Big Pun dies

Why it matters

Christopher Lee Rios, who recorded as Big Pun, died on February 7, 2000, of a heart attack at a White Plains hotel. He was 28. He weighed approximately 700 pounds at the time of his death. He had been in declining health for at least a year. Pun is the first Latino rapper to have a solo album certified platinum (Capital Punishment, 1998). He was, in the eighteen months before his death, the most technically gifted Bronx MC of his generation. Fat Joe, who had brought Pun out, has spent the last twenty-five years carrying the Terror Squad continuity that Pun and he had built together. The unreleased Pun material (Yeeeah Baby, the posthumous LP, came out in April 2000) hints at where he was heading. He never got to make the third or fourth or fifth album where most career rappers actually figure out what they are. He just had the first two. You can play the lyric to "Twinz (Deep Cover '98)" out loud right now, the part with the multi-syllabic rhymes, and hear what he was. Twenty-eight is too young. The Bronx, by 2000, had lost two of the great Bronx MCs (Pun and Big L) in eleven months.