This is one of my favorite pieces that I ever wrote as a member of the MTV News team. I followed the Shyne case for a long time prior to my professional career and was fascinated by the yearly rumors insinuating Shyne’s release from prison was imminent. Long story short: Brian Hiatt, a current staffer at Rolling Stone and former reporter at MTV, wrote a definitive account of Shyne’s sentencing, which amounted to 10 years for reckless endangerment due to his firing a gun inside a crowded Club NY. His report was published long before the internet dominated the pathway of information. In the intervening years, online editorial, especially in the entertainment and music space, still lacked sophistication when it came to reporting and parceling facts from fiction. Over the years, within this digital vacuum, Shyne grew to become an almost mythical figure; hardly seen and rarely heard from. I decided to cover the minutia of the case and was able to correct the narrative regarding his proper release date. Then, when I went to the courthouse on the day he was scheduled to be released he…wasn’t released. I didn’t know what to make of it and when his counsel, who was also confused, called me to gather what intel I had, I was stumped. I remembered, however, that in my apartment I had a copy of the Vibe where Shyne graced the cover of the magazine in his prison jumpsuit. I dashed out of the 1515 Broadway office to go to Brooklyn to grab my issue and then rushed back to the city. I used the inmate number on Shyne’s uniform to make several calls, first to the federal bureau of prisons, then to other government agencies, and lastly—as a result of the gathered details— to ICE. That’s when I got the scoop about his whereabouts and his likely deportation. I filed the piece and the story did crazy numbers; it got picked up by every major news outlet. My legal reporting continued to mature and I wound up influencing a generation of young, hip-hop reporters to follow in my footsteps. All in a day’s work.
