Raising Hell

by Ronin Ro

  It was a shame that it ended like this, many people felt. “And Steven Tyler—I just saw it on VH1—said, ‘We were begging them,’” Doctor Dre noted. “He said, ‘What is it? Do you need more money? Is it the tour bus? Whatever you guys want, I want you on this tour.’ I don’t know why they left. That doesn’t make sense. It’s like, you’re on the road, you made money, your ego got involved, and you said, ‘I’m not as big as Aerosmith.’ But don’t worry about being as big as Aerosmith; just go, perform, and have fun!”

  Chapter 30

  Loss and Remembrance

  They were off the Aerosmith tour, but Run had agreed to perform with them at the halftime show of a Washington Wizards basketball game, so in his New Jersey home D packed for the trip. He’d have to catch a flight the next morning. It was October 30, 2002. In the background the TV was on, tuned to the news. He heard an announcement for a special report and turned toward the screen. “Rap pioneer Jason Mizell of rap group Run-D.M.C. has been shot,” the anchorperson said.

  D.M.C. stopped packing. Nah, that ain’t true, he thought. Maybe somebody got it twisted, like in late 1986, when someone crashed into Jay’s new car, Jay broke his leg, and rumors claimed Jay had been shot and killed. Here we go again, D thought; but still, he began channel surfing. And more newscasts said Jay was not only shot, he was dead. D stared at the screen in abject disbelief. It couldn’t be. Seeing footage of Jay’s studio, where they had recorded Crown Royal, he figured, “Oh, they’re saying that because it’s Jay’s studio. It’s not gonna be Jay and it’s gonna be all good.”

  Then his cell phone rang—friends calling to say Jay had been killed in the studio. D still didn’t believe it. There might be some mistake. He told his family he was heading out there to see what was up, ran to his truck, and drove to Queens. It was raining and cold, and on Merrick Boulevard, people stood around—police officers, Lyor Cohen, DJ Ed Lover. Fans were placing Adidas sneakers, album covers, Run-D.M.C. posters, candles, and godfather hats at a shrine. Someone had even hung a sign on a fence: “Another Brother Lost to Violence.” But D.M.C. didn’t believe Jay was dead until he saw Chuck D of Public Enemy in tears.

  Chuck had been watching TV at home in nearby Long Island when his friend Kyle Jason downstairs yelled, “Oh, shit, turn on the television!” Chuck heard the name Run-D.M.C. and thought, What the hell happened? Downstairs he watched a news report about Jam Master Jay’s murder. “At first I was like sitting there, talking with Kyle and then all of a sudden I just broke out, man. I was like, Yo. That shit hit me on a delay. Like ‘Jay got killed.’ I looked at it on the TV like it was somebody else and it sat in me like, this was, this was, my friend. And then I kind of like, you know…it was a crying type of thing going on. I was like, Yo. That emotion just kind of hit me. And Kyle and me went right on over to Queens. I saw Ed Lover. I saw Big D and um, it was just, it was not good. It was not a good feeling. It was right across the street…Jay’s studio was right across the street from Encore, the old Encore, which was the place my friend Butch Cassidy first heard Run-D.M.C.’s first 12-inch. That’s where Jay’s studio was, right at the Jamaica Bus Terminal. And I was like, ‘What the fuck.’”

  Run was sitting onstage at Zoë Ministries during a service when Erik Blam beeped him. Then the rap duo EPMD’s DJ Scratch. Even before returning the pages, Run knew something was wrong.

  The next day, Halloween, D.M.C. traveled to Jay’s modest three-story house in Queens. Hurricane was already there. He had flown in from his home down south after someone called and told his wife the news. “I was in my kitchen; I don’t remember what I was doing. I remember when she said it to me. It didn’t register. I wouldn’t believe it.” Now D.M.C. and Hurricane were in Jay’s home. “I don’t remember seeing Run,” said Hurricane. “He never came by. It was a sad day basically, a lot of grieving.”

  Hours after Jay’s death, Randy and Randy’s bandmate in Rusty Waters, Jay’s nephew Boe, were supposedly rehearsing for a promotional tour. The police reportedly wanted to speak with both of them, but a detective told Jay’s family that they were hard to reach, and that everyone around the studio seemed to be offering contradictory accounts of what had happened. “They were being uncooperative,” someone told reporter Frank Owen of Playboy magazine. “Each story Lydia told was different.” People in Hollis were also gossiping about Randy Allen, claiming he had relocated Lydia to Las Vegas and was spreading false rumors that Jay had been shot because his wife was involved with a legendary drug lord. Hurricane couldn’t believe his ears. “Terri is a straight-up lady, a good mother and an excellent wife,” he said of Jay’s widow.

