I was actually a fan, although I don't think I could have named his songs or recognized his face I definitely knew his music and one of those songs that I remember enjoying was called 'Bad Boys'
hear his song here (NSFW- explicit lyrics!)
But now on to the real reason I am writing this post- apparently, Shyne has a Jewish mother and changed his name to Moses Michael Levy (from Jamal Michael Barrow) and is now a religious practicing Jew living in Israel ans studying at Ohr Somayach!
A few interesting articles have come out in the last few days regarding his experiences in Israel and what he is doing-
http://www.vosizneias.com/68398/2010/11/10/jerusalem-rapper-finds-order-in-orthodox-judaism-in-israel
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/11/shyne_just_your_average_rappin.html
http://www.jpost.com/ArtsAndCulture/Entertainment/Article.aspx?ID=194798&R=R1
The New York Times published this article (it was partially posted on the vosizneias website above)
Rapper Finds Order in Orthodox Judaism in Israel
By DINA KRAFT
JERUSALEM — The tall man in the velvet fedora and knee-length black jacket with ritual fringes peeking out takes long, swift strides toward the Western Wall. It’s late in the day, and he does not want to miss afternoon prayers at Judaism’s holiest site. “We have to get there before the sun goes down,” he says, his stare fixed behind a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, the first clue that this is no ordinary Jerusalem man of God. It’s the rapper Shyne, the Sean Combs protégé who served almost nine years in New York prisons for opening fire in a nightclub in 1999 during an evening out with Mr. Combs and his girlfriend at the time, Jennifer Lopez. “My entire life screams that I have a Jewish neshama,” he said, using the Hebrew word for soul.
Living as Moses Levi, an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem (he legally changed his name from Jamaal Barrow), he shuttles between sessions of Talmud study with some of the most religiously stringent rabbis in the city and preparations for a musical comeback. His transition from troubled adolescent in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, shot at the age of 15, to celebrity gangster rapper turned prisoner turned frequenter of yeshivas, is the latest chapter in a bizarre journey that began with his birth in Belize 32 years ago. He is the son of a lawyer who is now that country’s prime minister and a mother who brought him to the United States and cleaned houses for a living. “The science of Judaism” as Mr. Levi refers to it, has become his system for living, a lifeline that connects him to God and becoming a better human being. He sees no conflict fusing the hip-hop world with the life of a Torah-observant Jew.
Mr. Levi speaks in the style of the urban streets but combines his slang with Yiddish-accented Hebrew words and references to the “Chumash” (the bound version of the Torah, pronounced khoo-MASH) and “Halacha” (Jewish law, pronounced ha-la-KHAH). As in: “There’s nothing in the Chumash that says I can’t drive a Lamborghini,” and “nothing in the Halacha about driving the cars I like, about the lifestyle I live.” As a teenager he started reading the Bible, relating to the stories of King David and Moses that he had first heard from his grandmother. At 13 (bar mitzvah age, he notes) he began to identify himself as “an Israelite,” a sensibility reinforced after finding out his great-grandmother was Ethiopian; he likes to wonder aloud whether she might have been Jewish. He was already praying daily and engaged in his own study of Judaism at the time of his arrest but only became a practicing Jew, celebrating the holidays, keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath under the tutelage of prison rabbis. In Israel, he said, he had undergone a type of pro forma conversion known as “giyur lechumra” (pronounced ghee-YUR le-kchoom-RAH).
On the December night in 1999 that Mr. Levi walked into a Times Square nightclub, he was a 19-year-old enjoying the fruits of his first record deal and the hip-hop high life. The details of what happened inside remain muddled, but after an argument broke out between Mr. Combs, then known as Puff Daddy, and a group in the club, shots were fired, and three people were hurt. Mr. Combs was charged with gun possession but later cleared in a highly publicized trial. Mr. Levi was sentenced to 10 years in prison for assault, gun possession and reckless endangerment. The police said he fired into the crowd. He maintains he shot in the air to break up the dispute. He would not say whether he took a fall for his former mentor. “That’s the past, I got so much going on,” he said. “We move on.”
