.J. for Run-DMC Is Shot to Death in Queens
By ANDY NEWMAN
am Master Jay, the D.J. who provided beats and
scratches to the rap group Run-DMC's
groundbreaking records, was shot and killed last night
at a recording studio in Jamaica, Queens, the
authorities said.
The D.J., whose real name was Jason Mizell, 37, was in
a lounge in the second-floor studio with another man
when two men entered, apparently after being buzzed
in, around 7:30 p.m., the police said.
They shot Mr. Mizell once in the head and the other
man once in the arm, then fled, the authorities said,
leaving no immediate explanation for the killing.
Mr. Mizell died at the scene, the police said. The
other shooting victim, Urieco Rincon, 25, was in
stable condition at Mary Immaculate Hospital.
Robert Brown, an employee of the studio, on Merrick
Boulevard near Jamaica Avenue, above a restaurant and
a check-cashing store, said that Mr. Mizell was taking
a break from producing a record by a group called
Rusty Waters when the attack occurred. The police said
there were at least four other people in the studio,
but no one else was in the lounge.
Outside the studio on the commercial strip of Merrick
Boulevard, a large crowd quickly formed in the cold
rain, crying and comforting one another and
occasionally lashing out in anger. Some of them were
rap royalty.
"These are our Beatles," Chuck D, the
founder of Public Enemy, said of Run-DMC, adding that
Mr. Mizell had given him his first break in the music
business.
Dr. Dre, a D.J. on Power 105.1 FM said: "This has
got to end. I'm sick of coming down to these
things and saying we can't have this anymore.
This is my friend. I feel like my heart was
broken."
One of Mr. Mizell's three children, a teenage
son, arrived in tears.
In the 1980's, Run-DMC was the first rap group to
become a household name, and Mr. Mizell's deft,
playful manipulations of the turntables, a process
known as scratching, were an essential part of their
sound. Run (Joseph Simmons) and DMC (Darryl McDaniels)
were the declamatory voices of the band, but they
always described Run-DMC as an equal partnership
between the three of them.
On stage, Mr. Mizell's pinpoint juggling of beats
and records made Run-DMC one of the rap's most
exciting live acts.
When a drumbeat on a vinyl record is scratched back
and forth under a needle, it makes a sort of
percussive swishing sound. The first scratches the
average pop music fan ever heard were Mr.
Mizell's, said Bill Adler, author of
"Tougher than Leather: The Rise of Run-DMC."
"The true sound of hip-hop made its way to
America through Run-DMC's records," Mr.
Adler said, "and Jay could take a lot of credit
for that."
Run-DMC notched rap's first platinum album,
"Raising Hell," in 1986 and the biggest hit
from that record, a remake of Aerosmith's
hard-rock anthem "Walk This Way," was the
first hugely successful marriage of rap and rock,
styles that many had e believed were antithetical.
Today, they are deeply intertwined.
For most of its history, rap has been criticized for
promoting violence, and several rappers who sang the
praises of the gangster life, including Tupac Shakur
and the Notorious B.I.G., were murdered. But Run-DMC
and Jam Master Jay, all middle-class natives of
Hollis, Queens, a mile or so from where Mr. Mizell was
shot, created rap with a social conscience, urging
listeners (between boasts) to stay in school, fight
prejudice and respect one another.
Mr. Mizell himself was a subject of many of the
band's rhymes. In the song "Jam Master
Jay" from the band's first record, they
rapped, " `Behind the turntables is where he
stands / Then there is the movement of his hands / So
when asked who's the best, y'all should say:
/ `Run-DMC and Jam Master Jay' "
When Run-DMC broke up temporarily in the late
1980's, Mr. Mizell started his own label, Jam
Master Jay Records, which signed the highly successful
group Onyx.
Run-DMC had gotten back together and had just finished
a tour with Aerosmith and Kid Rock. Ms. Miller, the
publicist, said that Mr. Mizell and Mr. McDaniels had
been scheduled to perform tonight in Washington at a
Washington Wizards basketball game. Mr. McDaniels told
MTV News over the summer that the band was planning a
new record and tour to mark its 20th anniversary.
As the police pulled away from the scene last night,
leaving only fans and loved ones, a 27-year-old
aspiring rapper named Dezo Chase tried to make sense
of what had happened.
"I rhyme myself because of Run-DMC," he
said. "I grew up on Run-DMC. A part of our
history is gone. This was hip-hop history and they
took it away tonight."
An S.U.V. slowly drove by, blasting the song "Jam
Master Jay." "We can either come out here
and celebrate the violence and the death or we can
celebrate the memory of the music," Mr. Chase
said. "The music is timeless."