This is a fascinating read for old school hip hop fans and those with an interest in sports memorabilia. I love 3rd Bass, yet I never knew of Pete's obsession with baseball, nor that he was Ivy League educated. Here are a few highlights and the SI link.
Peter Nash struts around a Hollywood soundstage, brandishing a silver-knobbed cane and spitting acid rhymes. "Getting paid to peddle sneakers and soda pop," he raps. "The thin ice you skate upon will break and set ya straight." In his boxy suit and slicked-back hair, Nash, 24, has a vaguely thuggish demeanor at odds with his Ivy League bachelor's degree in English........Since his moment of fame as a rapper for Def Jam Records, Nash has achieved a markedly different kind of renown -- among hard-core baseball memorabilia collectors who wouldn't know Def Jam from Def Leppard. Over the past two decades Nash has become known as the most prolific source of the rarest old-school material, especially from the 19th century.
But on this afternoon in late July the tough-guy rapper turned baseball historian is mired in a widening scandal over the holiest relics of America's pastime. Nash recently lost a lawsuit against a leading memorabilia auctioneer in which he admitted to fraud, and, according to sources, the FBI is investigating whether he sold forged memorabilia. (Nash declined to comment on the investigation.)
His 3rd Bass royalties came to only about $5,000 a year, and an attempted reunion of the group, which included a performance at Woodstock 1999, never gained traction.
The house in Cooperstown was repeatedly under threat of foreclosure, the repo man was after his car, and Nash took to calling up friends for help in paying his basic living expenses: rent, a tank of gas, diapers, the phone bill.
Nash, for his part, dismisses a suggestion that a 3rd Bass reunion might help solve some of his problems. "Serch has asked me to do certain things," Nash says. "It's not like there's any huge money in doing it. There's a lot of interest, but I mean, it's nothing I have that much of an interest [in]."
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/the_bonus/12/09/nash/index.html