What Mr. Levi has moved on to since being released from prison last year is a life in which he is often up at daybreak, wrapping his arms with the leather straps of tefillin, the ritual boxes containing Torah verses worn by observant Jews for morning prayers. Throughout the day he studies with various strictly Orthodox rabbis. “What are the laws?” he said, explaining his decision to adhere to the Orthodox level of observance. “I want to know the laws. I don’t want to know the leniencies. I never look for the leniencies because of all of the terrible things I’ve done in my life, all of the mistakes I’ve made.”
On the sprawling stone plaza of the Western Wall, crowded with tourists and worshipers, he clutches a worn prayer book whose leather cover was torn off by prison officials for security reasons. Here he encounters a group of young Ethiopians singing in Hebrew and Amharic about Jerusalem. For a moment he links arms with them, and together they spin, dancing in concentric circles at dizzying speed. With him is his local sidekick, a burly and bearded 30-year-old named Eli Goldsmith who used to run nightclubs in London (his uncle is a prominent music promoter) before he too became religious. Later, with Mr. Goldsmith in the rental car he uses to get around, Mr. Levi sampled tracks from two new albums, “Messiah” and “Gangland,” that are to be released in a joint venture with Def Jam Records. The deal suggests the clout he holds despite not having released an album since 2004. He put the volume on high as he drove through the traffic-clogged roads of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. In songs like “Am I a Sinner?” he casts his spiritual quest as an escape from prison life and pain, with lyrics like, “Look in your soul and you will find vision that you can’t see through the eye.” Three more albums are scheduled to follow. Touring in the United States remains uncertain; he was deported after his prison release as a felon who does not have citizenship, a ruling he is appealing.
Arriving at a small hummus restaurant, he recited the blessing for bread over a piece of warm pita. With him were two rabbis. Jeffrey Seidel, one of the rabbis, said he been moved by the depth of Mr. Levi’s intellectual curiosity and dedication to Judaism. Their current focus of study together: Sabbath laws. For Mr. Levi they help explain his attraction to Judaism. “What I do get is boundaries,” he said. “Definition and form. And that is what Shabbat is. You can’t just do whatever you want to do. You have to set limits for yourself. “All these rules, rules, rules,” he said with his hand on an open page of the Talmud. “But you know what you have if you don’t have rules? You end up with a bunch of pills in your stomach. When you don’t know when to say when and no one tells you no, you go off the deep.”
----
Article from jpost.com:
Even Quentin Tarantino couldn’t imagine this script.
A 20-year-old Belize-born New York street rapper with an Ethiopian Jewish maternal grandmother releases his smash debut album in 2000, right around the same time he’s charged with attempted murder in a night club shooting involving Sean (P. Diddy) Combs and Jennifer Lopez. After serving a 10-year sentence, the rapper is deported from the US and returns to Belize, where his father is prime minister.
Becoming religiously observant while in prison, the rapper makes his first visit to Israel over Rosh Hashana, decides to stay, undergoes a symbolic conversion, adopts the garb of the Belz hassidic sect and begins studying at a yeshiva. While still fighting his deportation, the rapper signs a lucrative deal with Def Jam Records and begins plotting his comeback – not as a misogynist, profane disciple of the Notorious B.I.G., but as an inspirational hip-hopper aimed at showing kids the path of Jewish values.
Meet the double life of Shyne, who’s traded in his oversized basketball shirts and backward baseball cap for high, white socks and a big black kippa – at least if it’s on Shabbat or the Torah-reading days, Monday and Thursday.
A 20-year-old Belize-born New York street rapper with an Ethiopian Jewish maternal grandmother releases his smash debut album in 2000, right around the same time he’s charged with attempted murder in a night club shooting involving Sean (P. Diddy) Combs and Jennifer Lopez. After serving a 10-year sentence, the rapper is deported from the US and returns to Belize, where his father is prime minister.
Becoming religiously observant while in prison, the rapper makes his first visit to Israel over Rosh Hashana, decides to stay, undergoes a symbolic conversion, adopts the garb of the Belz hassidic sect and begins studying at a yeshiva. While still fighting his deportation, the rapper signs a lucrative deal with Def Jam Records and begins plotting his comeback – not as a misogynist, profane disciple of the Notorious B.I.G., but as an inspirational hip-hopper aimed at showing kids the path of Jewish values.
