themselves. I popped in our advance bootleg copy of JayZ’s “American Gangster” CD & we were off. Everybody was lethargic, but after a while everyone started waking up a little & talking shit as usual. This was 07 so somebody said “PAUSE” in the middle or at the end of every sentence. We ‘PAUSED’ the shit out of each other constantly. It was like a spoken punctuation. You know what “PAUSE” is right? It’s used as a disclaimer when someone unwittingly says something that can be construed as homoerotic shit. Like if somebody says, “NAW, I AINT HIP TO THAT. FILL ME IN” or “DUMARS USE TO BE ALL OVER JORDAN. HIS ‘D’ WAS RIDICULOUS”. That type of shit would get a “PAUSE”.
I know. Juvenile as fuck. This is the type of environment this debacle takes place in. First you gotta understand that English isn’t Nils first language & he doesn’t really understand all the nuances of it. He kind of just mimicked or repeated what we said without fully grasping what we meant. Ok, the scene is set. We were talking shit & Ruck said something benign like “I’M HUNGRY”.
Nils jumped on it.
This was his chance.
“PAWS!”, he yelled.
“Hehe, PAWS!”
He looked around at everyone in the van, kind of looking for approval. We got sort of quiet. We weren’t trying to be rude to Nils but to make that statement pauseworthy was a reach. Suddenly Ruck leaned forward from the seat behind me. “Yo son, can u drive this van?” I looked over at the driver seat, looked at the steering wheel, shift selector, pedals, etc. It was a normal set up. I didn’t know what Ruck had in mind but sure, I could drive the van. “Yup”, I replied, curious as to why he asked me that. “Good”, he said. “I’m gonna kill this n***a Nils, & we’re gonna dump his body on the side of the road. You can drive us to the next venue.” Nils was white as a ghost. I kinda looked at Nils & shrugged. Then I turned around & looked at Ruck, searching his face for a hint of a smile or something that would tell me he was bullshitting. There was none. I realized that Sean Price was serious as fuck.
“Dog, you’re tripping.” I said. I mean, first of all we were in fucking Germany, I had no idea where we were going. Plus we were on the fucking Autobahn & cars were going past us at 200 fucking miles per hour. Oh yeah, & we aren’t gonna fucking kill Nils. I cited all of these reasons to Ruck as to why his plan was a bad fucking idea. He finally relented but he growled at Nils,”YOU BETTER SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Nils lived but he used minimal words the rest of the tour, especially around Sean Price. I think he loosened up later in the run but he didn’t get that fucking loose again. Ruck damn near rendered that man a mute.
Only Sean P could make a murder plot funny as fuck. ( Funny in retrospect only, because this shit wasn’t that funny when it was happening. )
I really love & miss that dude.
No “PAWS” needed.
ironsidehex was formerly known as “HEXMURDA” & was the manager of artists Black Milk, Guilty Simpson, Danny Brown, eLZhi & co-manager of Random Axe until he suffered a stroke in 2009 which left him with impaired speech, one good eye, & wheelchair bound. He also was the executive producer on such lp’s as Black Milk’s “POPULAR DEMAND” & “TRONIC”, elZhi’s “THE PREFACE”, Bishop Lamont X Black Milk’s”CALTROIT” & co-executive producer of Random Axe’s “RANDOM AXE”. He can be heard occasionally on Statik Selektah ‘s ‘SHOWOFF RADIO” on Shade45/Sirius via computer voice & he has a reoccurring editorial column on ALLHIPHOP.COM.
ironsidehex currently resides in Detroit, Michigan.