One of the original, defining voices of Houston’s dynamic rap community, Kenneth Moore, known in music circles as Big Moe, passed away Sunday October 14th at Ben Taub Hospital after suffering three heart attacks and slipping into a coma just one week earlier.

Known as the grimy crooner of DJ Screw’s Screwed Up Click, Big Moe’s baritone, sing-songy rap style came to help define what is now known as Houston’s signature sound – a slower, more blues inflected variation of hip-hop.

Moore was merely 33 years old, but had been plagued with health problems for much of his life, problems which were compounded by a salacious appetite for codeine cough syrup. Moe made no bones about his drug of choice, naming both of his major albums (2000’s City of Syrup and 2002’s Purple World) and many of his hit songs after the street term for the prescription opiate.

Death is no stranger to his crew, the aforementioned Screwed Up Click. In 2001 his mentor, the late DJ Screw, died after suffering a heart attack, many say was caused by an overdose of codeine cough syrup. Fat Pat and his brother Hawk, both A-Level MC’s in the click were both gunned down in separate incidents.