  To their fans, Run-D.M.C. was a wholesome group that had finished a big tour and was currently writing an album for Def Jam. But industry people who knew them blathered about how Run had disbanded the group on the tour bus. “And a couple of days after that Jay got killed,” said a close friend. “Jay wasn’t even supposed to be home yet. That’s how that went down: Run thinking about no one but himself.”

  Reporters wanted a statement, so publicist Tracy Miller—now representing only D—got a few quotes from D.M.C. and e-mailed reporters instead of putting D on the phone with them. “As far as Joe, he had been his own person, so I don’t know what he was granting or doing.” Miller then wrote an obituary for the funeral program. “It was very surreal,” she explained. The media kept calling. Cable news channel MSNBC and NBC’s high-rated Today show wanted her to appear on television. The next morning, one program sent a car to her home, but she didn’t go. She granted only one telephone interview. “I thought it was important for people to realize the kind of person Jason was.” But she didn’t go on TV. “What am I gonna do?” she thought. “What am I gonna say? I’m just gonna sit there and cry.” Instead, she kept planning for the funeral, composing a “security list” similar to one for a show, with passes granting certain mourners special access in the funeral home. “But it was, you know, for Jay, and he’s dead. It was bizarre.”

  She took a call from Kid Rock, who offered to provide transportation if any of Jay’s relatives needed to fly to New York and couldn’t afford to travel. She thought that was cool, since “so many other people just used it as another event to get some publicity.”

  On the morning of November 4, 2002, Run arrived at the J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home in Jamaica, Queens, with wife, Justine. Three hundred people—many in unlaced Adidas and godfather hats—waited outside in the rain. Radios in passing cars blared “My Adidas” and “Peter Piper.” D.M.C., his wife, Zuri, and Tracy Miller arrived from New Jersey in a limousine and walked past hundreds of cameramen, reporters, and fans standing behind metal gates.

  Inside, D saw Jay’s body in an open coffin. Someone had dressed Jay in his “Rock Box” outfit (the black leather suit, shell-toed Adidas sneakers, hat, and thick gold chain). D saw fans reach Jay’s coffin, and burst into tears when they saw him in his outfit.

  He also saw people he hadn’t seen in ages: Kurtis Blow, Doug E. Fresh, Bill Stephney, even Rod Hui, engineer on their early records. Hurricane, Runny Ray, Big D Jordan, and more of Jay’s friends in the Hollis Crew honored him by wearing their own black leather suits, hats, and unlaced Adidas.

  D saw a huge floral arrangement from L.L. Cool J that had the word “Student” written on it and red roses, and Ad Rock and MCA of the Beastie Boys standing against a wall with numb facial expressions. “It was very strange,” said Ad Rock. “It seemed like everybody was divided. They were different people. Jay was different from [Run and D]. And everybody knew that. Everybody looked to Jay to see what was right. I knew that from the beginning when I met those dudes. If you wanted to know what was what, Jay knew what was what. He was the cool one in the group.”

  Doc arrived, and heard Run and D speaking with Russell and Lyor Cohen about recording a tribute to JMJ, but Doc felt it was in poor taste. “After a while I’m hearing these clowns, especially D, talk about, ‘Oh, we should do a record,’” said Doc. “They were discussing business. Trying
to make money,” Doc claimed. “They’re talking about records and how this can work and I’m looking at these motherfuckers like, ‘Y’all have the nerve to talk about how y’all can fucking sell records right now? I can’t fuck with you cats.’ I mean you at the man’s funeral. The body is right in front of you. And all you are talking about is an opportunity to sell records.”

  At the pulpit, the Reverend Dr. Floyd H. Flake addressed an audience that included producer Jermaine Dupri, Def Jam artist Foxy Brown, A Tribe Called Quest, Whodini, TV personality Big Tigga, Chuck D, journalist Harry Allen, Congressman Gregory Meeks, Russell and his wife, Kimora, Def Jam president Kevin Liles, members of the Fearless Four, Hurricane, music executive Bill Stephney, and Doctor Dre, who said, “I felt empty about everything.”

