Jam Master JayKnown to millions of music fan by his stage name, Jam Master Jay, Jason Mizell became an influential musician and DJ during the 1980’s as a member of Run D.M.C., one of the biggest groups to emerge from the American hip hop scene.
After his career waned during the late 1980’s, Mizell began his own record company, signing rapper 50 Cent, among others. In late 2002, a gunman shot and killed Mizell in his recording studio. The cause of death has never been adequately explained.
Born in Brooklyn, New York City, as one of three children to Jesse Mizell and Connie, Jason William Mizell held musical aspirations from a young age, and began playing trumpet at the age of three. He also performed at his local church and with various bands.
After his parents moved the family in 1975 to Hollis, Queens, New York City, he soon discovered turntablism at the age of ten-years-old. Three years later he started DJing. Although he was known as a good kid, he soon dabbled in criminality.
Mizell become involved with a teenaged gang and started committing residential burglaries. This foray into crime did not last long, and he was frightened after an encounter with an armed security guard. In his later life, he was known for discouraging his friends and family members from engaging in criminal activities.
When the family moved briefly to Atlantic City, New Jersey, Mizell met turntablism pioneer DJ Def Lou Hauck, who taught him how to crossfade, a technique in sound editing, whereby the sound is made to appear or be heard gradually as another disappears or becomes silent.
Owing to his musical experience he caught on quickly, and after a year of DJing, Mizell was confident enought to play before a crowd of people. During his time attending Andrew Jackson High School in New York City’s Queens, he began calling himself Jazzy Jase.
As Jazzy Jase, Mizell started playing at parks, then later at bars. When he started to get noticed, he threw small parties around the area. While still learning, he received a pair of Technics 1200’s, using them to improve his skills by using the headphones to practice at night when he was meant to be sleeping.
Joseph “Run” Simmons and Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels often hung around the Two-Fifths Park in Hollis in the late-1970s, hoping to rap for the local DJs who performed and competed there. One of the most popular to frequent there was Jason Mizell.
Eventually, Simmons and McDaniels rapped in front of Mizell at the park, and the three became friends. The duo began writing together, and with the assistance of Simmons elder brother Russell, they recorded their first single.
Called “Street Kid,” it went unnoticed, however despite the single’s failure, their enthusiasm for hip hop was growing. In 1982, Mizell joined them just after they graduated from high school and agreed to DJ for them because in his own he words he “just wanted to be part of the band.”
Together they formed the hip hop band Run D.M.C. Known for his flashy wardrobe and b-boy attitude, Mizell began using the name Jam Master Funk, but was known mostly as Jam Master Jay. After group signed with Profile Records, and released their debut single “It’s Like That/Sucker MCs”, in late-1983.
The single did well, and emboldened by their success they released their eponymous debut album Run-D.M.C. in 1984. Hit singles such as “Jam-Master Jay” and “Hard Times” proved that the group could continue to produce successful hits.
The groups landmark single “Rock Box” went on to become a cornerstone of the group’s sound, fusing raw hip hop and hard rock, a ground-breaking sound that would become a cornerstone of the group, paving the way for the rap rock subgenre movement of the 1990s.
Unlike the more old school rappers, who often tended to dress flashy, the members of Run D.M.C. discarded this in favor of a more street sense of style, that incorporated such fashion staples as leather jackets, Kangol hats, Cazal glasses, and unlaced Adidas shoes.
This look had been heavily influenced by Mizell’s own personal style. Run would later say about Mizell’s b-boy style, “There were guys that wore hats like those and sneakers with no shoestrings. It was a very street thing to wear, extremely rough.”
“They couldn’t wear shoelaces in jail and we took it as a fashion statement. The reason they couldn’t have shoelaces in jail was that they might hang themselves. That’s why DMC says ‘My Adidas only bring good news and they are not used as felon shoes.'” It was this look and style of the street that defined hip hop fashion for the next 25 years.
The group released their second album King of Rock in 1985, that built on the success of their first, and in 1986, their third album, titled Raising Hell, became the group’s most successful album and one of the best-selling rap albums of all-time.
For the album Raising Hell, Mizell played keyboards, bass, and live drums in addition to his turntable work. The global phenomenon that was hip hop’s golden age is often credited to the success of Raising Hell, which saw rap music become more visible and viable to a commercial audience.
In between appearing in movies, the group’s status waned somewhat during the 1990’s, especially after the release of their album Back From Hell. In 1989, Mizell established Jam Master Jay Records. The label is best known for signing 50 Cent and Onyx, and it occupied most of Jam Master Jay’s time leading up to his untimely death.
