BHM| Today In Hip Hop History: Larry Davis Killed in Shawangunk Prison 16 Years Ago

Some say he was 50 Cent before 50 Cent. Some called him “the Robin Hood of The Ghetto,” while the establishment dubbed him “the crack city terminator.” In the hood, his solution is considered the only possible answer to an ongoing epidemic of police brutality. Some of your favorite rappers, from French Montana to Lloyd Banks to Jay-Z, have name-dropped him on their tracks. BET felt he was so important to American culture that their American Gangster series had to open with him. Still, only an educated few know why the name Larry Davis continues to ring bells more than three decades after that fateful night in November of ’86. On February 20, 2008, Adam Abdul Hakeem, aka Larry Davis, was stabbed to death in Shawangunk State Prison in New York by a fellow inmate after serving 23 years for an illegal weapons charge. Most would say that people die in American prisons daily, so what’s the big deal about another dead prisoner? Well, it must first be explained why Mr. Davis was in jail for so long on a mere gun charge in the first place. As he said on camera after his capture in 1986, “the police gave...