Bronx-based rapper Big Punisher died yesterday of apparent heart failure; he was twenty-eight. Doctors believe his sudden death was caused by a longstanding heart condition that resulted from his extreme obesity.

The platinum-selling Puerto Rican MC, born Christopher Rios, collapsed late in the afternoon at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains, N.Y., where he and his family had taken up temporary residence, reportedly because their house was undergoing renovations. His wife Liza called Rios' friend and collaborator, Fat Joe, alarmed that Rios had stopped breathing.

"She asked what she should do," Joe says, still clearly shaken up. "She didn't call me to say he was dead. She told me to hurry up and go to where they were at. I assumed the worst, when somebody says he stopped breathing and don't have a pulse. But it was like slow motion. I went over there and saw the paramedics working on him and they just covered him up. He was still breathing until he got to the hospital and they was working really hard on him, trying to revive him."

Rios was pronounced dead at 3:53 p.m. by doctors at White Plains Hospital. Today, Dr. Louis Roh at the Westchester County Medical Examiner's office performed an autopsy on Rios and concluded that while further standard tests needed to be performed, the rapper's death was preliminarily being attributed to heart failure brought about by a weight-related condition known as cardiac hypotrophy, or enlarged heart. Roh says Rios weighed 698 pounds at the time of his death and that, as a result of his obesity, his heart had gradually grown three times larger than its normal size.

"He was so big and he knew his weight was causing a health problem," says Fat Joe. "For a long time, even though he was a big guy, he could do whatever he wanted. He'd play sports with us and everything. But as time went on, his health got worse."

Rios had entered a diet program at Duke University this past summer and had even shed some weight. But Joe says that Rios quickly gained the weight back. "I'm heavy myself and it's like, I know that losing weight is a real fight. It's hard to get over, especially the weight he was. So we'd constantly try to talk him into losing weight and say do it for your family, do it for your fans. And he really wanted to. It was just overwhelming."

Rios first came to prominence two years ago, on the merits of his debut album Capital Punishment. The album wound up earning a Grammy nomination and went double Platinum. Since then, he has collaborated with a slew of other artists, including Fat Joe, Raekwon, the Beatnuts and Kool G Rap. Recently, he did a guest shot on Jennifer Lopez's single "Feelin' So Good."

"His death leaves a huge void," says Loud Records President Steve Rifkin. "He really touched all the bases. He touched the crossover community, he touched the inner city. He was the first Latino rapper to go multi-platinum that wasn't a novelty act. There's a big hole and everybody's going to have to step up a notch now."

"Whenever we would reminisce, he'd be like, 'Yo, we did it, Joe. We legends,'" Joe remarks, sadly. "And I would always tell him we're not legends, we're not nothing yet, just to try to push him and motivate him. Even though I knew he was a legend and what he did was legendary and his music was classic, I would always just tell him, 'No, you still got a lot more to do.'"

Big Pun's second album, Yeah Baby, is finished and nearly ready for release on Loud Records. Rifkin says that while the album may be pushed back a few weeks, it will still likely come out in April, as planned.

JENNY ELISCU
(February 8, 2000)