On October 30, 2002, Jam Master Jay was in his recording studio on Merrick Boulevard in Jamaica, Queens, with 25-year-old Urieco Rincon. At around 7:30pm, two gunmen entered the building and fatally shot 37-year-old Mizell. Rincon was shot in the ankle and survived.
Following his death, Mizell’s friends and fans set up a memorial outside the studio with Adidas sneakers, Run D.M.C. albums, and flowers. Fellow artists expressed grief for the death of Mizell, a great loss to the hip hop community who had influenced others.
Jason William Mizell aka Jam Master Jay was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum in Hartsdale, New York. In the aftermath of his death, the remaining members of the group announced the official disbanding of Run D.M.C. Meanwhile the police investigation explored all avenues, including that his death might be the result of a hip hop feud.
By 2003, investigators were looking into the involvement of Kenneth “Supreme” McGriff, a convicted drug dealer and long-time friend of Murder Inc. Records founders Irving “Irv Gotti” Lorenzo and his older brother Christopher.
It was suspected McGriff had targeted Mizell because the DJ had defied an industry blacklist of rapper 50 Cent that was imposed because of “Ghetto Qu’ran”, a song 50 Cent wrote about McGriff’s drug history.
Later that same year, in December 2003, an article was published by Playboy magazine written by investigative journalist Frank Owen. Entitled, “The Last Days of Jam Master Jay”, it gave the reason for the murder as a drug deal gone bad.
In his investigation, Owen had uncovered evidence Mizell, who normally shunned any type of crime as an adult, had turned to cocaine distribution to pay mounting bills. The reason for this was that Mizell had experienced financial difficulties.
Substantial debts were owed by Mizell to the Internal Revenue Service, among others, after his music career stalled in the late 1990s. Owen found Mizell had travelled to Washington, D.C., on July 31, 2002, to obtain 10 kilograms (22 lb) of cocaine valued at about a quarter-million dollars from a trafficker known as “Uncle”.
He reportedly agreed to pay for the drugs within a week, but failed to repay Uncle, who allegedly arranged to have Mizell murdered. Several years later in April 2007, federal prosecutors revealed a suspect in the case.
Ronald Washington was named as an accomplice in the murder. Washington was also believed to be a suspect in the 1995 murder of Randy “Stretch” Walker, a former close associate of rapper Tupac Shakur, who was also murdered.
Court papers field by prosecutors describe how Washington allegedly “pointed his gun at those present in the studio, ordered them to get on the ground and provided cover for his associate to shoot and kill Jason Mizell.” Despite this, Washington was not convicted.
In December 2018, streaming service Netflix released the documentary ReMastered: Who Killed Jam Master Jay?, the third episode of Netflix’s ReMastered music documentary series, which sought to investigate the circumstances of his murder.
Several of the Mizell’s family members, friends and acquaintances were interviewed and shared theories regarding the suspects in his death. Although the documentary explores several lines of inquiry, it does not settle on a satisfactory conclusion regarding who was responsible for the crime.
That same year, Jam Master Jay’s murder featured on the series Marcia Clark Investigates The First 48 on A&E, where the former prosecutor examined several scenarios and suspects for the murder. During the show, she spoke with former Run DMC road manager Darren “Big D” Jordan, who denied allegations of involvement made against him by Ronald Washington.
Clark also interviewed journalist Frank Owen, who reiterated his belief from his 2003 article about who was responsible, stating he did not know who pulled the trigger in the Mizell murder but believed it was orchestrated by Mizell’s close friend Ronald Washington.
The murder of Jam Master Jay remained unsolved until August 2020, when Ronald Washington was finally arrested along with an accomplice, named Karl Jordan Jr. Both were indicted for the murder of Mizell that same year.
According to prosecutors, at the time of his death, Mizell had recently acquired 10 kilograms (22 lb) of cocaine from a distributor based in Maryland. Mizell, Washington, and Jordan had an agreement to sell the cocaine on consignment, but Mizell cut the two men out after a dispute.
Investigators considered Washington a suspect very early in the investigation, and Jordan had been charged in August 2003 with attempted murder after shooting Mizell’s nephew, Rodney Jones, in the leg.
In the face of this indictment, Washington and Jordan Jr. pleaded not guilty. Federal prosecutors announced in November 2021 that they would not seek the death penalty, but would instead want terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Almost a year later in October 2022, it was announced the trial was scheduled to begin on February 20, 2023. Prosecutors have said that Karl Jordan Jr. admitted to the murder of Jason Mizell in a conversation.
The legacy of Jam Master Jay and his influence on music cannot be underestimated. A year after his death, Run D.M.C. was ranked by Rolling Stone at number 48 in its list of 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time, while in 2009, they became the second Hip Hop group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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