Rapper resurrects career in Holy Land

Associated Press

JERUSALEM

The rapper Shyne is singing a new tune: After serving eight years in prison for a nightclub shooting, the former prot g of Sean “Diddy” Combs has converted to Orthodox Judaism, come to Jerusalem, and is devoting his days to the study of Torah while plotting a musical comeback.

His arrival in the Holy Land caps an unorthodox journey that began in Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he grew up and was shot at the age of 15. He then joined the high-flying hip-hop universe and ended up in a maximum-security state prison before he was eventually deported to Belize — where his father happens to be prime minister.

“Being in Israel is just the exclamation point,” he said Thursday. “This is the ultimate place to be who you are.”

During a two-hour conversation on a hotel balcony overlooking the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City, Shyne said his connection to Judaism goes back to his childhood — when he was still known as Jamaal Michael Barrow.

His mother claims Ethiopian Jewish ancestry, but the man who now calls himself Moshe Levi Ben-David says his roots go even deeper and that even as a boy in the streets, he was oddly drawn to Judaism and identified with its biblical heroes, especially King David.

Shyne, 32, has swapped his hip-hop attire of oversized basketball jerseys and diamond-studded teeth for the traditional black suit and white knee-high stockings favored by the Belz Hassidic sect. He wears a black skullcap over his shaven head, but in a reminder of his former life, he still wears stylish, black Ray Ban sunglasses.

Where he once rapped about loose women, fancy cars and hollow-point bullets, he now fires off staccato sentences about Jewish law, peppered with Yiddish, in the same raspy voice once compared to that of the Notorious B.I.G.

In late 1999, Shyne was at a Manhattan club along with Combs and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez, when he was involved in a high-profile shooting that left three people injured.

He was released a year ago, then deported to his native Belize where he is appealing the decision so that he can return to the U.S. and go on tour. His two new albums, “Gangland” and “Messiah,” are scheduled to be released in March by Def Jam records.