The former 3rd Bass member, host of The (White) Rapper Show, and all-around rap rabble-rouser MC Serch spoke out on Instagram, pouring out his feelings about the creative genius behind one of VH1's biggest social experiments, Sacha Jenkins's this decade. Sacha Jenkins, a driving force behind Ego Trip magazine and one of the architects of The (White) Rapper Show, died on May 23 from multiple system atrophy, and he was just 54.
Serch didn't wade into the flood of tributes. His post began with candor: "Took me a minute to come around to this post." And when he did, it was a tribute, a story, a reflection, and a regret.
In 2007, The (White) Rapper Show was more than just a reality competition program. It was a loaded question that took the form of a game show. Ten white rappers deposited in the belly of the South Bronx, competing for $100,000 and wrestling with issues of identity, authenticity, and the fine line between homage and appropriation. Jenkins and the Ego Trip crew (which included Elliott Wilson) gave the show an edge and an odd lump-in-the-throat poignancy. And MC Serch? He drew on the realness of the host, using his credibility and calm as an anchor.
Serch remembered the whirlwind of signing on: hosting a morning radio show in Detroit, immediately hustling to New York to shoot the pilot that day, just hours after he had said yes. "There was no question that the show would go," he wrote. "It was so well written and well thought out. The @egotripland way you always did things."
For Serch, that break set off nearly a decade in TV purgatory. Some dreams were fulfilled, the rest not, but always with enough to feed the family. TV had budgeted, TV had potential, and Jenkins had a vision.
His reflections returned to the last time and their close encounter passing one another in at the Mass Appeal offices, a nod, a missed opportunity. "I just jumped up and ran out," he recalled of the morning he raced home to deal with a medical emergency. Jenkins texted later, "Anyways, hope your family is OK. Be well.' That would be the end of it between them.
"We did not speak after that. Not a word or a text," Serch confessed, his remorse thickening. "Life started life-ing and we had stuff to do."
It is a brutally honest moment that only arrives too late to change. "I was hoping to have had the opportunity to sit with Sacha and make amends," Serch wrote. "To try to tell him who I am now… So many words that I should have said to him." But maybe, in the end, that's the best kind of authentic tribute, not glossy with praise but jagged with truth.
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