News: Rhymes Explains Bodyguard Murder Silence
Rapper Busta Rhymes' slain bodyguard's family wants him to tell the New York police what he knows about the shooting.
The victim's sister also accused the rapper of using the Feb. 5 death of Israel Ramirez for publicity, the New York Post reported Monday.
"I understand the code of the streets, (but) they're probably just very afraid for themselves and their families," Ramirez's older sister Sonia Rodriguez told The Post in an exclusive interview.
She also said that she is sickened by Rhymes' shout-outs to Ramirez during performances.
"I find it kind of nauseating -- especially when he's talking about how he cared for my brother," Rodriguez said. "He doesn't give two diddlies about my brother. At this point, I honestly believe Busta is using my brother's death as a publicity stunt and I'm angry."
Ramirez was killed outside the studio where Rhymes had been taping the video for "Touch It" on Feb. 5. None of the witnesses, including Rhymes, have helped police crack the unsolved case.
BUSTA RHYMES has spoken of his pain at watching his friend and bodyguard ISRAEL RAMIREZ die from a gunshot wound earlier this year (06). The rapper has refused to speak to police about what he saw on 5 February when his minder was shot outside a New York City warehouse, where the video for Rhymes' track TOUCH IT was being filmed. Rhymes - real name TREVOR SMITH - claims he didn't see the incident, although he now wishes he had never asked Ramirez to work that fateful night. He says. "I don't really care about what anybody has to say. "You don't really know who was the source of the problem, all you know is a handful of people were arguing with each other. We was inside shooting a video, and on the way outside, that's when everything happened, so I was told to stay inside. "I really didn't get a chance to see what went down. When we went outside, that's when we saw my friend on the ground, dying slowly. "If I didn't ask him to come to work, he'd have been at home with his family. That's the only guilt I live with, but still in that sense I don't have any guilt, because that was the way we made money together. "He always came to work and got home safely, because I don't condone that kind of activity and I'm not a person that has a reputation of violence in my life."
Hip-hop star BUSTA RHYMES has warned budding rappers not to fake a tough background, as they could face tragic consequences. Rhymes, real name TREVOR SMITH, thinks it's "the stupidest thing in the world" when newcomers to the rap scene pretend they have lived a life of urban crime. He says, "A lot of the time, certain rappers don't have those real-life experiences. "They use (street stories of crime) to be credible, and they end up encountering danger from an environment they were never involved with in the first place just because they wanted to be cool. "And I think that's the stupidest thing in the world. It's always better to tell your own story than someone else's, and in BEEN THROUGH THE STORM I'm telling my story. "I went out and tried to get more of what I wanted, but realised that every route I took was a dead-end street. Then I had an opportunity to do music, and I left that other stuff alone because the option to do music was a better one, a safer one and a smarter one."
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