Photo courtesy of hiphoplifeandtimes.com

One year ago, on the morning of Aug. 30, 2012, the University of Wisconsin and the Madison community lost a powerful voice. That morning, John “Vietnam” Nguy??n walked with four friends to swim in Lake Mendota as the sun rose. When one of his friends panicked, Nguy??n helped her onto a dock before going underwater and failing to resurface. He was 19 years old.

Nguy??n was a UW student and Chicago rapper on scholarship through the First Wave Hip Hop and Urban Arts Learning Community, a program that provides full-tuition scholarships to fledgling hip-hop artists. Nguy??n had an active social media presence, through which he chronicled hundreds of verses in assorted songs, mixtapes and cyphers. He was known for his lyrics dealing with multiculturalism and personal identity. He regularly performed in poetry slams, including the Louder Than a Bomb: the Chicago Youth Festival, and spoke and performed at high schools and colleges throughout the country.

In his song “If a Minute Would Reverse,” Nguy??n raps, “What you take for granted / I don’t really understand it / I practice balance on the planet’s tilted axis.” For Nguy??n, every second of life was valuable.

“He never slept,” said Michael Penn II, a UW student and First Wave scholar who performs under the name CRASHprez. “He’d just be up doing something – something productive: going to work out, going to play ball, going to Gordon’s. It was just relentless. He felt like if you were sleeping, you were wasting time.”

In his freshman year, Penn and Nguy??n were inducted into the same First Wave cohort. In that year, he grew close to Nguy??n, who constantly challenged his peers to strengthen their lyrics.

“He was one of the people I was inspired to keep up with competitively even though I would never really say it,” Penn said. “The fact that he could convey his message so well and touch people in such a way that left the impact that he did – that was something I always admired to the highest degree.” According to Penn, if Nguy??n was tier one, he was tier 68.

“He was never weak on his stuff. Period. I’ve never heard a weak John Vietnam verse – ever,” he said.

Nguy??n was known for his excess positivity and goofy nature. He would regularly criticize Penn for his plain eating habits. “We could go get wings and John would hop on me for getting plain wings – no sauce, nothing like that. Just little things like that. He’d get on me about it and never let it go. If we were in class, we’d always be rehashing each other’s pieces, joking on people’s stuff,” Penn said.

Although it’s been a year since his death, Nguy??n’s presence is still felt on campus. His YouTube videos and Facebook account still draw in regular visitors. Users continue to comment on his videos, thanking him for his inspirational words and dedication to the art of hip-hop. More importantly, his words and his message continue to inspire those who met him throughout his life.

“You gotta do stuff now,” Penn said, reflecting on what he’s continued to learn from Nguy??n since his passing. “You’re gonna have a legacy behind you. All the work into crafting that legacy is gonna start now. He’s touching people who barely even knew him. That’s awesome.”

Friday, Aug. 30, marked the first city-sanctioned John “Vietnam” Nguy??n Day. At 6 a.m., Nguy??n’s father, the Rev. Joe Hertel, held a sunrise service commemorating John’s passing. Friends, family and Madison community members congregated at Memorial Union for a day of events dedicated to Nguy??n’s memory, including a Fellowship Dinner, a Passing the Light ceremony and musical performances by Qwel & Maker, CRASHprez, FM Supreme and Defcee.

Eli Lynch, another First Wave scholar who performs as Smiley Gatmouth, wrote a song called “Dying,” dedicated to the memory of Nguy??n, his peer and friend. It is a better eulogy than this article could ever hope to be, so it’s only right that his words bring it to a close: “Yo, John Vietnam used to stay awake late nights / Waiting on some sleep till the penetrating daylight / Came bright and early so he started to embrace life / In a new way, starting living every day like / His last ’cause he saw that the end could come fast / And we knew that he was right, but he never really asked / What would happen if it happened? / Couldn’t fathom a reaction / If one day, he was with us, laughing and relaxing / And then the next day he vanished, left his body on the planet / And I took him so for granted that I couldn’t understand it / We agreed that the meaning of life was unforeseeable / Like what would be in the freedom of night / You lived well homie, I learned a lot from you / Rest in peace, you’ll be missed, but it’s time that you get some sleep.”