  Jay’s widow, Terri, sat near their three sons; Jay’s mother, Connie; Jay’s brother Marvin; Jay’s sister Bonita Jones; and a few cousins who are preachers. Randy Allen was also there, but it wasn’t visibly obvious to Hurricane that Randy was grieving.

  “He didn’t live a long life,” the reverend told the gathering. “But he lived well by the people whose lives he touched. We are here to celebrate his life.” A gospel singer sang two songs, and then the Reverend Stanley Brown said a few words.

  D.M.C. got up there with a few pieces of paper. “Jam Master Jay was not a thug,” he said, voice breaking. “He was the personification of hip-hop.” Fighting back tears, he then led the crowd through his classic verse from “Jam Master Jay”: “Jam Master Jay, that is his name / And all wild DJs he will tame / 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 / ‘Jason Mizell, Jam Master Jay!’”

  Run led the crowd through the Prayer of Comfort. “Jason did what he was supposed to do,” Run added. “He helped to create this hip-hop nation. Jason walked in grace, in style, and with class. I didn’t know if I should say this, but I believe this is Jason’s biggest hit ever: all the support that has come in, all the people that have cried out across the world. I told my brother, I told Lyor and a couple of people. I don’t know if anybody understood it. I believe this is the biggest hit ever. This is the most press that he’s ever got.”

  During the funeral, Run and D sat next to each other in numb disbelief. “Joe, Jay’s dead for real,” D said.

  “No he ain’t, D. He’s really dead? He’s not on a plane or playing PlayStation? Jay’s dead?”

  Many mourners in the church knew about Run leaving the group. “But I understand why they were sitting together,” said Ad Rock. “Because it was Run-D.M.C. They had to sit together. And both were like, ‘He’s where he needs to be.’ Saying weird things. ‘He’s where he needs to be. He did his thing. This is God’s plan.’ But you know, whatever. We all believe what we want to believe. When our friend gets killed we’re all in shock and say things we don’t really fully understand in terms of how it appears to people, what it means and all of that.”

  Reporters who had infiltrated the funeral shoved microphones into Run’s and D’s faces. D kept his answers brief, but Nelson George, an older black writer who had coauthored Russell’s autobiography, Life and Def, wrote, “At first their good cheer was disturbing. How could two people who’d been friends with Mizell since childhood be so happy at his [funeral]?”

  After the ceremony, Jay’s friends in the Hollis Crew carried his coffin down the church steps and toward the white hearse that would convey it to Ferncliff Cemetery in tree-lined Hartsdale, New York. After the burial, D joined his wife and Tracy Miller in a limo and “just went back home again,” said Miller.

  November 6, a windswept Wednesday morning, D.M.C. arrived at the Rihga Royal Hotel in midtown Manhattan for a press conference. Russell would be announcing a new fund to pay Jay’s tax debts, buy Jay’s $250,000 home in Hollis, and help his wife and three kids. Many celebrities who attended the funeral—Sean Combs, rapper Busta Rhymes, the Beasties, Foxy Brown, Chuck D, Doug E. Fresh, Russell’s friend Andre Harrell, and others—sat in the Majestic East Room, listening to Russell tell the crowd and media that L.L. had donated $50,000, and that Eminem, Jay-Z, Aerosmith, Kid Rock, Lyor, Interscope Records, BET, The Source, XXL, Redman, Method Man, Busta, and West Coast Dr. Dre had also made contributions.

  In addition to buying Jay’s house and establishing college funds for his children, Russell explained, $50,000 of the money would go to anyone providing information leading to the arrest of the person or persons who had murdered Jay. In the audience, many rap artists felt it was weird that Russell, a multimillionaire who had earned an estimated $100 million from selling Def Jam, was asking others to help pay Jay’s debts. “Come on!” said producer Hank Shocklee. “A ‘fund-raiser’ for Jay? It’s ludicrous.” Even so, people worth $400 million wrote checks for $10,000 and saw reporters describe the contributions in newspaper articles.

  Onstage, at the podium, Run told mourners, “The thing that I recognize is that we were just on tour with Aerosmith and Kid Rock and we can’t perform anymore. Nobody wants to see Run and D.M.C. without Jay. Jay was definitely one-third of the group. People might see us on television and be wondering if Jay was a significant part of the group. Yes, he was.

  “We split this money three ways,” he added.

