Mark Curry broke down in tears while sharing a story about his last moments with another former Bad Boy artist, Black Rob. The “Whoa!” rapper died of kidney failure at 51.
Black Rob — whose real name was Robert Ross — died in Atlanta on April 17, 2021, and Curry said he was with his friend when he passed away.
In an exclusive interview with “The Culture Club Uncensored” on April 9, the 52-year-old recalled the never-heard-before story about his final days with Black Rob.
“I was holding his hand,” Curry said host Osei The Dark Secret. “He died holding my hand.”
The “Bad Boy for Life” artist continued by saying Ross’ caretaker called him the day before he passed and asked Curry to stop by. Ross was having dialysis treatments and was staying in a hotel after a recent hospital stay, and he’d fallen just before Curry’s arrival the next morning.
“He said ‘Curry, I just fell.’ He said, ‘I just fell. I was over there standing up and I just fell.’ He was like, ‘Yo, I can’t feel my legs’,” recalled the artist. “He was like, ‘I can’t feel my legs, Curry.’ I said, ‘Yo, uh, we going to have to get you to a hospital.’ He was like, ‘I can’t feel my legs.'”
He said Black Rob cried out, “I need my legs.’ So I said ‘OK, well we going to get you to the hospital.”
“He said, ‘I don’t want to go to the hospital. Don’t take me to the hospital.’ He said, ‘No, don’t take me there.’ I said, Why?’ He said, ‘Because if you take me there, they going to not give me back.'”
Curry claimed that Ross had missed a lot of dialysis treatments, and the hospital would want to keep him because of it. He also said that Ross didn’t want to be seen in a wheelchair and when they got to the hospital, he refused to go inside. Curry tried to take his friend to another hospital, but after Ross refused to go inside that one as well.
Curry then took Rob to a Juice bar and while he was inside, the caregiver rushed in to get him.
“She said, ‘Mark come outside right now.’ I walked outside, he in the car like, ‘What? What’s wrong with her? What? She tripping. What’s, what’s wrong?’ I said ‘Yo, you all right?’… He was foaming at the mouth and … real watery at his nose, and so I’m holding his hand in the car window and then he’s like, ‘Yo, what’s wrong with her?'”
When Curry felt Ross’ hand get heavy and then drop, he said, “Oh my God. No, you did not just do this to me.” They rushed to the emergency room as he held his friend up from the back seat while the caretaker frantically drove the vehicle.
“We get to the hospital, I run into the hospital. I said, ‘My friend is outside. I think he’s dying.’ They came outside, took him in, put him on the — on the machine,” Curry continued.
“They came back to me after a while, and they said, ‘Who, who is he here with?’ I said, ‘He’s here with me.’ They said, um, ‘I’m afraid to tell you, but your friend has passed,’ and he said, ‘If you want, I can take you in and show you where we’re trying.'”
Curry added that they took him back to the room where the medical staff was trying to save Ross.
“They had Black Rob on the table, and they kept hitting that heart thing on them. It was, ‘pow pow,’ and they said, ‘We’re trying one more time.’ … And he said, ‘I’m sorry, he’s passed,’ he said, ‘But, when a person dies, the last thing they that they lose is their hearing and their memory.'”
Curry said that the doctor told him that Ross could still hear him talk in his final moment so he told him. “I said, said, ‘I love you man.’ Let me get that right. I said, ‘I love you.’ I said, ‘See you in another life.'”
Ross was an artist on Bad Boy Records, the label owned by Sean Puff Daddy Combs — now known as Diddy — whom Curry called after Ross’ untimely death.
“He said, uh, ‘Mark, we not going to let this moment be about me and you. We gonna let it be about Rob. What do I need to do?’ I said, ‘Puff, you’re gonna have to get his kids or somebody out here to come claim his body, ’cause they’re asking, somebody got to come claim him.’ So he said, ‘What do I do.’ I said, um, ‘Get, fly his son out here.’ He said, ‘Tell his son to call my office.'”
“I said, ‘We gonna have to bury Rob,’” Curry continued. “And he helped. That was a moment that I saw a change in Puff, and I was like, ‘Wow at least he he has some empathy. He does have some — able to show some compassion towards other people.'”
Diddy and Curry have been feuding for several years, and the former Bad Boy artist dragged Diddy after he announced he was giving his artists back their publishing rights.
