Rico Wade is getting a monument in East Point

It’s the latest move from a city honoring the late producer, who died from heart failure at 52.

In July, the City of Atlanta’s Rico Wade Music Executive Training Program graduated its first cohort. Mayor Andre Dickens first announced the program during funeral services for Wade at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

The East Point ceremony will be invitation-only. A flier for the event states that additional info is forthcoming. Brown noted he will announce a time for the event “soon.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reached out to the City of East Point and Wade’s family for comment about the monument.

Wade, one-third of production trio Organized Noize, is credited as one of Atlanta’s hip-hop forefathers, and prominent cultural ambassadors. The basement of Wade’s mother’s house in Lakewood Heights served as the makeshift studio where her son, Brown, and Ray Murray would cultivate Atlanta’s sound, breaking through into mainstream hip-hop conscious.

That dank, red clay-filled space became known as the Dungeon, where Organized Noized helped Outkast, Goodie Mob and Future all find their voices as artists. The collective, and their mentors who called it home were known as the Dungeon Family. At beauty supply shop at the intersection of Headland and Delowe in East Point is where Wade first met then-teenagers Andre 3000 and Big Boi.

It seems fitting then that a celebration of Wade’s musical legacy would take root in the city where it started. It’s also welcome news for Dungeon Family members who are mourning the loss Beatrice Wade, who passed away on Oct. 14. Her celebration of life took place over the weekend.

The Wade matriarch housed, fed, and supported the young Black kids making music in her house. The brick bungalow, now an Airbnb owned by OutKast’s Big Boi, is considered a hip-hop landmark.

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