By KELEFA SANNEH
The New York Times
Published: October 27, 2005

Have you heard the new Chris LeDoux hit single? Of course, it’s not a new song by LeDoux, the beloved rodeo star turned country star who died in March. It’s a new song about him, recorded by his friend Garth Brooks. It’s called “Good Ride Cowboy,” and it’s a high-spirited send-off. The eulogy culminates with a celebratory reference to that famous goddess of victory and sneakers: “Be more like Chris/Pull your hat down tight and just LeDoux it!”

While “Good Ride Cowboy” canters up the country charts, the hip-hop world is getting acquainted with a different kind of tribute song: an ode to the Notorious B.I.G., more often known as Biggie, who was killed in 1997. Since this is hip-hop, it’s fitting that the homage is delivered by the rapper himself, with lyrics recycled from an old recording. And the new song is “Hold Ya Head,” a stitched-together collaboration with Bob Marley, and it reminds listeners of B.I.G.’s grim sense of humor. It begins with his famous declaration that when he dies, “I wanna go to hell.”

Like Buddhist monks and soap opera villains, pop stars know that death isn’t the end. While the pop marketplace often demands constant transformation from its living stars, it has also found ways to reward the immutability of the ones who will forever remain tragically young or laudably old. The departed stay fixed firmly in place, sometimes seeming sturdier than the flighty singers and rappers who can’t afford to stay the same. And so when the living and the dead collaborate, each borrows a little immortality from the other. That’s the idea when Peggy Lee and Tupac Shakur are reincarnated as a Bette Midler tribute album and a CD of hip-hop poetry. (You can guess which became which, although it would be more fun if you couldn’t.)

“Good Ride Cowboy” borrows some of its power from a story that country fans already know: the two singers were famous friends, and their careers have been intertwined. Mr. Brooks helped push LeDoux into the mainstream when he sang, on his 1989 debut album, about a “worn-out tape of Chris LeDoux”; a few years later, the two collaborated on a hit single, “Whatcha Gonna Do With a Cowboy?”

LeDoux never became a stadium-sized star, unlike Mr. Brooks. With his boyish enthusiasm and fondness for melodramatic – and quite often riveting – stories, Mr. Brooks is a great narrator, while LeDoux was more like a protagonist. His voice is rougher and less precise, and, when he sang about the rodeo, fans knew that he was a 1976 bareback riding champion.

When Mr. Brooks sings about LeDoux, you can hear not just affection but also awe. Borrowing words and phrases from LeDoux’s huge oeuvre (he released more than two dozen albums), and confident that true LeDoux fans will recognize every one, Mr. Brooks turns an old friend into a new hero:

From “Bareback Jack” to “This Cowboy’s Hat”

The songs were stronger than his pain

He would not “Slow Down” from town to town

Like children “Running Through the Rain.”

That reference to pain is an indirect acknowledgment of the illness that took Ledoux’s life. He had a rare disorder called primary sclerosing cholangitis, and eventually died from cancer of the bile duct. You won’t find any mention of that in the song, and not just because those words would ruin the meter. When a singer dies too young, fans can’t help imagining that the end somehow reflects all that came before. And so if “Good Ride Cowboy” helps some listeners to imagine that LeDoux met his fate in some rodeo disaster, after riding one too many horses and testing his luck one too many times – well, so much the better.

When it comes to conflating life with death, few artists pose more temptations than Biggie. He released only one album during his lifetime, and it was called “Ready to Die.” He was shot just before his second album reached shops; in a horrible coincidence, it was called “Life After Death.”

The duet with Marley is part of “The Final Chapter,” a duets album being prepared by Biggie’s friend and mentor, Sean (Diddy) Combs. For the album, Diddy has recruited a lot of hip-hop A-listers, including R. Kelly, Jay-Z and Eminem. Unlike Shakur, who somehow remains one of hip-hop’s most prolific acts, Biggie has released only one posthumous album, an ill-conceived 1999 compilation also overseen by Diddy. This CD is Diddy’s chance to get it right.

No one who has heard “Hold Ya Head” can accuse Diddy of playing it safe. The song uses a snippet of the Bob Marley song “Johnny Was”: “Woman hold her head and cry/’Cause her son had been shot down in the street and died.” But even as this snippet gestures toward real life, Biggie’s rhymes tug in a more unsettling direction. After all, he’s rapping about suicide.

Or almost. On mix tapes and online, the song appears with profanities intact but with other words deleted. “I wanna go to hell” becomes “I wannna go to (uh!)”; other words removed include “heaven” and “slit,” as in, “just (uh!) my wrists and end this.” But the narrative is startling, regardless. Biggie’s suicide letter was also an extended joke about a not-quite-remorseful lowlife who finds that even in the afterlife, he can’t escape himself.

“It don’t make sense going to heaven with the goodie-goodies/Dressed in white – I like black Timbs and black hoodies,” he raps: a sinless paradise doesn’t sound like much of one. Even his funeral is a farce: “My baby mama kissed me but she glad I’m gone/She knew me and her sister had something going on.” This Marley-enhanced version doesn’t improve on Biggie’s brilliant original, “Suicidal Thoughts.” Maybe that just proves the point: if you want a eulogy done right, do it yourself.

It’s easy to be cynical about the way fans and executives and colleagues find ways to perpetuate the careers of dead stars. And early on Sunday morning, we almost got another one to add to the list: the great rapper Cam’ron was shot in the arm during an apparent carjacking attempt. By the time he left the hospital, he was already in promotional mode, plugging a new album by one of his protégés. Despite all the jokes about death as a great career move, Cam’ron has discovered an even better one: stay alive.