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| Members of the Grammy-winning rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony — from left, Wish Bone, Bizzy Bone, Krayzie Bone, and Layzie Bone — are shown in this undated promotional file photo. The pioneering Cleveland group was honored Wednesday with the 2,851st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Photo: Ruthless Records / File) |
The Grammy-winning rap group received the 2,851st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Wednesday during a ceremony at 6126 Hollywood Blvd., where friends, family, fans and fellow hip-hop veterans gathered to celebrate one of rap’s most distinctive groups.
The honor came in the recording category, more than three decades after Krayzie Bone, Layzie Bone, Bizzy Bone, Wish Bone and Flesh-n-Bone turned rapid-fire flows, street harmonies and grief-soaked melody into a sound no one else could duplicate.
“Cleveland is in the house,” Jerry Newman, chair of the board of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said as the ceremony opened.
Radio personality Big Boy hosted the ceremony, calling the day “beautiful” as fans lined the sidewalk in the July sun. He introduced the group as pioneers whose music brought national attention to Midwestern rap while helping shape the melodic, double-time style that still echoes through hip-hop and R&B.
“There’s a lot of people that pay homage and there’s a lot of sloppy carbon copies,” Big Boy said.
That was the unspoken theme of the afternoon: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony did not just make hits. They invented a lane.
Fat Joe, who spoke before the unveiling, said he had attended about 10 Walk of Fame ceremonies and had never seen a crowd spill into the street the way fans did for Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
“I owe a great deal to Bone Thugs-N-Harmony,” Fat Joe said.
The Bronx rapper said the group supported him early in his career, took him on tour, appeared in his videos and stayed close through personal loss, including the death of Big Pun.
“They never acted funny with me,” Fat Joe said. “They took me on tour with them. They came to my videos. They showed up in my songs.”
Fat Joe said the moment also mattered because the five members were together, healthy and able to receive the honor in person.
“I love that the guys are all here,” he said. “They all look great.”
Ice-T followed with a speech that put the group’s legacy in the context of 1990s hip-hop, when biting another artist’s style was one of the fastest ways to lose credibility.
“I get a phone call. They say Bone Thugs getting a star. I said, ‘About time,’” Ice-T said.
He asked the crowd to pause and appreciate that the members were alive, together and receiving their flowers in public.
“Usually, you only see people like this — we only get together during bad times,” Ice-T said. “Let’s just applaud the fact that all Bone Thugs are alive, healthy and here.”
Ice-T said originality was the currency of the group’s era.
“Our era of hip-hop, you had to be original,” he said. “You could not sound like anybody else.”
When Bone Thugs-N-Harmony arrived, he said, there was no mistaking them for anyone else.
“When Bone Thugs hit the scene, they were like nothing we had ever heard,” Ice-T said. “That’s why I got to tip my hat to them.”
The group formed in Cleveland in 1991, originally performing as B.O.N.E. Enterpri$e before being discovered by Eazy-E. He signed them to Ruthless Records in 1993, giving the West Coast label a group that sounded nothing like Los Angeles, New York or Atlanta.
That difference became the point.
Their national breakthrough came with the 1994 EP “Creepin on ah Come Up,” powered by “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” and “Foe tha Love of $.” A year later, “E. 1999 Eternal” made them unavoidable.
Released in 1995, “E. 1999 Eternal” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and produced “1st of tha Month,” “East 1999” and “Tha Crossroads.” The last of those, rewritten as a tribute after Eazy-E’s death, spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy Award for best rap performance by a duo or group in 1997.
“Tha Crossroads” did something rap was still fighting to prove in the mid-1990s: It made mourning sound massive.
Bone Thugs followed with “The Art of War” in 1997, another No. 1 album that included “Look Into My Eyes” and “If I Could Teach the World.” By then, the group’s influence had moved beyond Cleveland and Ruthless Records. Their cadence, hooks and sing-rap approach were already being absorbed across hip-hop and R&B.
Big Boy called them “veterans and relevant at the same damn time.”
During brief acceptance remarks, the members thanked God, their families, Ruthless Records, longtime collaborators and the fans who stayed with them for more than 30 years.
“From the trenches to the stars,” one member said. “We’ve been through it all, through the fire and the rain. We came from a place where opportunities were way too limited. So to be here standing with my brothers is something that I don’t take for granted.”
He said the group’s mission was simple.
“All we wanted to do was share a particular sound to inspire the world,” he said.
Another member made clear that the star belonged beyond the five men whose names were being honored.
“This is everybody’s star,” he said.
That line fit the afternoon. For Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, the Walk of Fame star is not just a trophy for past sales. It is a public marker for a sound that stretched rap’s vocabulary and made Cleveland part of hip-hop’s emotional map.
The group’s records could be spiritual and menacing in the same breath. “1st of tha Month” turned a welfare-check calendar date into a celebration. “Tha Crossroads” became a funeral song and a victory lap at the same time. “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” sounded like a cipher drifting through smoke.
That influence is easier to hear now than it was to explain then. The melodic rap that later became a default language for many artists did not appear out of nowhere. Bone Thugs helped make it commercially viable without sanding off the speed, darkness or strangeness that made them special.
At the end of the ceremony, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce proclaimed Wednesday Bone Thugs-N-Harmony Day in Hollywood before the group unveiled its star.
More than 30 years after five Cleveland rappers chased a record deal to California, Hollywood gave Bone Thugs-N-Harmony a star. Cleveland gave them the hunger. Eazy-E gave them the door. Hip-hop gave them the sky.
The harmony still travels.
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