Run-DMC’s McDaniels On Aftermath Of Jam Master Jay Murder
Darryl McDaniels, the DMC of Run-DMC, says that the still-unsolved shooting death of the group’s Jam Master Jay is representative of the ongoing wave of violence affecting inner cities like New York, and he declines to fault the New York City Police Department.
When asked to comment on the fact that police have still not named any suspects in the October 2002 murder of the pioneering rap group’s deejay, a hoarse McDaniels said: “There’s a lot of murders that go down in the ‘hood, so Jam Master Jay is just one amongst thousands of people that we know whose murders are unsolved, and he represents a problem in society.”
McDaniels went on to warn members of the hip-hop community that more must be done to stem the tide of violence within their own communities and within the industry. “You’ll see a lot of artists on TV that wait ’til somebody dies and then they’ll show up and have a big benefit, they’ll do a record, you know, in the memory of the person, and then we all go back to living the same way,” DMC said. “I think it takes the artist’s heart being more vocal and saying something, instead of ‘I’m just representing the ‘hood, you know what I’m saying.’ They gotta really talk about what’s going down.”
Jam Master Jay, whose real name was Jason Mizell, was shot and killed October 30 at a recording studio on Merrick Boulevard in the Jamaica section of Queens. He was 37.
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