Jam Master Jay
In 1984, on their first album, Run-DMC cut a track called
"Jam Master Jay" a track that now sounds like a gentle relic
from an age that was already passing: "J-A-Y are the letters of his
name/ Cuttin' and scratchin' are the aspects of his game/ So check out
the Master as he cuts these jams/ And look at us with the mikes in our
hands." This was back when DJs and not rappers were the true stars
of rap, competing in fierce displays of skill on the turntables in public
parks and block parties in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan.
In black velour hats, black leather jackets, plain hooded sweatshirts,
and Adidas sneakers, Jay, Joe "Run" Simmons, and Darryl "DMC"
McDaniels stood out in purple disco jumpsuits. But what really made Run-DMC
special was Jam Master Jay: Jason Mizell, the presiding stylistic and
musical genius who helped to invent rap's defining look and sound for
the '80s, and became everybody's favorite DJ.
In the early 80's, hip-hop, which had started in the 1970's as the expression
of poor and working-class black youth in the South Bronx, relocated to
middle-class Queens. Run-DMC. was the standard bearer for this second
wave of hip-hop, maintaining the music's minimalist "street"
sound but writing their own music and raising the standard for complex
wordplay in lyrics delivered at high speed, internal rhymes and puns all
over the place. The pair of vocalists swap parts in mid-sentence and even
mid-word, often to dazzling effect. And while their sense of humor was
always evident, they weren't self-parodying clowns like the Sugarhill
Gang and some other early rappers. Although Grandmaster Flash and the
Sugarhill Gang had released hit rap singles years before, Run-DMC was
the first rap act to hit the album charts, the first rap act to release
a CD, and they really launched rap and hip-hop into the public consciousness.
However the band had its ups and downs through out the 80's and into the 90's they stayed together. Run DMC was one for all and all for one. That is why in Oct. 2002 on that cold night inside a recording studio, after someone had taken the life from the great Jam Master Jay, the next week the surviving members of RUN DMC, Darryl and Joe, said at press conference that without Jay they will no longer play. And since that day that rocked the hip hop world, they have been true to their partner.
Jam Master Jays death goes down like many others before him as unsolved, just like icons Biggie and Tupac. The rumors will always be around of what could have happened that night but until the truth comes out, the hip hop world will truly miss Jam Master Jay. Put your Jay up...
NEXT : PART 2 - RunDMC and the Beastie
Boys
Author: Jennifer Adams