UPDATE (May 23, 2013): Arrest Warrant Issued for Tim Dog, ‘Dead’ Since February
UPDATE (May 17, 2013): Tim Dog May Have Faked His Death to Escape Scamming Debt
We’re used to rap beefs playing out on Twitter now before getting gobbled up by the rest of the day’s news, but Bronx rapper Tim Dog’s 1991 debut single is a reminder of the pure hatred that was at the root of the feud between New York and Los Angeles. Timothy Blair — who reportedly died Thursday night at the age of 46 from a seizure due to complications from diabetes — was a key cog in the war that would define rap music in the ’90s thanks to his debut single “Fuck Compton,” which threw a series of roundhouses primarily at N.W.A.
The East Coast/West Coast battle would of course grow to become something much larger, but direct disses at Tim Dog pepper seminal works like Dre & Snoop’s “Fuck Wit Dre Day” and DJ Quik’s Way 2 Fonky. The L.A. rappers would have the last laugh, so to speak, as Tim Dog’s career never reached near the heights of the rappers he got famous for dissing, but his 1991 debut Penicillin on Wax remains a classic from New York’s dookie ropes era. After the dissolution of Ultramagnetic MC’s, Kool Keith and Tim Dog formed a group called Ultra, which recorded the 1995 album Big Time.
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Tim Dog last popped up in the public eye in 2011, when he pleaded guilty to grand larceny after pocketing $32,000 in an online dating scam (the incident would later be profiled in a June 2012 episode of Dateline NBC). In the end, his legacy boils down to one track and its subsequent album, but what a start to a career it was.
