Today in hip-hop history...

1998: On March 2, 1997, Derek Michael Armstead, better known as Bloodshed, met an untimely death as a victim of a car accident.

Bloodshed was a member of the Big L-founded supergroup Children of the Corn, which also included Cam'ron (known as Killa Cam then), Ma$e and Herb McGruff. Cam and Bloodshed were cousins, and Jim Jones also cites Bloodshed as one of the originators of The Diplomats. Practically celebrities of the underground rap scene, COC ran Harlem streets and cypher circles in the mid-1990s.

Bloodshed could more than hold his own with his extremely talented peers, as made clear on the Children of the Corn song "Harlem Nights." "As the bullets travel through your liver/This nigga Bloodshed is mad rough/Battling me is like jumping inside a river while you're handcuffed," he rapped. I stay in murder scandals, and dust the fingerprints of burner handles/And I left Jehovah slain, I don't cry over pain/'Cause I puff fat dimes of novocaine/Murder astrologist, mad cases of manslaughter."

On March 2, 1997, Bloodshed died unexpectedly in a car accident in New York. He was only 22 years old. Following Blood's death and the death of Big L in 1999, Children of the Corn officially disbanded.

As a group, they never released a studio album before parting ways, but a compilation album, Children of the Corn: The Collector's Edition, was released in 2003.

RIP, Bloodshed.

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