Meet the double life of Shyne, who’s traded in his oversized basketball shirts and backward baseball cap for high, white socks and a big black kippa – at least if it’s on Shabbat or the Torah-reading days, Monday and Thursday.
“I dress both ways. But on Shabbat? Absolutely. Mondays and Thursdays? Absolutely. But Tuesdays, Wednesdays? I have some leeway,” Shyne told The Jerusalem Post in a far-ranging interview that took place in a conference room at the capital’s Mamilla Hotel.
Born Jamal Michael Barrow, but now going by the name Moshe Levy Ben-David, the 31-year-old Shyne has become a ubiquitous presence in Jerusalem in recent weeks, whether it’s hosting a delegation of Def Jam executives last week to discuss his new album slated for 2011 release, working out at the David Citadel fitness center, studying at Ohr Somayach yeshiva or visiting the Gilad Schalit tent to talk with the captive soldier’s parents, Noam and Aviva.
Shyne’s troubled youth, which included an estrangement from his father, Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow; moving to the slums of Flatbush Gardens in Brooklyn to be with his mother when he was seven; and being shot when he was 15, was cushioned by discovering a talent for hip-hop when he was a young teen.
Discovered and signed by hip-hop mogul Combs to a lucrative deal with his Bad Boy Records in 1999, Shyne was featured on Combs’s album Forever and was recording his debut record when the fateful nightclub incident took place at the end of that year.
The intensity shone in Shyne’s eyes, even through his reflector shades, when recalling that tumultuous period.
“Someone shot at me outside a studio about a month before the nightclub thing, and I got a gun. It was a terrible mistake, but I had post traumatic stress disorder,” said Shyne, who regularly peppers his speech with yeshiva terminology.
“So 30 days later, I’m in the club with Combs and [then-girlfriend] Jennifer Lopez and there’s an argument between him and this guy, who I knew for a fact was a stone-cold murderer from Brooklyn. I knew there wasn’t going to be too much talking before he pulls a gun out. The next thing you know, someone who was with the guy from Brooklyn pulls the gun, and I was just defending myself.”
While spending time in a New York lockup after his arrest, Shyne recalled turning to the Bible stories his grandmother used to tell him growing up in Belize.
“When we had to cope with situations growing up, we didn’t deal with them talking about Muhammad or Jesus, it was with David and Moses. Those were the standard-bearers in my household,” he said. “What happened to me was a wake-up call, like Hashem saying to Adam, ‘Where are you?’ This was my ‘Adam’ moment. He was saying to me, ‘Where is your soul? What are you doing?”
Shyne’s debut album was released during the period before his trial, and rose to the top of the Urban charts – and not just thanks to his newfound notoriety. Fans also found an authenticity in his brand of hip-hop, fueled by an innate talent to verbalize his frustrations and struggles into sometimes vulgar, sometimes misogynist, but always straightforward rhymes.
Dropped from his label and ostracized by his former mentor Combs, Shyne was convicted of possessing a firearm, reckless endangerment and assault, and in late 2001, he began serving a 10-year sentence at a New York maximum security prison.
“We’re talking from January 1, 2000, to January 1, 2001. I went from being arrested, to having a No. 1 record, to being sent to prison. But I see it all through the grace ofHakadosh Baruch Hu [the Holy One, Blessed is He],” said Shyne, who started becoming observant by keeping kosher and Shabbat eight years ago while serving his sentence. In 2006, he changed his name to Moses Michael Levy.
When he was released last year, he was deported from the US to Belize after federal authorities determined that, although he was in possession of a green card, he had never become a citizen of the US. Shyne is currently trying to get the deportation order rescinded through a petition to New York Governor David Paterson.
Meanwhile, he returned to Belize, where in his words, he began acting as a “goodwill ambassador” for the country, and also began rehabilitating his withered career. The most successful US hip-hop record company, Def Jam, believed in his abilities and, earlier this year, signed him to a lucrative distribution deal for two new albums slated for early 2011 release – Messiah and Gangland.
