Where Have All the Fat Rappers Gone? Or, How Hip-Hop Lost All the Weight.

“Once Pun died, I went on a diet and lost like 100 pounds,” Fat Joe told VladTV. “I didn’t know what I know now … I had to turn it up because I lost, like, six friends last year to heart attacks. All younger than me … They looked healthy to me. They was just like me—they was tellin’ jokes like me, they was cool like me—but they all died.” Rappers like Big Pun took their platinum records and big paychecks and lived large. “Us rappers,” said Fat Joe, “we start thinking we’re superheroes, but we’re not. We’re human beings.”

In the ’90s, when rappers like Biggie, Heavy D, Big Pun, and even the Gif of Gab hit it big, hip-hop became mainstream, and artists became known not just by insular communities but also by fans worldwide. For rappers who were already large, their weight became a part of their image. But today, when celebrity and pop culture has a firm grip on every inch of our existence, image for celebrities is manufactured and calculated down to the very last pound.

Along with the rise in image-consciousness, the ’90s also saw the beginning of real obesity in America—when heaviness was first considered a “problem,” not just a way of being. A study by researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that from 1990 to 2000, the average weight of a a 5-foot-9 18-year-old man rose from 149 pounds to 166 pounds. An average 5-foot-5 woman’s weight increased from 132 to 147 pounds. Those numbers have only gone up since. Now rappers in New York City can’t even buy a large soda without feeling the wrath of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While Americans as a whole may not be slimming down, those in the public eye feel the pressure to lose weight as they build a public image.