NEW YORK — The gunman accused of murdering Run-DMC's Jam Master Jay later filmed a music video in front of a mural dedicated to the hip hop pioneer, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Karl Jordan recorded a video for a song called “No Silver Spoons” in 2015, in front of a mural in Hollis, Queens, honoring the man he’s accused of killing on Oct. 30, 2002, federal authorities said in paperwork filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
In the video. Jordan, 38, dances around shirtless holding a bottle of juice in front of a painting of Jam Master Jay, whose real name was Jason Mizell.
“‘Silver Spoon’ features Jordan rapping in front of a mural commemorating Mizell,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Arti McConnell wrote in court papers. “Jordan has been involved in narcotics trafficking for decades. He has carried, brandished and used firearms on numerous documented occasions, something he brags about and glorifies in his music.”
The reveal came in documents filed by prosecutors Tuesday, imploring a judge to keep Jordan locked up until he goes on trial for Mizell’s murder. Jordan’s lawyers begged the jurist to release their client in a filing Feb. 15.
Sporting a hat that says, “Just Be Happy for Me,” Jordan raps about being a gangster and never working a day in his life in the expletive-laden song.
Mizell, a Queens native, shot to stardom in the early ′80s in Run-DMC with Joseph “Run” Simmons and Daryl “DMC” McDaniels. With their Adidas tracksuits, fedoras and gold chains, the group had hits with “It’s Like That” and “Sucker M.C.’s.” They achieved crossover success with “Walk This Way,” a mash-up with the rock band Aerosmith in 1986.
Despite those accomplishments, federal prosecutors said Mizell was dealing drugs before he died.
Jordan shot Mizell in the head inside his Jamaica, Queens, studio after the musical trailblazer excluded Jordan and his partner Ronald Washington out of a narcotics deal, prosecutors charge.
Mizell, 37, was planning to sell cocaine in Maryland with Jordan and Washington, but cut them from the deal at the last minute, prosecutors said. The pair allegedly decided to kill him over the snub.
Despite numerous witnesses in the Merrick Boulevard studio when the deadly shot was fired, the case went cold for 17 years — until Jordan and Washington, 57, were indicted in August 2020.
Up until his arrest, Jordan continued to sell drugs and rap, according to prosecutors.
He was also accused of taking part in three shootings in Queens within about a two-year span after the Mizell murder, but none of the charges against him resulted in a felony conviction.
Jordan allegedly shot a man in the leg on Hollis Avenue in 2003, but the victim did not cooperate with prosecutors and charges were dropped.
The feds said Jordan intimidates witnesses and continues to do that in the Mizell case.
“The government is aware of four separate witnesses that Jordan endeavored to identify and silence through threats and coercion and has enlisted others to do so on his behalf,” McConnell wrote.
In one of his songs called “Aim for the Head,” the slaying suspect brags, “I aim for the head, I ain’t a body shooter.”
Jordan maintains that he is being framed for the high-profile killing, that he was at a girlfriend’s house at the time and that she and her mother are his alibi witnesses.
He asked the judge in his case to release him on $1 million bond on Feb. 15.
“Mr. Jordan has been wrongly charged with the murder of his neighbor and lifelong friend ... which occurred when Mr. Jordan was just a teenager,” his lawyers wrote in their bail application.
Brooklyn Federal Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall has not yet ruled on Jordan’s motion for release.
His trial with Washington, who is also charged with murder while engaged in narcotics trafficking and firearm-related murder, is set for November.
The callousness of Jordan shooting a rap video in front of the Jam Master Jay memorial on 205th Street was not lost on Run-DMC fans.
“Grimey ... guy got arrested ... for JMJ’s murder,” one person wrote under the four-minute, 15-second video on YouTube. “Allegedly was the trigger man too. Had to shoot his videos and s--t in front of the legend’s mural. Disrespectful.”
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