Heavy D

1967–

Rapper, actor

When Heavy D came on the music scene, with such songs as "Mr. Big Stuff" and "The Overweight Lover's in the House" in the late 1980s, his music seemed more of a novelty than a lasting sound. Yet Heavy D possessed a charismatic personality that helped catapult his music and himself into the upper echelons of the entertainment industry within a short time. His music remained popular through the 1990s and gained notice for its influence as music writers in the early 2000s looked back at hip-hop's first quarter-century of existence. When he stopped producing hit songs Heavy D moved effortlessly from music performer to music executive to actor. Heavy D's long-term success rested on his ability to project his personality in whatever he did. "All these cats be runnin' around talkin' bout keep it real," he once told Havelock Nelson of Billboard. "I keep it real, too, because I'm real to myself. I stay true, and, at the end of the day, you have to respect the honesty of the whole situation."

Heavy D's real name is Dwight Myers. Born May 24, 1967, in Jamaica near Montego Bay, he was the youngest of five children. The whole family moved to Mount Vernon, New York, when Heavy D was four. Their middle-class life was supported by the professional careers of his parents; his father, Cliff, was a machine technician, and his mother Eulahlee was a nurse. Heavy D's chubby frame got an early start, perhaps due to his father's skills as a jerk pork cook, and neighborhood kids tagged him with his nickname. Even after he lost 160 pounds for a part in a play in 2005, the name stuck. "I've been Heavy D since I was 15," he told Margena A. Christian of Jet. "Honestly, I can't see it any other way."

Financed Music with Gambling Winnings

When rap music began to surface (from partly Jamaican roots) in the late 1970s, young people in New York's suburbs began to listen to it and experiment with it almost as quickly as those in the central city. Heavy D and neighborhood friends DJ Eddie F (Eddie Ferrell), Trouble T-Roy (Troy Dixon), and G-Wiz (Glen Parrish) started performing at parties. They graduated to making demo tapes after Heavy D won $1,500 in an Atlantic City gambling casino and plowed it back into electronics for the group. They took the name Heavy D & the Boyz and began to focus their efforts on getting a record deal with one of New York's burgeoning hip-hop labels.

They struck gold when one of their tapes was heard by Def Jam label executive Andre Harrell, who was about to form his own label, Uptown, and was looking for music that could negotiate the split between hip-hop and R&B; urban contemporary radio stations at the time tended to play one or the other. He was impressed by Heavy D's hip-hop reworking of the 1970s Jean Knight R&B hit "Mr. Big Stuff," and in 1986 Heavy D & the Boyz were signed to Uptown and became the first act to release an album on the label. Living Large (1987) was a promising debut, achieving platinum-record status (for sales of 1,000,000 copies) and spawning hit singles in "Mr. Big Stuff" and "Overweight Lover's in the House."

The 1989 album Big Tyme did even better, with platinum-level sales and a string of hits that included "We Got Our Own Thang." Heavy D also contributed a somewhat Jamaican-flavored guest rap that year to the single "Just Coolin'" by R&B vocalist Levert, and his mix of rap and R&B began to influence other artists. He was one of the first rappers to use the now-ubiquitous device of making a featured appearance on another artist's recording, and his blend of rap with more tuneful material was innovative in itself. More than a novelty teddy-bear rapper, Heavy D was creating hip-hop music that made broad marketplace inroads.

Charity Event Ended in Tragedy

Heavy D & the Boyz were slowed by the death of Trouble T-Roy in 1990 in a freak touring accident, but they bounced back with Peaceful Journey (1991), which included the jaunty "Now That We Found Love" single that gained wide crossover airplay on pop radio stations and nearly made the pop top ten. Another tragedy struck Heavy D late that year when nine young people were killed as a crowd rushed a rap-star basketball game he had organized to benefit an AIDS-education charity. But the ensuing controversy didn't dent sales of Heavy D's 1993 Blue Funk album, which nodded toward his Jamaican roots, or of the platinum-selling, R&B-chart-topping Nuttin' but Love (1994). Part of Heavy D's longevity in the fast-changing hip-hop field was that he made convincing music that went against the trend toward a harder and more violent edge in the hip-hop genre. He steered completely clear of gangster themes and of the well-publicized wars between New York and West Coast rappers. "It's just another dimension of black-on-black hatred, and I will have no part in it. I love everybody," he told Chappell after the violent deaths of rappers Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. With a keen eye for talent himself, Heavy D, like Sean "Diddy" Combs (whom he had helped introduce to the recording scene) made the transition from performer to executive. He headed the Uptown label for several years. When he announced his departure from Uptown in 1997, its parent label MCA disbanded the label. He moved to the position of senior vice president at Universal Music.

