Stephen’s ear for tone...was on another level. [But] he never liked to sing in the choir. He loved anything ’hood. That’s why he didn’t want to sing. He kept...making sure he didn’t look soft.
Garrett was living the life. Sitting in the back of a maroon stretch Hummer limo, sporting a black Versace suit, cornrows neat, adidas shell-toes peeking out, he looked like a million bucks.
Static was in Las Vegas to film the video for his latest composition, “Lollipop,” the song that helped transform Lil Wayne from rap star to glitzy pop pinup. It was to be the lead single on Wayne’s soon-to-be multiplatinum Tha Carter III (Cash Money/Universal, 2008). Though Static was feeling a little under the weather during the shoot, he was surrounded by beautiful women and icy bottles of champagne. Fame was back in Static’s sights.
Less than three weeks later, Garrett was wearing the same suit. But instead of cruising the streets of Vegas, he was lying in a gold casket, dead at age 33. His shocking exit was due to complications from a medical procedure intended to treat a rare autoimmune neuromuscular disease named Myasthenia Gravis, which normally doesn’t lessen life expectancy. “Hospitals kill people,” Static’s still-shaken manager Dorian “Lil D” Washington recalls the songwriter telling his wife, Avonti. “This was probably an hour before he died.”
The charismatic man known as Static/ Major worshipped music but hated singing. He looked like a bona-fide celebrity but kept a low-profile. He craved kung fu movies, pro wrestling, and family fun nights. In the swampy ’hoods of his native Louisville, he’d drive a Bentley to Victory Park and sit for hours on a porch in the local housing projects. And though he was largely unknown, to the music industry Stephen Garrett (no relation to songwriter/singer Sean Garrett) was one of the very best songwriters of his generation. He stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and R. Kelly.
His catalogue—which spans nearly 15 years—includes Ginuwine’s “Pony” (550/Epic, 1996) and “So Anxious” (550/Epic, 1999), Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?” (Atlantic, 1998) and “Try Again” (Blackground/Virgin, 2000), Jay-Z’s “Change the Game” (Roc-A- Fella, 2000), Diddy and Christina Aguilera’s “Tell Me” (Bad Boy/Atlantic, 2006), Pretty Ricky’s “On The Hotline” (Blue Star/Atlantic, 2007), and his swan song, Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop.” They’re songs of yearning and swagger, hope and sex, power and vulnerability. Garrett laid the blueprint for a new kind of musical metaphor, sensually imagined but rarely vulgar.
The shock of his death was intensified by the fact that he had yet to receive credit for his accomplishments. Now for the first time, Garrett’s friends, former bandmates, and family, come together to set the record straight.
EDITH GARRETT RAYMOND (mother): Me and my son were close. I always said, “You can never split away from me, I breast-fed you,” and he used to say, “Mama, don’t tell nobody that!” I always wanted to make sure my son grew up "manly-like." But some of the bases I couldn't cover. Like I remember when he was getting ready to play football and he told me he needed a cup, and I didn't know what a cup was. I discovered he could sing when he was about 3. He led the song "Trouble In My Way" with an adult choir. His father could play the piano by ear.... I was divorced when Stephen was 5. I don’t think he missed a lot by not having a father figure in the house ’cause we were in church quite a bit.
STACEY “SWADE” WADE (friend/photographer): Stephen’s ear for tone...was on another level. [But] he never liked to sing in the choir. He loved anything ’hood. That’s why he didn’t want to sing. He kept...making sure he didn’t look soft.
RAYMOND: I would have to beg him to sing for me in church. I would have to pay him to sing for me. He was just… shy. A lot of times little ladies after service would be like, "He sure do sing good," and they'd slide a dollar or something to him. By the time he got to high school he had been in all the little talent shows, so everybody knew he had charisma. I got one little video of him doing Luther Vandross, "If Only For One Night." He got three little girls backing him up, and they all have on real tight black dresses, and the whole auditorium is just screaming. He was pretty popular with the ladies.
TIM BARNETT (childhood friend and personal assistant): He had the older chicks. We were sophomores and he had the seniors. But nobody knew he could sing until our senior year of high school.
RAYMOND: I found something that he and his sister liked to do: roller skating. We had a roller skating rink that was real close to our house, so we ended up roller skating two or three times a week. That was something we did together when we wasn't headed to church for choir rehearsal.
[He and his sister, Melynda] were close, but...she had a heart condition. She’d been having fainting spells and hadn’t told anybody. Once we got her to the doctor, we found out she needed a heart and lung transplant. I remember sitting in a conference room with the doctors that were going to be her heart care team, and they said they done a lot of heart transplants, but they haven't been very successful with lung transplants. She use to go to the hospital and sometimes have to be in the hospital for hundreds of days.
I remember picking up Stephen one day at [high school] football practice, after leaving the hospital. He came to the car, I told him his sister passed. I didn’t think we were gon’ ever be able to get away from the school, but finally we got in the car and got home and just had to face it. She was 22.
JUWAN “SMOKEY” PEACOCK (singer, Playa): [He thought] the hospitals [killed his sister]. Guess it was his way of dealing with it.
WADE: I don't think he was ever the same after that.
RAYMOND: He got into a little trouble at school after his sister died. He said something bad to the cafeteria woman over some Tater-Tots. So they put him in this program, Burger King Academy. It’s for underprivileged kids who have a talent but get in trouble. He ended up singing for them there, and they gave him a full scholarship to any college he wanted. He didn’t want to leave Louisville, so he went to the University of Louisville.
TONY ANDREWS (college roommate): He was my [college] roommate. We both liked to wrestle. We wrestled a lot even though he was really skinny. He was probably 5'9 and [wasn't] gonna quit for anything. Even if you had him locked, he would break his arm before he quit.
SMOKEY: We were up at U of L about to rehearse, and Static walked into the hall singing. I was like, This muthafucka can sing! We need to get him in this!
BENJAMIN “BLACK” BUSH (singer, Playa): From around ’92 on, we were officially a group. We were doing gospel and secular at the same time. You had some [who said] that you’re worshipping two gods. We all felt...our music didn’t kill nobody. If anything, we making a lot of babies.
TIM BARNETT (childhood friend and personal assistant): [Static] flunked because he was focusing on music and chilling with the ladies. He came home with all Fs. [His mom] was hot. She was ready to say, “Get out, go do what you do, but you ain't going to stay around here, you're going to work.” He just started staying up at U of L with friends that he knew.
ANDREWS: He went to school, really, for one semester. He may have went an entire year, but after that, he just stayed with me in my dorm.
RAYMOND: I think he had maybe one semester under his belt when all that happened. He didn't end up losing his scholarship, but he had a choice: Do I go off into the music field or do I stay here and continue to go to college?
Come back to VIBE.com tomorrow for part 2 of “ONE IN A MILLION."
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