Black Mafia Dope Got Jam Master Jay Shot

Los Angeles 1995- Christmas season. A series of events that were set in motion that this Christmas season- 27 years later- have become the ghost of Christmas Past for Terry Flenory aka Southwest T the Black Mafia Family brother who was released back home to Detroit many years early from his 30 year prison sentence due to the C-19 events we are just coming out of. As Dopeman rap was just starting its long ascent from sub-genre to current dominance, one of the original hip-hop icons was in town looking to get in the actual dope game- a $500,000 IRS bill being his most pressing financial problem. His name was Jason Mizell but we knew and loved him as Jam Master Jay- not just the Deejay but the one-time manager of RUN-DMC. P Jay had borrowed 30 G’s from a guy named Curtis “Scoon”. - a former dealer from Queens who had been in the mix with the Supreme Team and Lorenzo “Fat Cat” Nichols. You may remember Scoon’s name and face from his work as a producer on American Gangster for BET…and as the original prime suspect in the Jam Master’s homicide on Devil’s Night 2002. So it’s December of ‘95 and Jay touches down in Gangland LA with Scoon and one of the manager’s of the record label he had started- Onyx was Jay and the label’s first success and he would famously go on to discover 50 Cent. “Jay said he knew somebody in L.A., and he was going to be in Cali anyway on business, so we met up there,” Scoon told journalist Frank Owen. Jay’s connect was missing in action once they hit L.A- but he had a backup connect in Compton- This was Compton in ‘94 /95, the infamous Compton which was at the very top of the list for murder rates in the entire country- and the Jason the deejay, raised in the black suburbia of Hollis, Queens got stuck up for Scoon’s 30 G’s AND the jewelry he was wearing.