Hamden Remembers Fatman Scoop

Top: Hamden Police Chief Edward Reynolds. Bottom: The Electric Slide. Lucy Gellman Photos.

Laquita Norris came to Hamden Town Center Park prepared to mourn a hip-hop icon. But when Cameo’s “Candy” came on, her feet carried her through the grass, finding their way toward the brightly lit stage. As she did, lines of people formed in front of her, and began to do the Electric Slide. All of them, in their own way, were praying. 

Over 200 people gathered, prayed, wept and danced at a candlelight vigil for Fatman Scoop last Friday night in Hamden, exactly a week after the performer collapsed onstage during the last summer concert of the season. As they grieved his sudden death, many took the night as a space to process, making sense of how a cool summer evening could change so quickly. 

Throughout the night, the entertainer’s signature and final phrase—”If you came to party, make some noise!”—seemed to be everywhere, sending the words heavenward. 

“We thank you for how he was able to inspire other people,” said the Rev. Samuel T. Ross-Lee, pastor at Immanuel Missionary Baptist Church, in an opening benediction. “He was a connoisseur of the culture. He was a griot of the groove. He was a hype man of hip hop. He was the motivator of the movement. And for all of these things, we say thank you.” 

Rev. Samuel T. Ross-Lee: We are grateful for the music that he left behind, for the sound that he left behind, and for the people who will continue to be motivated by who he was and what he did.”

In a speaking lineup that included faith leaders, law enforcement officials and a fleet of licensed clinical social workers—all buoyed by DJ Bink-B—many attendees came to connect with each other. Beneath a tent by the stage, volunteers handed out bottles of water, and directed people to a table blanketed with electric tea lights, their filament-flames still off. Mayor Lauren Garrett, who was out of town the night of the concert, buzzed between speakers and town officials. 

Sitting far back from the stage, New Haveners Tammy Imre, Cheryl Rabe, and Mark Griffin held each other close, reflecting on how hard the last week had been for them. 

All members of Survivors of Society Rising, the three attended last week’s concert as longtime fans of the musician, and found themselves in shock after the performer’s collapse. All three have experienced loss and trauma in their own lives, Imre said, which made Friday feel heavy. When they arrived Friday, she and Rabe made a beeline for a social worker who took down their information.    

June Cullen, Cheryl Rabe, Tammy Imre and Mark Griffin.

“This whole past week, I’ve been having flashbacks of it,” she said. She can’t stop thinking about how Scoop peeled off his shirt, and made a comment that there weren’t any fans onstage, she said. “I loved him so much as an artist—”

 “He died doing what he loved,” said Griffin. When he heard Scoop’s music playing for hours on the radio over Labor Day weekend, “You feel it here,” he said. He tapped his heart, placing his hand beside a necklace of large wooden heads. “Like ‘Wow, he’s gone.’”

Around them, dozens of social workers spread out across the park, checking in with attendees and each other. Introducing them, Jessica Rizzo, crisis intervention team coordinator within the Hamden Police Department, suggested that there was no wrong or single way to mourn. She nodded to the number of parents and young kids present at the concert, urging them to take advantage of social workers and crisis counseling services not just Friday, but all year round.

DJ Bink-B.

But it was the man behind her that helped turn a curtain of grief into a groove, attendees praying with their feet as they stood to dance. As he raised the volume to Scoop and the Crooklyn Clan’s 1999 “Be Faithful,” DJ Bink-B looked out at the audience, and for a moment seemed to glow beneath the light. A week before, he had been standing next to Scoop when the entertainer collapsed. He later said that the two were not just longtime colleagues, but friends. 

“Wave your hands in the air! Wave ‘em like you just don’t care!” shouted Hamden Police Chief Edward Reynolds, tapping into his 30 years of experience as an ordained minister. “Somebody! Ev-er-y-body! Make some noise!”

And within moments, attendees did. Cheers and applause, sometimes sharp and musical, went up from different sections of the audience. People set up lawn chairs and picnic blankets for a strange and surreal sort of encore performance. Several yards from the stage, Hamdenite Ricky Smalls drummed his palms on a plastic tabletop, adding impromptu percussion.

By the time Bink-B flowed into Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em,” a knot of dancers had formed in front of the stage, many mouthing along with the words.

Laquita Norris. "I hope mad people come out and support his family," she said.

The DJ, it turned out, was just getting started. With a sort of musical alchemy, he took it back to the late 80s, with Cameo’s “Candy,” the beat tapping through the park. As dancers formed a rows-deep electric slide, Norris nailed the steps on her own, keeping a single, half-lit spot in the grass to herself. Between moves, she remembered seeing Fatman Scoop do his thing when he came to New Haven, where he emceed day parties for years.  

“It’s hard!” she said. “You know, here one minute and gone the next. He was onstage, and then he was gone. I hope mad people come out and support his family.”

