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Long Live a King

A look inside the late, great Jam Master Jay's viewing.

by Gregory M. Guity | 2002.11.27

"Everyone--you have just boarded the Kumba Train!"

Not the first time I've seen this man on 42nd Street's cross-town Shuttle, but it is for Karen, six and a half months my beloved. From Grand Central to Times Square, he beats the African drum between his legs for this packed car, the commuter's nightmare, the froteur's dream. As he drums, and makes clear his purpose--to entertain and invigorate our wearied souls--he makes sure to extend a few invitations. "Clap your hands," he says. "Stomp your feet, and if you've enjoyed the Kumba Train tonight, feel free to leave a dime, a nickel or a quarterâ?” Not that he'd frown on a few bills, of course. I give him a dollar and we leave the Kumba Train, en route for the tunnels connecting Times Square to Port Authority.

As we await the E train this time, we find a man, no doubt in his sixties, playing some good old, 180-proof Mississippi Delta blues. I find myself wishing I knew the words so I could sing along, like the guy seated on a flight of steps leading back towards the surface. This, Karen enjoys even more; if only for the older man in a ratty coat and limp, brown skullcap, nodding and tapping along. "If the hat weren't hanging off to the side like that, then it just wouldn't be as cool," she says to me. Seated on the E train moments later, I realize that, for all intents and purposes, we are traveling through a veritable timeline of Black music. Between the subway and ten minutes on a Q4 bus, our next stop is 180th Street and Linden Boulevard, Queens.

The line to the J. Foster Phillips Funeral Home is two blocks long in opposite directions, with only a half hour left. T-minus thirty minutes, and no one is going anywhere. Hundreds of people braving the cold, some having waited all day to catch a glimpse. And only a glimpse is expected, too; as they move the lines along, police officers tell the crowd that time permitting, we will have to keep moving into the building, into the room and then right back out into the street. And so we wait in the cold, in a neighborhood that, thanks to a large NYPD spotlight, has seen the best nighttime lighting in an undoubtedly long time. I would think, I tell Karen later, that St. Albans should only be so well-lit under normal circumstances.But then, I suppose, if the city provided adequate lighting to one suspect neighborhood in dire need of it, they'd have to do it for all of them. Living on the upper west side as I have the last eleven years, I guess I've been spoiled.

"I think that's Ed and Dre," I say to Karen. Off to the left of the line, I see Power 105.1's Doctor Dre with friends, heading in the direction from where we'd come. By the time they pass, I realize that I was wrong about Ed Lover, but that was indeed Dre. I almost want to step out of the line and go after them. I wanted to tell Dre to pass along one thing to anyone and everyone he sees back at the station, or any one of his colleagues in Hip Hop: don't let anyone say that the man we're all here in tribute to "passed away." Stroke victims "pass away." This man was murdered. But by the time I was convinced it was him, the opportunity was gone.

Ten minutes pass, and we are moving surprisingly fast. As we move forward a few feet here, a few yards there, Karen and I listen to the conversations around us-two men in front of us discuss their fluctuating fortunes in the search for gainful employment. A woman sneezes, and Karen is there with Kleenex. She gets thanks and a compliment on her bag in return. I find myself wishing I'd been born a bit sooner. I was only six, singing “You Talk Too Much” with my P.S. 123 school chums Karim and Lester. It would have been nice to have seen him, them in concert. They couldn't have played “King of Rock” enough times for my liking, to be sure. We make due with one of Karen's favorites, though. A black car with tinted windows and shining hubcaps is playing it loud enough so that we can all catch it: "Not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good!" She rubs my hands in time with the 8 bars of record scratches that follow. "There it is." She loves that cowbell. Right around then, to quiet, grateful applause, a policeman announces that the family has consented to extend the viewing for one more hour.

"They did him up, yo!" An excited girl with maroon, streaked hair and a tanned leather outfit says to someone in the crowd. We all can hear as she rattles off details-how he looks, the room; as they say, 'this, that and the third.' She sounds as anyone would who'd just met one of their lifelong idols. Considering the circumstances, though, we're both more than a little disturbed. Nonetheless, we're getting closer, and we hear somebody scoff that nobody in Manhattan could care at all about what's happening here. A loss for Hip Hop that could only be paralleled to John Lennon?* The line should've stretched back to the subway. "I'm from Manhattan, and I care," I mutter to Karen. She chuckles. "I'm from Rockland County, and I care. How could I not?"

The viewing room was laid out in khaki, beige and gold. Wreaths everywhere. As we keep the pace, I see one containing a card signed by Funkmaster Flex himself. Later, Karen mentions that she could swear that she saw a member of Boyz II Men seated in the room. But right then, she was unable to say much. For there, as slow-playing organ music wafted through the room, we saw him. He was dressed in black leather, a fedora, a gold chain with a sneaker pendant and classic, white Adidas sneakers. The standard musketeer's uniform. He even lay in the classic pose. I bet he could've struck it in his sleep. Promo photographs stood against his coffin. Behind him are two wreaths. On the right is one in the shape of turntables. The one on the left, shaped like the Adidas logo. In front of me, Karen sobs gently.

Behind us, the line has to keep moving.

Outside again, we hold each other for a few moments. "Why did that have to happen?" She asks me. A few feet away, I see policemen jump between two men, and then converge on one of them, pushing him away from the other. "You hit like a bitch, though!" I can hear him shout. I'm beyond mortified.

"Why did that have to happen," I grumbled. As we cross the street for the Q4 back to the subway (and to get away from the growing fiasco), that same black car passes the funeral home, blasting the streets with another old school classic. Of the cars that rode past tonight, playing tribute in their way, this is the third time this one's appeared.

Why did that have to happen? The question of the night. All the way back to the city, I think of a legend behind a turntable, helming the beat as Joseph Simmons tells us that he doesn't know why: "It's like that," he and Darryl once said, "and that's the way it is."

But then, I do believe the point of Run-DMC and Jam Master Jay, was that it doesn't have to be.

*Author's Note: If there is anyone reading this that takes exception to this simile, I would like to remind you, dear reader, that there are those who could conceivably regard John Lennon, and his contributions as an entertainer, innovator and human being with anything ranging from ignorance, to indifference, to outright scorn. A good number of them were probably there that night. I may not be such a person myself, but it isn't lost on me that the perpetrator of that crime was almost immediately caught. As I write this, Jay's murderer is still at large.

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