Rapper Magoo, a foundational member of a groundbreaking hip-hop scene that emerged in Virginia in the 1990s and included his collaborators Timbaland, Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams, has died at age 50.
Magoo, whose birth name was Melvin Barcliff, died this weekend in Williamsburg, Va., according to his wife, Meco Barcliff, and a statement from his family. Barcliff said he has no known health problems other than asthma, but he hasn’t been feeling well for the past week. The coroner’s office is still investigating the cause, he said.
Magoo was young when rap music was first broadcast on the radio, and he credits it with helping rescue him from a rough childhood in Norfolk, Va. At first, he thought hip-hop was something he could dance to and listen to, but it was only done by people in the Northeast, he said. in an interview in April 2013 for the hip-hop oral history collection at the College of William & Mary.
As rap music began to fly from the coasts and Atlanta to radio stations and record stores in Virginia, Magoo realized at age 14 that it was an art form he could also practice. At Deep Creek High School in Chesapeake, he befriended other teenagers who also wanted to rap along with Timothy Mosley, also known as Timbaland, who became a well-known music producer.
Magoo and his Virginia Beach-area bandmates, including Pharrell Williams and Missy Elliott, will continue to have a heavy influence in music in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Magoo and Timbaland formed a duo and between 1997 and 2003 released three albums. “Welcome to Our World,” their first collaboration, included the track “Up Jumps da’ Boogie,” featuring Elliott and Aaliyah, which reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, their highest charting effort. Critics noted the project as a step in Timbaland’s development as a producer, and compared Magoo to Q-Tip, one of the rappers in the Queens group A Tribe Called Quest.
On Monday morning, Timbaland posted on Instagram several videos and photos of the two together and said in a caption: “Tim and Magoo forever.”
Elliott wrote on Instagram on Monday that he met Magoo when they were teenagers and he gave him the nickname “Misdemeanor,” telling him it was because “it’s a crime to have that much talent.”
Although Magoo has faded from the spotlight as the stars of his early collaborators continue to rise, Barcliff says his wife prefers to be behind the scenes.
He said they separated five or six years ago but they are still family.
The couple met on August 10, 1996, at a club, he said. Although Magoo was a good dancer, she said, she would realize after a few months that she didn’t like going out because it felt like work. “That’s when I knew: No more clubbing for me,” he says.
Barcliff said he had a 2-year-old daughter, Detrice “Pawtt” Bickham, when they met, and Magoo raised her as his own. As a family, they love going to theme parks, including Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion.
Magoo’s survivors include the aunt and uncle who raised him and whom he considered his mother and father, Magdaline and Hiawatha Brown, and his two sisters, Portia Brown and Lynette Hawks.
In the William & Mary interview, Magoo said that his aunt, who goes by Mag, inspired his rap name, Mag-an-ooh, which he later shortened.
He said in the interview that his aunt took him when he was 4 years old. He said he would have likely been taken into state custody without his aunt’s care and he “probably ended up far away from family and not in a position to be what I could have been.”
He cherishes the memory of the first time he heard a rap song, he said. He even remembered where he was standing, at another aunt’s house, when he heard the track, “Rapper’s Delight,” by the Sugarhill Gang.
“It just changed my whole outlook on life because, like I said, I was, like, 6 or 7 at the time,” Magoo recalled. “I was only three years away from being with my real mother who abused me, so I’m not completely over that abuse, but rap music was my blanket.”
Alain Delaquerière contributed research.