As she listened, New Havener Dawn Jackson soaked in the sound with her 10-year-old grandson Jayden, who knew Scoop’s music through her tutelage. Decades ago, Jackson remembered hearing Scoop’s signature, gravelly bellow on the radio and thinking that she needed to know more about the musician. In a house that was always full of music, that wasn’t hard to do. She’s since passed that love on to three generations of listeners.

“We’re a family of music,” she said. When she learned last week that Fatman Scoop had died, she couldn’t stop crying. “It was like it was a member of the family,” she said. 

Dawn Jackson and Ricky Smalls. 

Back onstage, WNHH-LP radio host and content creator Fly Tye held a moment for Scoop’s family, asking attendees to lift them in prayer (he is survived by his children, Tiana and Torrance Freeman, and his brother Kendell Freeman). For Tye, who does work as an emcee himself, Scoop was a masterful teacher, even from afar. It was and is Scoop’s music that gets people moving, electric and alive, at parties, just as they were in the park last Friday.  

“Fatman Scoop, he was the truth,” he started to shouts of “Yes!” from the audience. “I’m thankful that he came to Connecticut, he gave us his all, like, he went all out for us.” 

He paused for thunderous applause and more cheers from the audience. “I’m happy for that. It’s a sad situation, but at the same time, it brought us all together, so we can remember him and all the things he did for us.”  

That memory will live on in Tye’s household, he added after coming down from the stage. After Scoop’s death last week, Tye’s daughter, Aylivia Harvey, started to do research on the musician as a way to honor his life. She now knows the lyrics that made him famous and how he got his nickname (a childhood sobriquet inspired by his love for ice cream), among other factoids that she was excited to share. “I love his songs, he’s a great person,” she said.  

Aylivia Harvey (in plaid), Chef Lizz'y Lizz and Fly Tye all came to pay their respects.

Across the grass, attendees listened, gathering electric candles as dusk gave way to a velvety, cool blue-black sky. Those who had not yet picked up tea lights headed toward a table where they still sat in neat, squat white rows. Rev. Robert Middleton, senior pastor at New Beginnings Ministries in Hamden, lifted his light skyward and began to speak. Several candles went up across the park, pinpricks of yellow light into the night. 

“As we hold this candle up tonight, I want you to begin to think about the good times,” he said, turning to Phillipians 4:8. “The things that you remember on a positive note, that he has contributed to your life. We’re celebrating the life of a man that gave himself to people. And I wonder if you know anybody like that. I know a guy like that, his name is Jesus—”

“All right!” someone yelled in the crowd. Cheers followed, and Middleton took just a beat. A whistle went up from somewhere to the right of the stage.

“And he’s the light of the world!” Middleton pressed on. “It’s amazing how you lift up these candles in a dark place, and it gets a little brighter. There’s something about us coming together … to be able to stand together like this shows that we got power.”

Ron Waters.

Ron Waters, who attended Scoop’s final concert with his daughter, repeated the words with a whispery bass. Thirty years ago, it was Scoop who made him want to be a DJ, a craft he still practices today. He can still remember hearing him on WQHT Hot 97, a staple for listening when he and friends were getting ready to hit the club.  

“He represented hip hop to the core,” Waters said. In each hand, he held a votive candle, the sweet, soft faces of the Virgin Mary and Saint Jude staring back. In addition to the vigil, he suggested that the town institute a hype man award in Scoop’s honor. 

Before he came down from the stage, Bink-B (or as he’s also known and loved, New Havener and now Hamden resident Bert Goldson) remembered talking to Scoop a few weeks before the concert, and hearing firsthand about how excited his friend and colleague was to come to New Haven. The hype man later made the day-long drive from Ohio, where he had been the day before, to perform Friday.  

Jessica Rizzo (in white blazer): "That event bonded us just like his music bonded us,” she said. “The way we break bread as a family, it nurtures us, it nourishes our bodies. So does music. And that is what Mr. Freeman, Scoop, did for us last Friday. I want us to acknowledge the fact that there will be different feelings and emotions flowing through all of us, and none of it is right, and none of it is wrong. Give yourself permission to be exactly where you are."

The two spoke for close to an hour, catching up before saying that they would see each other soon. Wiping his brow, the DJ remembered how giving Scoop was, never afraid to share connections with other people in the music industry. That was true even on the night he died, when he asked DJs Bink-B, Big E and Huggy Bear to share the stage with him. 

“Good brother, he always spread positivity,” he said before putting on DJ Frosty’s 2010 “Ride That Wave,” which features Fatman Scoop alongside DJ Webstar, Young B. and Smooth. “He was a giving guy.”

“He was one of a kind,” he later added, as Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” closed out the night. For Bink-B, the only man who came close was Doug E. Fresh, who Scoop often named as a mentor. “You can’t compare him to nobody. He was always energetic. The gap [he leaves] is gonna need to be filled, and his motivation will keep me doing what I do, in my way.”