He was also the recipient of a rare commutation from President George W. Bush, who in 2008 cut off Fort\u00e9\u2019s sentence after seven years and sent him home to resume his musical career and create the family he had longed for at 23. <\/p>\n
The Chilmark police chief, Sean Slavin, told various outlets that there was no \u201creadily apparent cause of death\u201d but also no evidence of foul play. Fort\u00e9\u2019s death is being investigated by the state medical examiner\u2019s office in Massachusetts, per the Vineyard Gazette<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cThis one hurts,\u201d Fugees founding member Wyclef Jean wrote Tuesday on social media<\/a> with a video of himself and Fort\u00e9 performing an acoustic set. \u201cmy brother @john_Fort\u00e9 has joined the Angels legends never Die look at the smile R I P my Refugee brother.\u201d<\/p>\n Born Jan. 30, 1975, in the Brownsville part of Brooklyn, Fort\u00e9 didn\u2019t have a posh upbringing, saying in a May 1998 interview<\/a> (posted on YouTube in 2016 by the Interview Channel) that his neighborhood had been \u201cdeclared a war zone\u201d by the NYPD. He reminisced about his mother buying him only generic \u201cplastic\u201d sneakers, then shared some of the discomfort he experienced when he moved into the nicer Brooklyn Heights neighborhood after he had some musical success.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s crazy, when you tell them you went to a good school,\u201d he said, \u201cand they think you meant reform school.\u201d<\/p>\n But Fort\u00e9 was actually \u201can inquisitive 8-year-old who played the violin in a youth orchestra and even had a recital at the vaunted Brooklyn Academy of Music,\u201d according to GQ<\/a>. He picked up whatever was playing on the radio at home \u2014 jazz, soul, random songs \u2014 then decided that rap was his \u201clifeline\u201d to another world. <\/p>\n Fort\u00e9 also earned a scholarship to the Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire. Ben Taylor, the son of Carly Simon and James Taylor, also attended the private high school, but Ben Taylor and Fort\u00e9 didn\u2019t meet until years later. They all became fast friends when they did meet, and the \u201cYou\u2019re So Vain\u201d singer would play a critical role when Fort\u00e9\u2019s life went sideways. <\/p>\n At 16, he found himself in a studio watching and learning from Gang Starr, with the rapper Guru and producer DJ Premier, as they created their music. Fort\u00e9 earned mention in the liner notes of Gang Starr\u2019s album. \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh man, Keith [Elam, a.k.a. Guru]<\/a> remembered me,\u201d he told GQ. \u201cThat gave me the tools that I needed to not just rap, but to also make music.\u201d<\/p>\n After Exeter, he studied the music business at New York University, according to the New York Times<\/a>, and roomed with rapper Talib Kweli. <\/p>\n Fort\u00e9 connected with the Refugee Camp All Stars in 1993, when he was 18, through mutual friends he knew from working as an A&R executive for indie rap label Rawkus Records. He met Lauryn Hill first \u2014 they dated briefly, he said in the 1998 interview \u2014 then Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cI submitted beats, we did \u2018The Score.\u2019 I was part of the nominations when it came down to the Grammys,\u201d Fort\u00e9 said. \u201cIt made me feel really proud to be part of an organization that in fact was a family.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Score\u201d went to No. 1 around the world and has sold around 22 million copies. It was the Fugees\u2019 second and final album. <\/p>\n John Fort\u00e9 performs at a criminal justice reform fundraiser in Washington, D.C., in May 2018.<\/p>\n (Paul Morigi \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n After working with the Refugee Camp All Stars<\/a> and the Fugees, Fort\u00e9 released a solo album in 1998. The record landed like \u201ca brick,\u201d selling only 80,000 copies, he told old friend Kweli on \u201cThe People\u2019s Party\u201d<\/a> in 2021. For Fort\u00e9, it was maybe the first disappointment in his life, he said. <\/p>\n \u201cPartially abandoning the easily embraceable sound he incorporated on recordings with the Fugees and Wyclef Jean, Fort\u00e9 includes some tracks with morbid story lines on his debut album,\u201d The Times said of \u201cPoly Sci\u201d<\/a> in 1998. \u201cWhen creating potential pop tunes, Fort\u00e9 excels with light-hearted subject matter and instrumentation. However, when the Brooklyn native shifts to gritty themes and backdrops, his appeal diminishes rapidly. Fortunately, his softer selections redeem this album.\u201d<\/p>\n After the record failed, Fort\u00e9 told Kweli, \u201cInstead of looking in the mirror and self-examining \u2014 what can we do to right this ship? \u2014 I didn\u2019t look in the mirror. I didn\u2019t look in the mirror at all.