A man has been arrested in connection with the killing of P. Fluid, the frontman of influential funk metal band 24-7 Spyz.
The singer – real name Peter Forrest – was found badly beaten in the back of an abandoned vehicle in the Bronx, New York. He was pronounced dead at the scene on January 13 at the age of 64.
The vehicle in question was a private ambulette bus that Forrest drove for work, with the New York Police Department noting that he had suffered “trauma around the body” and that they were investigating his death as a homicide.
On Friday (January 17), Sharief Bodden, 29, was charged with Forrest’s killing. He now faces charges of murder, manslaughter, criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminal possession of a weapon.
24-7 Spyz were a heavy metal band that P. Fluid co-founded in 1986. They gained a fanbase in the late ‘80s and ‘90s for their radical fusion of heavy metal, reggae, and hard rock. This led to their prominence alongside funk metal bands such as Living Colour and Faith No More.
Forrest was also a co-founder of the Black Rock Coalition, an artists’ collective and nonprofit organisation founded in New York in 1985.
He recorded and wrote songs for the band on three of their albums: 1989’s ‘Harder Than You’, 1990’s ‘Gumbo Millennium’, and 1995’s ‘Temporarily Disconnected’. Per Rolling Stone, in 1990, Forrest had originally announced his departure from the band at a Jane’s Addiction concert, where they performed as openers. He would return to the band to perform on ‘Temporarily Disconnected’ before leaving again.
On his own, Forrest took part in short-lived projects, including a supergroup with Living Colour’s Corey Glover and former Fishbone member Angelo Moore. He also resurfaced in the 2010s with a goth rock project named BlkVampires, in which he donned white makeup for their shows.