With lyrics still focusing on the difficulties of inner urban life, the difference in the new Shyne is the omission of profanity, the “N-word” and misogynist references.
“Already on my second album [2004’s Godfather Buried Alive, released while he was in prison] there wasn’t any misogyny, but I was still a little more Ishmael and Esau – you know, a beast. But on my new records, I’m finally Ben-David. I’m still a warrior, I’m still on the front line, but it’s sanitized,” he said.
“With my first album, I was a baby, I was a fetus, I was wounded, and I was just crying and complaining,” he added. “I had a lot to learn.”
That’s what, in part, has led him to Israel. Shyne explained that with no Jewish community to speak of in Belize, he would fly every weekend to spend Shabbat in a Shabbat-observant community in Argentina, Guatemala or Panama.
Everyone was always telling me to go to Israel, but to me it’s not just going to Israel, it has to really be the emet [truth], otherwise I won’t do it. And for some reason, my neshama [soul] wasn’t driving me there,” he said. “Then as Rosh Hashana approached, I was thinking, ‘How can I not go to Jerusalem?’ And by God’s good graces, I’m in a position where I can decide just like that to go somewhere, so that’s what I did.”
Saying that his time spent here since his arrival has surpassed all expectations, Shyne added that it wasn’t very difficult to do so.
“I’m a guy that has simcha [joy] and kedusha [holiness] in a prison cell with rats running – and walking – around. Under the most inhumane circumstances, I would daven with as much fervor as you can imagine. So to be at the center of the universe now, I knew that whatever I was doing in exile would be multiplied tenfold,” he said.
Since his arrival, Shyne has undergone the symbolic conversion that the Chief Rabbinate provides for all olim from Ethiopia, including a symbolic brit mila and the adoption of the new name – Moshe Levy Ben-David.
“Once I took care of everything, then you gotta get a new name,” he laughed. “So I replaced Michael with Levy.”
Despite his global travels, his upcoming album that he hopes will bring him back to the public eye, and optimism that his ban from the US will be lifted, Shyne was adamant that he’s here in Israel to stay.
“I plan on making aliya and buying a home here,” he said. “So even if I’m not really here, my soul will be. It will be my stake in the ground here.”
A full profile of Shyne will appear in this Friday’s Magazine.
Born Jamal Michael Barrow, but now going by the name Moshe Levy Ben-David, the 31-year-old Shyne has become a ubiquitous presence in Jerusalem in recent weeks, whether it’s hosting a delegation of Def Jam executives last week to discuss his new album slated for 2011 release, working out at the David Citadel fitness center, studying at Ohr Somayach yeshiva or visiting the Gilad Schalit tent to talk with the captive soldier’s parents, Noam and Aviva.
Shyne’s troubled youth, which included an estrangement from his father, Belize Prime Minister Dean Barrow; moving to the slums of Flatbush Gardens in Brooklyn to be with his mother when he was seven; and being shot when he was 15, was cushioned by discovering a talent for hip-hop when he was a young teen.
Discovered and signed by hip-hop mogul Combs to a lucrative deal with his Bad Boy Records in 1999, Shyne was featured on Combs’s album Forever and was recording his debut record when the fateful nightclub incident took place at the end of that year.
The intensity shone in Shyne’s eyes, even through his reflector shades, when recalling that tumultuous period.
“Someone shot at me outside a studio about a month before the nightclub thing, and I got a gun. It was a terrible mistake, but I had post traumatic stress disorder,” said Shyne, who regularly peppers his speech with yeshiva terminology.
“So 30 days later, I’m in the club with Combs and [then-girlfriend] Jennifer Lopez and there’s an argument between him and this guy, who I knew for a fact was a stone-cold murderer from Brooklyn. I knew there wasn’t going to be too much talking before he pulls a gun out. The next thing you know, someone who was with the guy from Brooklyn pulls the gun, and I was just defending myself.”
While spending time in a New York lockup after his arrest, Shyne recalled turning to the Bible stories his grandmother used to tell him growing up in Belize.
