February 7, 2000: White Plains, NY -- Bronx-based rapper Big Punisher died of apparent heart failure; he was twenty-eight. Doctors believe his sudden death was caused by a longstanding heart condition that resulted from his extreme obesity. The platinum-selling Puerto Rican MC, born Christopher Rios, collapsed late in the afternoon at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains, N.Y., where he and his family had taken up temporary residence, reportedly because their house was undergoing renovations. His wife Liza called Rios' friend and collaborator, Fat Joe, alarmed that Rios had stopped breathing.

Rios was pronounced dead at 3:53 p.m. by doctors at White Plains Hospital. When Dr. Louis Roh at the Westchester County Medical Examiner's office performed an autopsy on Rios and concluded that while further standard tests needed to be performed, the rapper's death was preliminarily being attributed to heart failure brought about by a weight-related condition known as cardiac hypotrophy, or enlarged heart. Roh says Rios weighed 698 pounds at the time of his death and that, as a result of his obesity, his heart had gradually grown three times larger than its normal size.

"He was so big and he knew his weight was causing a health problem," says Fat Joe. "For a long time, even though he was a big guy, he could do whatever he wanted. He'd play sports with us and everything. But as time went on, his health got worse."

"His death leaves a huge void," says Loud Records President Steve Rifkin. "He really touched all the bases. He touched the crossover community, he touched the inner city. He was the first Latino rapper to go multi-platinum that wasn't a novelty act. There's a big hole and everybody's going to have to step up a notch now."

"Whenever we would reminisce, he'd be like, 'Yo, we did it, Joe. We legends,'" Joe remarks, sadly. "And I would always tell him we're not legends, we're not nothing yet, just to try to push him and motivate him. Even though I knew he was a legend and what he did was legendary and his music was classic, I would always just tell him, 'No, you still got a lot more to do.'"