With a new album is set to drop next month, fans were looking forward to the return of “a very spiritual brother” to Detroit’s seminal progressive rap group Slum Village after the seven-year absence of co-founder Titus “Baatin” Glover.
But the discovery of Glover’s body in Detroit Saturday morning turned any celebration of his music into a memorial. Both police and the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s office have said there was no evidence of trauma, but the cause of death won’t be fixed until toxicology tests are concluded in several weeks, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The death of Glover, 35, who left Slum Village in 2002 after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, follows that of co-founder and high school classmate James “J Dilla” Yancey, who died in 2006 from complications of lupus.
Glover “was a very spiritual brother,” Khalid el-Hakim, founder of Detroit’s Black History 101 Mobile Museum, told the Free Press. “He brought spirituality to Detroit hip-hop that you didn’t see with other artists. That’s what he was known for.”
Slum Village’s only remaining founder, T3, told rap website The Boombox that “fans wanted Baatin to come back. I felt like I really didn’t want to do another album without Baatin. I wanted his energy. I found him and he was ready. He seemed like he had his stuff together.”
The reunion resulted in Villa Manifesto, the new Slum Village album scheduled for release on Sept. 22, and Glover will be seen and heard in the video of the group’s new single, “Cloud 9,” shot last week.
Glover took his rap name Baatin – which he said was “Islamic for ‘hidden’” – to reflect “a newfound spirituality,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
He told the newspaper in 2000: “If people could open their minds, they could see a broader perspective of hip-hop instead of categorizing it as 95-beats-per-minute, loud snares and muffled samples. It could be anything.”
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