Ex-Bad Boy Records signee Shyne was one of the late ‘90s most promising acts. Being Diddy’s next protege, he was getting ready to launch into popularity as he prepared to drop his debut album. The Belizean-American emcee’s rise to fame would be forced to a halt on December 27, 1999, after a Manhattan club shooting that would have the rapper jailed and deported to his home country of Belize.
The rapper’s debut album was released at the beginning of his sentence, debuting at No. 5 on the Billboard 200, selling 90,000 copies.
Since Shyne was deported to Belize, he has become an outspoken activist and political leader in his country. Shyne was elected into the Belize House of Representatives in 2020, winning the seat of Mesopotamia.
Although Shyne has moved on to the world of politics, he still plans to get back in the booth and give us some more rhymes.
“I will be doing a bio movie and bio documentary as well as a bio TV series, which will all have corresponding soundtracks,” he tells HipHopDX. “I will be making music for those. But for those projects, not for a career, just as an attachment to those projects. You can’t have a movie without a soundtrack. And so I would have to create music for the movie and the documentary.
Shyne is also an advocate for Belizean music. The rapper plans to use his platform to highlight some of the countries dopest artists. “I would have to create music for the TV series. But again, you’ll hear a lot of Belizean artists with my American artist friends. So it would be a great opportunity to give the Belizean musicians a platform,” Shyne explains.
“I never give up on that passion, and so I still try to help them, still try to make connections between my American music friends and the Belizean young talent that’s there,” he continues.”I discovered so many young great talent. Now that I have that platform, I’ll be doing all I can to bridge the gap and allow them to walk over that bridge to success. We have great artists like Supa G, Stig Da Artist, T.Y., Tanya Carter, C-Wills, and so many great artists that you guys should all check out.”