\u201d He said he decided that those around him had failed him, when in fact he had \u201cmade that album in a vacuum,\u201d without asking for input from people whose opinions might have helped him. <\/p>\n He expressed his frustrations to his label, Ruffhouse Records, which responded by dropping him. <\/p>\n So Fort\u00e9 figured he could do it on his own, which led to him meeting a man in a club who had \u201can operation\u201d and said he could jump-start the musician\u2019s recording career. That led to him \u201cbecoming a middle man, connecting him to couriers to transport whatever needed transporting.\u201d The man wanted him to find women to carry drugs into the United States. <\/p>\n \u201cWith only having my hubris as my guide, what I allowed myself to receive \u2014 it didn\u2019t result in the healthiest choices,\u201d he told GQ.<\/p>\n \u201cThat house of cards fell,\u201d Fort\u00e9 told Kweli. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t me signing up to that, to all of a sudden change professions. … I was compartmentalizing and justifying it, because I was [also] going into the studio.\u201d He had decided the risks were acceptable. <\/p>\n Then one day he did something that he, as a middleman, had never done before, he said: He went to Newark International Airport to pick up two of the couriers. What he didn\u2019t know was the women had been busted at an airport in Houston the day before and were now cooperating with the federal government. He was driving into a sting.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen they picked me up, they just bagged me. Everything, time stood still that day,\u201d he told Kweli, choking up slightly. \u201cAnd then everything changed.\u201d<\/p>\n A second album, \u201cI, John,\u201d followed in 2002, with Carly Simon singing on one duet. But by that time, Fort\u00e9 was imprisoned on a 14-year federal sentence \u2014 \u201c168 months,\u201d he said \u2014 after being convicted of aiding and abetting possession with intent to distribute five kilograms or more of cocaine. <\/p>\n Fort\u00e9 told the court he thought he was picking up money in the suitcases, not $1.4 million worth of liquid cocaine, according to documents reviewed in 2008 by ABC News. The sentence fell on the low end of controversial mandatory federal sentencing guidelines.<\/p>\n Simon, his buddy Ben\u2019s mom who posted bail for him, was among the high-profile people who pushed for Fort\u00e9\u2019s early release, telling ABC News<\/a> upon his commutation that the 2001 sentence was too harsh for a first-time drug offense. Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah also pushed<\/a> for Fort\u00e9\u2019s release from a low-security federal prison in Pennsylvania. <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s an extraordinary young man. And he was the first time I met him. He\u2019s even more so now,\u201d Simon told ABC News<\/a> on Nov. 25, 2008, a day after then-President George W. Bush commuted Fort\u00e9\u2019s sentence<\/a>. <\/p>\n Fort\u00e9 spent the first part of his sentence in the law library, trying to figure a legal trick to get out. He also learned to play acoustic guitar with the help of another inmate. <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s the realization aspect that some prisons are not physical,\u201d he told the Vineyard Gazette, which would become his local paper, in 2010. \u201cThere are many people whom I\u2019ve encountered since returning, some of them feign indifference and others act as if they could have no clue about what it would be like to be in prison, but they\u2019re in an abusive relationship or they\u2019re in a dead-end job or they are suffering with their health. We all have to go through some sort of prison \u2014 some are spiritual, some are mental and some are physical.\u201d<\/p>\n After his commutation, Fort\u00e9 went back to New York and resumed his musical career, often playing acoustic guitar. He recorded a cover of Kanye \u201cYe\u201d West\u2019s \u201cHomecoming\u201d with Kweli and began teaching. In 2009 he released \u201cStyleFree, the EP,\u201d and saw the single \u201cPlay My Cards for Me\u201d appear in the 2010 movie \u201cJust Wright,\u201d starring Queen Latifah and Common. The song \u201cNervous\u201d was used in the 2010 movie \u201cStomp the Yard 2: Homecoming.\u201d<\/p>\n By 2012, he had written and recorded \u201cSomething to Lean On,\u201d which became the inaugural rap theme song for the Brooklyn Nets when the NBA franchise moved from New Jersey to New York and changed its name. <\/p>\n He also appeared in the 2012 movie \u201cThe Russian Winter<\/a>,\u201d about his journey from Brooklyn to Exeter to prison and a trip he took to Russia after his release.<\/p>\n Fort\u00e9 found his way to Martha\u2019s Vineyard by way of some old friends: Simon and Taylor. \u201cAfter I came home [from prison] and got back on my feet, even though I was living in New York, I would come up to the Vineyard whenever I could. It still had that gravity. And you know, Carly and Ben. They\u2019re family,\u201d he told Martha\u2019s Vineyard Arts and Ideas<\/a> in 2025. <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768459690_823_.jpeg\")
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