The Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E group leader Ted 'The Godfather' Devoux sadly passed away on April 28th from an extended illness.

The Samoan gangster rap outfit are known to FNM fans for their 1993 unique collaboration Another Body Murdered, featured on the Judgement Night soundtrack.





The Godfather grew up in a rough neighbourhood in Carson, California and began playing music in his father's Baptist Church with his brothers. After his brother Robert Devoux was killed in a shooting the family left Los Angeles and moved to Japan where they formed a rap and dance troupe dubbed the Blue City Crew. They returned to LA in 1988 as the Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E., '

.' and signed with Island's 4th & Broadway subsidiary.

Their debut album New Funky Nation was released 1990, the brothers played live instruments on it. They released seven studio albums in total, flirting with metal-rap crossover after their collaboration with FNM.



Messages of condolences have flooded in from the rap community including Ice T.

We spoke to Bill Gould, and he reflected on their collaboration.





"We didn’t know the Boo-Yaa guys before we did the collaboration…in fact, we met at the studio. They were all great musicians in their own right, and what was surprising is that we clicked immediately on a musical level. Once the instruments were set up, we proceed to do a probably 30 minute jam, which I have to say was excellent. Sadly, the engineers thought we were just soundchecking. So we did another, for probably another 30 minutes straight. It was also really good, maybe not quite the same as the first attempt, but great nonetheless. However, as luck would have it, the producer had forgotten to hit “record”. The music on this soundtrack came from our 3rd attempt, which turned out ok, but sadly probably the least interesting of the three takes.

The Godfather was cool, everyone in the band deferred to him, he was definitely a respected leader."





RIP OG.....