  By his side, D.M.C. nodded his head.

  “We’re not able to go back out in December with Kid Rock and Aerosmith,” Run continued. “We had an endorsement deal with Dr Pepper. We can’t make those commercials now. Run-D.M.C. is officially retired.”

  D was stunned. “I remember D’s face looking like, lost,” said Hurricane. “He didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

  Run hadn’t told him he would be retiring the group, D claimed. “Run needed a way out,” D said. “He couldn’t get out and Jay’s death was the perfect way out. I don’t mean to say it like that but that was real. He probably looked at it as God giving him his way out. He doesn’t look like the bad guy, because Jay was murdered. That’s how I feel. You wanted out but couldn’t get out. He was on his way out, but this solidified it.”

  Run kept speaking to the audience. “I can’t get out in front of my fans with a new DJ. Some rock bands can replace the drummer. People say that to me: ‘Are you the original three members?’ I say, ‘I don’t know any other way but to be the three original members.’ That’s all I can say—we’re retired. Does anybody have a job out there?”

  Run stepped aside. “My intention was to retire the group in class,” Run explained. “Bad enough we were still running around years later when our career wasn’t at its highest point. I mean it was good. We were still good at shows. That’s all I can say.”

  After the announcement, D.M.C. left the stage. Many of D’s friends felt it was a lousy thing Run had just done to him. “D didn’t know,” said Tracy Miller. “We were all shocked and disgusted by that. He [D] was embarrassed, he was angry, but at the same time it was par for the course. It just confirmed everything in D’s head that he had wanted to deny about Joe for the past year or two.”

  Many reporters saw the retirement as a poignant demonstration of unity and brotherhood. Reporters dutifully mentioned the group’s many career landmarks and focused on their early works, describing Run and D as two friends with a dream who had somehow managed to unite genres and races during the 1980s. Many in the audience remembered when Run-D.M.C. really was the group described in these articles. “And now years later to see that it is just about the money, buying Rolls-Royces, having Rolex watches, pimping around,” said Doctor Dre. “Everything you said you hated about this business you became.”

  My reaction was that these are all crazy people,” said Ad Rock. “But it’s also, in a weird way, like a weird family reunion. That’s why I didn’t get on the mike and say anything. Because ‘Big Tigga’ and Busta were saying, ‘I donate $50,000 to…’ I don’t even know what they were donating money to.”

  Many attendees assumed this conference would announce a bigger reward for whoever
could lead cops to Jay’s killer. But Russell and other people controlled the event and said they wanted to raise money for Jay’s mortgage and to pay Jay’s tax debt of about $230,000. Chuck D finally got onstage. “I was pissed off ’cause they were talking about a fund-raiser,” Chuck explained. “And as much as Russell and Lyor had earned from the Def Jam situation, how could you not take care of Jason’s arrears? I just thought that was stupid.”

  At the podium, Chuck discussed how rappers needed to be more conscientious and less greedy. “I don’t live in penthouses, suites, $300 hotel rooms. I’m in the communities from here to across the Pacific, and see people that only listen to and watch rappers. It’s no reason for us to not be men and women. Yes, we do control the climate. Understand we have the ears of the people. We have to be men and women. I don’t want to ruin the atmosphere, but Run, Jay, and D.M.C. made it possible for everybody.”

  Brushing him aside, Run told the crowd, “Rap is indifferent. It’s about whose hands it is in. This shooting, this murder, has nothing to do with rap music. It has to do with an angry, sick mind.”

  Hurricane was in tears when he and Chuck D left the stage. Chuck was furious. In an out-of-view room, the usually reserved and dignified Chuck punched walls. Sean “P-Diddy” Combs witnessed Chuck’s anger and tried to tell Chuck, “It’s not about this.”

  But Chuck replied, “Come on. This is bullshit. How the fuck you gonna have a fund-raiser when motherfuckers are publicly laden in the hundreds of millions of dollars? And you’re gonna have a fund-raiser to get Jay’s house out of hock? For about $200,000? Get the fuck out of here! That shit is stupid.”

  Chuck D and many others felt that Russell Simmons and Lyor Cohen should simply have written a check and made a quick and anonymous donation to Jam Master Jay’s young widow, Terri Mizell. “The only reason I didn’t make a fucking mess out of it was because it was something not to make a mess out of,” Chuck said. “It was out of respect to Run, and D. I mean, fuck it. You know?”