John Forté, the Grammy-nominated artist and Fugees affiliate, has died. He was 50.
According to the Martha’s Vineyard Times, Forté was discovered unresponsive on his kitchen floor by a neighbor on Monday (Jan. 12). After 911 was called, health officials arrived on the scene and declared Forté dead.
“There is no foul play suspected,” Chilmark Police Chief Scott Slavin said.
Forté, who moved to Martha’s Vineyard a decade ago, leaves behind his wife, Laura Fuller, and two children, Wren, 10, and Hale, 7.
An accomplished musician, Forté was raised in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York. He would go on to study at New York University but dropped out to pursue music, first at Rawkus Records and then alongside Wyclef Jean, Pras and Lauryn Hill. Forté’s career reached massive heights in the mid-1990s, as he wrote several songs for the group’s 1996 classic album “The Score” and contributed to Wyclef Jean’s 1997 solo album, “Wyclef Jean Presents Carnival featuring The Refugee All-Stars.”
Two years after the release of his debut album, “Poly Sci,” he was arrested at Newark International Airport while in possession of liquid cocaine. He was convicted on federal drug charges and sentenced to 14 years in prison under the then-mandatory minimum guidelines. Advocates, such as longtime friend and collaborator Carly Simon and her son, Ben Taylor, called for his release from prison, citing that he was not given a fair trial.
In 2008, Forté’s sentence was commuted by then-President George W. Bush and he returned to making music. In 2016, after falling in love with Martha’s Vineyard on his first visit in 1998, he made the area his home, engrossing himself in the community and using his recording studio as a place of jam sessions and an incubator for creative thought. He scored the film “Kerouac’s Road: The Beat of a Nation,” a documentary about the life of acclaimed writer Jack Kerouac with Peter More and a revival of the docuseries, “Eyes On The Prize.”
Forté would have turned 51 on January 30th.
