By Kyle Eustice • June 12, 2019

The New York Times Magazine published an article on Tuesday (June 11) detailing the 2008 fire at Universal Studios Hollywood. According to the article, an estimated 500,000 song recordings perished in the blaze, but the company attempted to keep it quiet for fear of “public embarrassment.”

Unbeknownst to people at the time, a library of master sound recordings owned by Universal Music Group also burned up in the fire. Tupac Shakur, Eminem, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, Queen Latifah, Eric B. & Rakim and The Roots are only a handful of artists whose work fell victim to what the article described as “the biggest disaster in the history of the music business.”

“We had a couple classics destroyed in the fire as well,” Trotter tells HipHopDX. “In short, that was the most depressing article ever. Not ‘EVER,’ but it was pretty heavy. I remember when it went down.

“Our first two classics — Do You Want More?!!!??! and Illadelph Halflife — were lost in the blaze. But I also strangely feel like … though things are often beyond our comprehension, still they happen as they should.”

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