Lauryn Hill paid tribute to longtime good friend and artistic accomplice John Forté following his sudden dying at age 50, describing their early bond and shared rise in Hip-Hop as “surreal” and unforgettable.

Forté, a Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter finest recognized for his work with the Fugees, was discovered unresponsive at his dwelling in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on January 12.

A neighbor found him on the kitchen flooring round 2:25 p.m. He was pronounced lifeless on the scene. No indicators of foul play had been discovered, and the reason for dying stays underneath investigation by the state health worker.

Lauryn Hill, who launched Forté to Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel within the early Nineteen Nineties, mirrored on their early days collectively in New York City, when Hip-Hop was nonetheless discovering its voice and the Fugees had been simply starting to form theirs.

“I can’t remember the exact moment I met John Forté—or Forté, as we used to call him—but I know we became fast friends very soon after,” Hill mentioned in a press release. “I loved him. My family loved him.”

She recalled walking the streets of New York with Forté, both of them immersed in the energy of a genre on the rise.

“Our generation of Hip-Hop was young and at the ascent of its epic rise,” she mentioned. “We were both there… participating and taking it all in, full of excitement and possibility.”

Forté, born in Brooklyn in 1975, was a classically educated violinist who blended his Brownsville roots with prep college polish.

Lauryn Hill remembered him as “a gentleman and a scholar with a strong pen, deep soul and kind heart.” She added, “Part Brownsville, part prep school, he had access to a way of expressing himself with a vocabulary and fluency that was very rare for the time.”

Forté’s breakthrough got here when Hill launched him to the Fugees. He went on to co-write and co-produce a number of tracks on their 1996 Grammy-winning album The Score, which stays one of many best-selling Hip-Hop albums of all time.

He additionally contributed to tracks like “We Trying to Stay Alive” and “Rumble in the Jungle,” collaborating with artists akin to A Tribe Called Quest and Busta Rhymes.

Hill described that period as cinematic.

“I remember that summer like a movie,” she mentioned. “Me, Forté, Chuck and Edwin were everywhere in NYC, in love with Hip-Hop, where it was going and where it could go.”

Their inventive chemistry prolonged past music.

“We were inseparable that summer—music and fashion connoisseurs, outside, figuring out the best ways to communicate our particular consciousnesses within that musical landscape,” she mentioned. ‘Our escapades read like a 90s version of ‘Cooley High’ to me.”

Though years handed with out seeing one another, Hill mentioned Forté joined the final Miseducation-Fugees tour and stepped on stage “like no time had passed at all.”

They had been in contact simply weeks earlier than his dying.

“This loss is unexpected and surreal and my heart aches… for his family, for his wife, for his children, for his friends, and for all of us who were blessed to know him,” Hill mentioned. “Love you John. Rest in peace gentle King.”

Forté is survived by his spouse, photographer Lara Fuller, and their two youngsters.

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