It’s only been a couple of days. First we had the 50th anniversary of when hip-hop was originated (Aug. 10, 1973) and then only yesterday (Aug. 11), I saw that in Cleveland, Ohio, particularly on E. 1999 Street that the street was named after one group that originated from that neighborhood, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
I would consider myself a Bone fan, even though I am not one of those fans who has the entire catalog of not just the group albums but also solo albums from Krayzie Bone, Layzie Bone, Bizzy Bone, and Flesh-N-Bone. I didn’t mean to leave out Wish Bone but because to this day he still hasn’t released a solo album, I had no other choice but to exclude him. But aside from that, I recall reading somewhere that the street would be named after them.
On Instagram and other social media platforms, some videos were shown of a ceremony being held with the placement of the sign to commemorate the group with Bizzy and Krayzie attending the event. At least Flesh, Layzie, and Wish gave their regards to this event despite not attending as seen in the video below.
However, this isn’t the first time I had heard about something like this.
Last year in 2022, social media posts and news articles had talked about how Bay Area legend Too $hort had a commemorative plaque to name a street after him. From what I have seen, the streets themselves didn’t actually have their names change but rather commemorate the artists in relation to those streets. According to an article from ABC 7, a ceremony was held near Fremont High School in Oakland, California on Dec. 10, 2022 as it was dubbed “Too Short Day” and wanted to commemorate him for his contributions to the community.
It made me dig deeper to see if any other streets in some cities had been named after groups and solo artists. I was not surprised that Wu-Tang had a street named after them in Staten Island, New York, when they are from. I found that this happened in 2019. As a fan of Wu-Tang myself, how did I just now find out about this?
Seeing this made me look more into other artists who were commemorated. A recent article covered this. Many examples here I did not know until now but it didn’t surprise me that some of them were also commemorative to those who are no longer with us. For example, Phife Dawg (of A Tribe Called Quest) passed away in 2016 and had a street named after him the same year of his passing. His real name, Mark Taylor, was included in the street sign. In the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn, NY, a street was named after The Notorious B.I.G. (Biggie Smalls). I like how his real name, Christopher Wallace, was also included in the sign.
As someone who has been a hip-hop fan for decades, I can’t believe that I barely learned about some of these examples. Personally, I think it’s cool that a lot of these artists are given some kind of commemoration and respect like this.
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