He was a rare black journalist on the
British music press, whose NME pieces summed up the radicalism of Public Enemy and the dark side of Morrissey. So how did his death go unnoticed for two years?
‘Dele Fadele was the first black journalist from the
UK that ever interviewed me,” says Chuck D of Public Enemy. “I thought that was amazing. And it was for our first important spread in the UK music press too.” Back in the late 80s, the hip-hop pioneers were used to dealing with journalists who couldn’t get their heads around a bunch of uzi-toting black power radicals, but that wasn’t the case with Dele: “He got us,” says the band’s founder.
Last month, an old university friend of Dele’s emailed the Guardian; he’d heard a worrying rumour that Dele had died and he’d hoped that it was just that, a rumour. Were we able to find out what happened to him? I spent a week contacting dozens of Dele’s old
Friends and colleagues and by the end of it all the picture was no clearer – some had also heard the same rumours that he’d died, but others claimed sightings or believed he’d returned to his native Nigeria.