Heavy D & the Boyz weren't quite the chart force in the late 1990s that they had been earlier. Yet when Heavy D produced the albums Waterbed Hev (1997) and Heavy (1999) without his backing group, both faired relatively well in the charts and in sales. By that time, Heavy D was already well into his second career—or his third, counting his administrative roles. He had begun appearing on the television series Roc in the early 1990s and went on to appear in recurring roles on Living Single and Boston Public. He also had various movie parts, including one in the acclaimed drama The Cider House Rules. The high point of his 1990s acting career came on stage, when he appeared in actor Laurence Fishburne's play Riff Raff and earned a nomination for a Drama Desk Award, the Off-Broadway counterpart to a Tony Award.

Earned Positive Notices for Acting

Fishburne noted Heavy D's unexpected talent and steered him toward a play called Medal of Honor Rag, a two-person drama about a Vietnam veteran named Dale "DJ" Jackson and a psychiatrist. "It took me ten years to do it because I just simply wasn't ready," Heavy D told Christian. "It's a huge taking on. It's really emotional and you want to do it justice." Finally Heavy D agreed to take the role in a 2005 production at the Egyptian Arena Theater in Hollywood. Working out five or six days a week, he dropped 160 pounds (from a previous peak of 395) to slim down for the part.

At a Glance …

Born Dwight Arrington (or Errington) Myers on May 24, 1967, near Montego Bay, Jamaica; son of Cliff (a machine technician) and Eulahlee (a nurse) Myers; youngest of five children; raised in Mount Vernon, NY; children: Xea.

Career: Heavy D and the Boyz (Eddie F [Edward Ferrell], G-Whiz [Glen Parrish], and Trouble T-Roy [Troy Dixon]), founder and singer, 1986–1990s; Uptown label artist, 1986–; actor, 1990s–; Uptown Records, president, 1995–1997; Universal Music, senior vice president, 1997–.

Awards: NAACP, Spirit Award, 2006.

Addresses: Label—MCA/Universal, 1755 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. Web—http://www.hev-d.com.

"Stage is really like a whole new muscle," Heavy D told Christian. "It's the most mentally fatiguing thing. When I leave rehearsals, I feel like I've run ten miles. It's that tiring. In every show, I'm wiped out. It's a good feeling." All the hard work paid off as Heavy D's performance was praised by critics, and a second run of the show had to be scheduled. With a new album, tentatively entitled Still, on the way and a new range of acting opportunities opening up, Heavy D, a single father of daughter Xea, was poised to enter his third decade of stardom.

Selected works

Albums

Living Large, Uptown, 1987.
Big Tyme, Uptown, 1989.
Peaceful Journey, MCA, 1991.
Blue Funk, Uptown, 1992.
Nuttin' but Love, Uptown, 1994.
Waterbed Hev, Uptown/Universal, 1997.
Heavy, Uptown/Universal, 1999.
Heavy Hitz, MCA, 2000.
20th Century Masters—The Millennium Collection: The Best of Heavy D, MCA, 2002.

Films

Who's the Man, 1993.
B.A.P.S., 1997.
The Cider House Rules, 1999.
Big Trouble, 2002.
Black Listed, 2003.
Dallas 362, 2003.
Step Up, 2006.

Plays

Riff Raff, 1995.
Medal of Honor Rag, 2005.

Sources

Books

Contemporary Musicians, volume 10, Gale, 1993.

Periodicals

Billboard, April 19, 1997, p. 12.

Ebony, November 1997, p. 148.

Jet, November 7, 2005, p. 54.

On-line

"Biography," HipOnline, www.hiponline.com (July 25, 2006).

"Heavy D," All Music Guide, www.allmusic.com (July 25, 2006).