R.I.P Jam Master Jay (1965-2002):

You’ve probably heard it already but the legendary hiphop D.J. and producer Jam Master Jay of Run D.M.C was murdered Wednesday night while taking a break from recording at a studio in Queens. Apparently Jay (real name Jason Mizell) was relaxing and playing video games when a masked man entered the studio and opened fire. Jay was shot once in the heart and died almost instantly. He was 37 and left behind a wife and three children.

What the Beatles were to rock n’ roll, Run D.M.C was to hiphop, not only bringing the music to audience whose size no one had quite imagined but elevating it artisically as well. Much up hiphop until Run D.M.C’s breakthough single “It’s Like That” were rap vocals laid over synthesized disco beats. Run D.M.C pioneered the use of rap over hard rock samples and heavy electric guitar, paving the way to their historic 1986 collaboration with Aerosmith, “Walk this Way.”

I first heard Run D.M.C in 1985 when half the kids in my 6th grade class were singing “King of Rock” in the hallways. That spring, Chike McCleod, the coolest kid of all, showed up to school wearing a Run D.M.C T-shirt. A half-dozen more followed.

That spring made me a hiphop fan which I continue, proudly, to be to this day.

Sadly, much of the press thus far has focused on what a peaceful man Jay was, a social activist who avoided the gangsta posturing of some hiphop stars, and shouldn’t have met such a violent end. The truth is, none of us should die this way but we have a notion in this society that hiphop and its listeners are a culture soaked in violence. Just last week, an article in USA Today tried lamely to link the Washington D.C. sniper suspect to a separatist hiphop act as if rapists, murders and thieves have not drawn inspiration from rock n’ roll, country and classical music (they all have).

I hope we recognize the subtle racism embued in feeling like we have to justify that Jam Master Jay wasn’t a violent man. Most hip-hop performers, producers and consumers are not violent people. But if we can look at the deaths of Jay, Notorious B.I.G, Tupac Shakur, DJ Scott La Rock and others as endemic to the culture of hiphop rather than tragic anomolies, we can somehow explain it away as a freak subculture of young black men. The truth is hiphop is now a worldwide cultural phenomenon, with African-Americans influencing the way young people across the globe dress, dance, and communicate. The significance of that is both enormous and as American as jazz, baseball and apple pie.

Hiphop is our American culture now as much so as the sitcom. Get used to it. It’s not going away.

• Category: music