Try not to let this shake you faith in the Hip-Hop community.
No, I was never on a party line, but I had a friend who was. I still have one of those things in the basement, it worked last time I hooked it up. We didn’t get touch tone phones until some time after 1985, when I got my first 1200 Baud modem. There is still a 50 cent/month surcharge for touchTone in Massachusetts! even though it costs the phone company a whole lot less than rotary dial to implement.
NY Daily news said “A Staten Island deejay and rising hip-hop star was shot to death while walking to a local bodega to buy a cigar early Sunday, police and a close friend said.”
There we go. Smoking kills.