P. Fluid of rap-metal pioneers 24-7 Spyz murdered in the Bronx
The 64-year-old was found beaten to death in the back of an ambulette he was driving.
Yesterday (1/14), NY Daily News reported that a 64-year-old Bronx man was found beaten to death in the back of an ambulette he was driving, and the news has since broke that the man was Peter Forrest, better known as P. Fluid, vocalist of the pioneering rap-metal band 24-7 Spyz. He also reportedly helped found Black Rock Coalition, a NYC-based artists’ collective and nonprofit organization for Black musicians that Living Colour’s Vernon Reid also co-founded in 1985. The article reads:
Forrest was last heard from by colleagues at the ambulette company at about 8 a.m. Monday. When he failed afterward to make a few pickups and stopped answering his phone, they became concerned.
A coworker at Marquis Ambulette used GPS to track Forrest’s ambulette to Castle Hill Ave. near Howe Ave. in Castle Hill around 10:30 a.m. Monday, police sources said.
When the coworker found his ambulette, the front-door window had been broken and Forrest was lying face down in the back in a pool of blood, cops said. According to police, Forrest was beaten to death.
“We are cooperating and it’s a terrible tragedy for the family and [our] hearts are going out to his family,” said the colleague, who did not want to share his name.
[Former longtime girlfriend Chiedza] Makonnen was stunned to learn of Forrest’s murder and baffled by the circumstances of the killing in a remote corner of the Bronx.
“I don’t know him to have had any enemies. He was a musician, he wasn’t that type of guy,” she said. “I never saw Peter in a fight.”
24-7 Spyz formed in 1986 and released their debut album Harder Than You in 1989. Its breakthrough single was a cover of Kool & the Gang’s “Jungle Boogie.” In 1990-1991, they opened Jane’s Addiction’s Ritual De Lo Habitual tour, and Fluid left the band after that tour. In 2008, he teamed with Living Colour’s Corey Glover and Fishbone’s Angelo Moore to release a single under the name AFC, and in 2009, he released the self-titled debut album by his band blkVampires.
“Music was his life and advancing Black rock was his life,” Makonnen told the Daily News. “He was passionate about that. He really helped pave that road for a lot of people to understand that Black musicians aren’t just rappers or R&B or soul, we’re rockers too.”
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