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Magoo, a rapper who was a foundational member of a groundbreaking hip-hop scene that emerged in Virginia in the 1990s, collaborating with up-and-coming stars like Timbaland, Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams, died over the weekend in Williamsburg, Va. He was 50.
The death was confirmed on Monday by his wife, Meco Barcliff, who said that the coroner’s office was investigating the cause.
Magoo, whose birth name was Melvin Barcliff, was a child when rap music was first heard on the radio, and he credited it with helping save him from a difficult early childhood.
At first he thought hip-hop was made only by people in the Northeast, he said in a 2013 interview for the hip-hop oral history collection at the College of William & Mary. But as rap music began to drift from the coasts and Atlanta to record stores in Virginia, Magoo, then 14, realized that it was an art form he could practice, too.
At Deep Creek High School in Chesapeake, he made friends with other teenagers who were interested in the genre, including Timothy Mosley, also known as Timbaland, who would go on to become a renowned producer.
Magoo and others in the Virginia Beach area, including Pharrell Williams and Missy Elliott, exerted a heavy influence on hip-hop in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Magoo and Timbaland formed a duo and, between 1997 and 2003, put out three albums. “Welcome to Our World,” their first collaboration, included the track “Up Jumps da’ Boogie,” featuring Ms. Elliott and Aaliyah, which reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would be their highest-charting effort.
Critics cited the project as a step in Timbaland’s development as a producer and compared Magoo to Q-Tip, one of the rappers in the Queens group A Tribe Called Quest.
On Monday morning, Timbaland posted several videos and photos of the two together on Instagram, with the caption “Tim and Magoo forever.”
Ms. Elliott wrote on Instagram on Monday that she had met Magoo when they were teenagers, and that he was the one who gave her the nickname Misdemeanor, — because he said it was “a crime to have that many talents.”
Melvin Barcliff was born on July 12, 1973, in Norfolk, Va., and raised by his aunt and uncle, Magdaline and Hiawatha Brown, who took him in when he was 4.
Without them, he said in the William & Mary interview, he most likely would have been taken into state custody and “wouldn’t have been in the position to become what I was able to become.”
In fact his aunt, who went by Mag, inspired his rap name, Mag-an-ooh, which he then shortened.
Magoo faded from the spotlight as his collaborators continued to rise, but Ms. Barcliff said that her husband had always preferred to be behind the scenes.
She said that they separated five or six years ago but remained close, and that he had helped raise her daughter, Detrice Bickham, taking her to theme parks like Busch Gardens and Kings Dominion.
The couple met on Aug. 10, 1996, at a club. Even though Magoo was a great dancer, she said, she would soon learn that he did not like to go out because it was too much like being at work. “That’s when I found out: No more clubbing for me,” she said.
Magoo’s survivors include his aunt and uncle, as well as two sisters, Portia Brown and Lynette Hawks.
Magoo said he treasured the memory of the first time he heard a rap song on the radio. He was at another aunt’s house when he heard the track “Rapper’s Delight,” by the Sugarhill Gang.
“It just changed my whole perspective on life because, like I said, I was 6 or 7 at the time,” he recalled. “I was only three years away from being with my real mother who had abused me, so I hadn’t completely gotten over that abuse, but rap music became my blanket.”
Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
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