“When we had to cope with situations growing up, we didn’t deal with them talking about Muhammad or Jesus, it was with David and Moses. Those were the standard-bearers in my household,” he said. “What happened to me was a wake-up call, like Hashem saying to Adam, ‘Where are you?’ This was my ‘Adam’ moment. He was saying to me, ‘Where is your soul? What are you doing?”
Shyne’s debut album was released during the period before his trial, and rose to the top of the Urban charts – and not just thanks to his newfound notoriety. Fans also found an authenticity in his brand of hip-hop, fueled by an innate talent to verbalize his frustrations and struggles into sometimes vulgar, sometimes misogynist, but always straightforward rhymes.
Dropped from his label and ostracized by his former mentor Combs, Shyne was convicted of possessing a firearm, reckless endangerment and assault, and in late 2001, he began serving a 10-year sentence at a New York maximum security prison.
“We’re talking from January 1, 2000, to January 1, 2001. I went from being arrested, to having a No. 1 record, to being sent to prison. But I see it all through the grace ofHakadosh Baruch Hu [the Holy One, Blessed is He],” said Shyne, who started becoming observant by keeping kosher and Shabbat eight years ago while serving his sentence. In 2006, he changed his name to Moses Michael Levy.
When he was released last year, he was deported from the US to Belize after federal authorities determined that, although he was in possession of a green card, he had never become a citizen of the US. Shyne is currently trying to get the deportation order rescinded through a petition to New York Governor David Paterson.
Meanwhile, he returned to Belize, where in his words, he began acting as a “goodwill ambassador” for the country, and also began rehabilitating his withered career. The most successful US hip-hop record company, Def Jam, believed in his abilities and, earlier this year, signed him to a lucrative distribution deal for two new albums slated for early 2011 release – Messiah and Gangland.
With lyrics still focusing on the difficulties of inner urban life, the difference in the new Shyne is the omission of profanity, the “N-word” and misogynist references.
“Already on my second album [2004’s Godfather Buried Alive, released while he was in prison] there wasn’t any misogyny, but I was still a little more Ishmael and Esau – you know, a beast. But on my new records, I’m finally Ben-David. I’m still a warrior, I’m still on the front line, but it’s sanitized,” he said.
“With my first album, I was a baby, I was a fetus, I was wounded, and I was just crying and complaining,” he added. “I had a lot to learn.”
That’s what, in part, has led him to Israel. Shyne explained that with no Jewish community to speak of in Belize, he would fly every weekend to spend Shabbat in a Shabbat-observant community in Argentina, Guatemala or Panama.
Everyone was always telling me to go to Israel, but to me it’s not just going to Israel, it has to really be the emet [truth], otherwise I won’t do it. And for some reason, my neshama [soul] wasn’t driving me there,” he said. “Then as Rosh Hashana approached, I was thinking, ‘How can I not go to Jerusalem?’ And by God’s good graces, I’m in a position where I can decide just like that to go somewhere, so that’s what I did.”
Saying that his time spent here since his arrival has surpassed all expectations, Shyne added that it wasn’t very difficult to do so.
“I’m a guy that has simcha [joy] and kedusha [holiness] in a prison cell with rats running – and walking – around. Under the most inhumane circumstances, I would daven with as much fervor as you can imagine. So to be at the center of the universe now, I knew that whatever I was doing in exile would be multiplied tenfold,” he said.
Since his arrival, Shyne has undergone the symbolic conversion that the Chief Rabbinate provides for all olim from Ethiopia, including a symbolic brit mila and the adoption of the new name – Moshe Levy Ben-David.
“Once I took care of everything, then you gotta get a new name,” he laughed. “So I replaced Michael with Levy.”
Despite his global travels, his upcoming album that he hopes will bring him back to the public eye, and optimism that his ban from the US will be lifted, Shyne was adamant that he’s here in Israel to stay.
“I plan on making aliya and buying a home here,” he said. “So even if I’m not really here, my soul will be. It will be my stake in the ground here.”
A full profile of Shyne will appear in this Friday’s Magazine.
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