Willimantic | hennesseyonice

I am very sad to announce that our dear friend Pauley Boom has passed. He was found last week with a bullet in his head behind the dumpster at Goodfella’s clutching a slice of pizza pie in one hand and a gat in the other.

Pauley is survived by a large network of criminals who reside in the Staten Island area, most of them family members. This includes an unknown amount of children who Pauley created with the help of countless exotic women. Though he was a mere 28 years old when he died, Pauley leaves behind a legacy of epic proportions.

Obviously everyone knows the tale of Pauley by now, but let’s recap. He was a bloodthirsty mob man, a muffthirsty gentleman, and a funthirsty mic-man who was a genuine joy to listen to. And nobody could deny that he wore his love for his nationality, Italiano, on his sleeve.

The first time I heard of Pauley was through my boy Kas Kade, a great former rapper I knew from Trumbull, CT. Kas told me he had this dude from Staten Island at his house who kind of wanted to tear up the mic. I guess this dude Pauley apparently had mad potential, but wasn’t sure if he really wanted to lay it down. He had been a “made man” in the illicit activities scene in Staten Island for awhile and at the time he didn’t see any reason to give that up.

I was intrigued by this character, so I headed to Kas’s crib. As I walked in, Pauley’s gravelly baritone was the first thing I heard. I was immediately awestruck.

A rap newcomer myself, I agreed to drop a verse on the track just to convince him to get on the mic. That night we recorded Pauley’s first track, “Sunrise,” and a star was born. A generous star, too – Pauley was even nice enough to have his assistant to grab us some canolis after the session.

I recognized Pauley’s kinetic presence in the studio, and from that point on I became his manager and lurked in the background while he stole the spotlight with hits like “Hey Girls; Oh Baby” and “I Like to Talk About Myself,” all available on his Myspace.

I came up with the idea of him to write a blog and promote himself to UConn students, as I was just a little bitch student myself back then and thought my peers would like his style. The Boom Blog became the chief instrument in Pauley’s meteoric rise to fame.

Pauley also hooked up with B, a part-time producer and full-time slacker, who he talked shit on all the time but in retrospect made some decent beats. And through my planning and incisive management Pauley came extremely close to opening for 50 Cent at UConn’s Spring Weekend concert and had the entire UConn campus eating out of the palm of his hand. At least that’s how I remember it.

I have been bereaving since I heard the news of Pauley’s passing to the point where I didn’t think I’d even be able to tell all you Pauley Boom heads out there about it. But a few days ago I caught a glimmer of hope. I was at his old apartment in the mob hub of Staten Island searching through his old stuff when I came across a couple things.

One was a lost track that somehow was still on his computer, “I Came Back For More.” It includes the verse Pauley posted in his last post, aka His Last Call Yo which trails off into the only recorded freestyle he ever laid down. It also features drumming by your humble narrator and a guest free from Pauley’s cousin Tommy Kabam, an Englishman. Download the shit here.

The other was a photo that was worn down a little from being stored underneath a pile of panties in his room. The pic was taken outside our favorite strip club, Willimantic’s Ultraviolet, right before a business meeting:

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Pauley and me

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My time with Pauley was filled with strippers, salami, and gratuitous gunfire. I am heartbroken to see him go. He was a truly inspiring human being, and I would be amiss to let his spirit die along with his body, to let it rot alongside that piece of pizza pie I mentioned before. For Pauley’s posterity, I had to make a video for the freestyle track we did using footage of Pauley I found of him goofing off in my basement when he was visiting Connecticut. For good measure I included a bit of our two favorite scenes from what was our mutual top film, “Ghost Dog.”

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But finding “I Came Back For More” made me want to do more than a tribute video for my fallen brother. It made me want to build on the foundation Pauley laid during his illustrious but brief career. His untimely death should be nothing if not a call to arms – a call to write, to freestyle, to maybe even drop a beat or two. From darkness comes light and for every ending there’s a new beginning — and I think just got struck by fucking lightning!

-Henne$$ey on I¢e

Settling Scores 2

Settling Scores 1

RIP Pauley Boom 1982-2011

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