{"id":462571,"date":"2026-05-23T00:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T00:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462571\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T00:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T00:27:10","slug":"rob-base-it-takes-two-rapper-dead-at-59","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/462571\/","title":{"rendered":"Rob Base, ‘It Takes Two\u2019 Rapper, Dead at 59"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Rob Base, one-half of the legendary duo with DJ E-Z Rock<\/a> behind the classic hit “It Takes Two,” has died at 59.<\/p>\n

The rapper — born Robert Ginyard — passed away peacefully after a private battle with cancer on Friday surrounded by family … just four days after celebrating his birthday.<\/p>\n

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His family remembered him in an Instagram post as a loving father, friend and “creative force whose impact will never be forgotten.”<\/p>\n

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Alongside DJ E-Z Rock — who died in 2014 — Rob helped bring hip hop into the mainstream with the massive 1988 hit “It Takes Two” … a track that became a pop culture staple and was later sampled by artists including Snoop Dogg<\/a> and The Black Eyed Peas. The duo also scored hits with “Joy and Pain” and “Get on the Dance Floor.”<\/p>\n

Rob and E-Z Rock met in the fifth grade while growing up in Harlem and later built their rap career from the ground up after recording early demos together.<\/p>\n

More recently, Rob continued performing on the “I Love the \u201990s Tour” alongside acts like Vanilla Ice<\/a> and Young MC<\/a> … while also mentoring up-and-coming artists through his company, Funky Base, Inc.<\/p>\n

RIP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rob Base, one-half of the legendary duo with DJ E-Z Rock behind the classic hit “It Takes Two,”…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[2476,321,93,338,61,60,43,2477],"class_list":["post-462571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-breaking-news","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-hip-hop","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-tmz-hip-hop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}