August 16, 2022 — At the center of the Jam Master Jay murder, there was a shipment of Black Mafia Family cocaine sent from St. Louis to Washington D.C. and then finally brought to New York City by Jam Master Jay himself, according to federal prosecutors in the upcoming first-degree homicide trial of his alleged killers. The deal went awry from there, with his partners either not getting paid or getting shut out of the deal all together, per an article published by Playboy Magazine in the months following his slaying.
Hip-hop pioneer Jason Mizell aka “Jam Master Jay” was shot to death execution style inside his recording studio in Queens on the evening of October 30, 2002. Prosecutors in New York City say Ronnie (Tinard) Washington and Karl (Lil’ D) Jordan killed the 37-year old Mizell over a drug-deal rip-off where Mizell cut them out of a 10-kilo purchase from an unnamed BMF lieutenant out of Missouri. Their trial is scheduled to begin early next year.
The Playboy article reported that BMF never received full payment for the purchase, were upset by that fact and looking for payback. It’s unclear if prosecutors believe Jordan and Washington had any contact with or incentivization from BMF prior to murdering Mizell for their own grievances.
Washington, 58, is also a suspect in the murder of a Tupac Shakur-affiliated recording artist in the East Coast-West Coast Rap War — namely, the November 1995 drive-by killing of Queens rapper Randy (Stretch) Walker, a member of the Live Squad and the legendary Shakur’s side project crew Thug Life. Shakur was famously gunned down less than a year later in Las Vegas in a still-unsolved, but heavily-speculated upon homicide.
In a motion hearing from the Jam Master Jay case held in May, prosecutors accused Washington and Jordan of attempting to intimidate future witnesses. Due to the increasing security concerns and the difficulty in tracking down subpoenaed records from two decades ago, the trial was pushed back from its original September 2022 start date to February 2023. Jordan, 40, is alleged to have acted as the triggerman in the Jam Master Jay
Universally revered as one of the greatest DJs of all-time, Mizell was part of the groundbreaking rap group Run DMC, practically single-handedly responsible for bringing hip-hop music to the masses in the 1980s. The Adidas, gold-chain wearing trio made up of Mizell, Joe (Rev Run) Simmons and Darryl (DMC) McDaniels, became the first rappers to reach Gold, Platinum and Multi-Platinum status in record sales and was the first corporate-embraced hip-hop entity, validating the craft to Wall Street and the music industry simultaneously.
Mizell took possession of 10 bricks of cocaine on consignment via a July 2002 meeting in Washington D.C. with BMF lieutenants from St. Louis and Maryland present, per a government timeline. Mizell knew the man from Maryland and went to him to broker the transaction of $250,000 of product through BMF, according to sources.
An aspiring rapper, who went by the stage name “Lil’ Yadi” in the music industry, Karl Jordan recorded with Mizell in the years before Mizell was slain and his dad, “Big D,” acted as Run DMC’s tour manager at times. He had a dispute with one of Mizell’s nephews about the slaying in August 2003 and shot him in the leg — Jordan only avoided going to trial in that incident because the nephew refused to cooperate with police. Mizell had fallen into financial hardship, was being hounded by the IRS for unpaid taxes and felt forced to turn to the drug world for fast money, according to the Playboy article.
Black Mafia Family began in Detroit in the early 1990s and by the 2000s had spread across the country to become the “Walgreens of cocaine,” in the New Millenium, establishing operations in almost two dozen states and raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. The organization was dismantled courtesy of the DEA’s historic 2005 Operation Motor City Mafia bust, which netted more than 175 convictions, including BMF bosses and founders Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory and Terry (Southwest T) Flenory. As they built their drug empire, the Flenory brothers kept multiple interests in the rap game, aiding in the career-launching of artists like Notorious B.I.G., Nelly and Young Jeezy, per sources and government-informant records.
The three-city leadership nexus in BMF consisted of Detroit, L.A. and Atlanta. Leaving loyalists behind in Michigan to hold down the fort in the Midwest, Big Meech set up camp in Atlanta, while Southwest T made his homebase in Southern California. St. Louis was known as a BMF “hub,” of sorts, an integral sector of the organization’s rare functionality and home to some of the group’s fiercest and most dangerous soldiers.
Terry Flenory, 52, was released from prison in May 2020 on a medically-related home-confinement pass. Big Meech, 54, isn’t set to be let loose until May 2029. The smash hit scripted television series BMF premiered to huge ratings last fall on the Starz Network. The show stars Big Meech’s son, “Lil’ Meech,” as Big Meech and is produced by rapper-turned-mogul 50 Cent and the team behind the Starz classic Power, the fictional tale of a New York drug kingpin called “Ghost.”