Scoon: Let me get to Dave Seabrooks first. Dave says that he saw he says something about me in a drug deal with Jay. Dave claimed he was a drug dealer too, but Dave lives off for white women. That’s what does.
AllHipHop: If I am not mistaken, wasn’t he married to Karen Gravano?
Scoon: I don’t know if he’s married, but he was with her. He was caught on a case with her father [Sammy “The Bull” Gravano] and her brother in Arizona. I’ll never forget when Dave first went to Arizona. He said to me, he called he said “Yo, I just want you to know, why I’m here. I’m about to meet The Bull. And he said, “Karen told her mother that I’m half Puerto Rican,” because Dave is light-skinned. My response to Dave was I said “Damn Dave, that’s sounds like all n#### to me man.”
But he got in with her because her and crew of little Italian girls was doing their thing with the ecstasy in the 90s. Dave is a pretty boy type you know? His hair gonna always be lined up and meticulous. I want to say metrosexual, but he doesn’t dress metrosexual. But he might as well be metrosexual. He’s with a white woman now down in Arizona.
AllHipHop: What was your relationship with him? In the documentary, he said that you guys were running the streets together.
Scoon: Dave was around but Dave is another one. He used to say Tinard was his cousin cause his mom and Tinard’s mom are really tight. What he needed to talk about the documentary. Dave is the connection between Flushing and Hollis, with Steve Lobel, Tony Rincon, because his father lived over there right. And his real cousin’s name is Unique. Dave introduced them to Tinard. They went down to Baltimore. Tinard was supposed to be his security. Somehow “wink wink” Unique gets shot in the back of his head and ends up paralyzed.
AllHipHop: It was over missing heroin. Unfortunately for Tinard, all these seem like the same modus operandi for the Jay murder.
Scoon: Tinard being your protection is almost like the fox guarding the chicken coop. I don’t know who shot Unique. But Dave made that introduction. You want to talk about something talking about that m###########. That’s s### that you know about because you don’t know nothing about me.
I don’t know what Dave was thinking. In that documentary, I had to turn it off man before, before I blew a fuse or something. He said Big D was like his brother. He gave everybody their props. That means nobody’s props is worth anything. He’s a dude that just wants to be liked by everybody. And Steve Lobel got him in there. And, he acted like the ghetto tour guide, trying to break down so intellectual about what Hollis was like, in the 70s and 80s. Dave that’s not who you are. That’s not how you talk. And these white folks are not going to call you back for the next documentary. Find another white woman, get a stable of them.
I just think that if any of Jay’s friends whether it be Hurricane, Big D, Randy, even Boe. They don’t need to be name-checking me. Y’all need to find out what really happened. If y’all don’t want to tell the police what happened, yall need to figure out what happened and go deal with it. Just stop gossiping.
AllHipHop: I’m worried that the Feds case is going to fall apart unless they have some of these people in the studio acting as cooperating witnesses saying, yes, this person did it.
Scoon: It doesn’t even make sense to me that Tinard would live in Jay’s house and go Little D to confront Jay about anything. Where you’re gonna live now? Your homeless, you ain’t got nowhere to go. You know, but again, that’s me thinking logically, these may not be logical thinkers, but I can’t make sense out of this stuff, man, because I would have to get in their head and think like they think and that is that’s beneath me, man. I can’t do it. I can’t level down like that.
AllHipHop: Let’s talk about the past 18 years. That is a long time to have something of this magnitude hanging over your head.
Scoon: It was tough.
AllHipHop: What was it like in the first two years? What did you have to do?
Scoon: The first thing I did was get out of New York.
AllHipHop: Did you leave New York for your safety?
Scoon: I don’t want to sound too cocky, but I really never been worried about no kind of issues in the streets. I feel like I’m capable enough, I could see things coming, I could position myself, or even get out of the way if I need. But what I was concerned with was the NYPD. Because I felt like as long as I was in New York, and they had me pegged as a person of interest, it would have been real easy for them to try to pick me up on another charge and put me on ice while they try to work this out. Because these are the type of things that cops do.
AllHipHop: In this time what were you doing for money and employment?
Scoon: I was in Atlanta. I’m very resourceful, that’s all I’m going to say. Real talk, man. I was selling cigarettes. It’s not legal but s###. I was selling cigarettes because the cigarette tax went up. And I don’t mean I was out there, I was getting them cheap down south, and sending them up to New York. And dudes was selling them and sending me my money back. Then my man he was selling Mitchell & Ness throwback jerseys and I started going out the house with him.
AllHipHop: This was a case that drew worldwide attention. So you are down in Atlanta hustling cigarettes. How did you start transitioning into something more legal? When I met you, early on, I know that you were aspiring to be into films. How did that transition into anything legal start?
Scoon: To be honest with you, this is probably gonna be the best part of the interview. This is going to give inspiration and a blueprint to people who really want to do right. You know, the transition for me started before the Jay thing. I just knew the way that I was living in the 80s and early 90s, I knew that some days were numbered. Of course, like most people, the first thing I wanted to do was something in music, because that’s what we all do. We all just get into the music business. That didn’t work out. One day, I was sitting on the bench in the projects in Long Island City, and I looked at the sky. I said, “man, who the f### am I?” I was going through this thing in my life, where I wasn’t who I used to be. And I didn’t know how to be who I wanted to be. So I was, I was at this crossroads man.
AllHipHop: What was driving that insecurity?
Scoon: Things weren’t working out. I was a dude that always touched paper. And I’m in this transitionary phase, where I don’t have no money. It’s tough when you try to reinvent yourself, where your old network is useless because what they’re doing is what you’re trying to get away from, but you have no current network. So you got to build it from the ground up. And you got to build it from the start. The answer came. “You’re a salesman, and you don’t have no product.” Because I didn’t have nothing to sell. So I tapped into myself. And I wrote a screenplay called “Fall from Grace.” That was my life. I fell from grace. I wrote a dope ass script, man, everybody that read it loved it.
AllHipHop: How did you learn how to write scripts? Did you take courses? What got you into it on that level?
Scoon: I went down to The Village. Somebody told me, they sold scripts to movies down there. So I went out, picked up a script, and I looked through it. I didn’t even buy it. I said, “I can do this s###.” And I went to bought this software called Final Draft, and I still got it too. I just set out, I poured my heart and soul into it, and it just came out so dope. The word got around that I could write in the hood. And then people connected Fat Cat came to me, and they wanted me to write the Cat story. And I wrote it. And I finished it two weeks before Jay got killed. And so I went from writing the movie to being in a movie.
I made all the news. I can’t get rid of this s###. How can I make it work for me? So I emailed Playboy because I had learned they some kind of option agreement with Brian Grazer from Imagine Entertainment. He would option their articles. So I figured if I could get an article in Playboy, I could get some attention on my script.
I emailed Playboy because you could submit articles and I said, I don’t have an article, I got something better. This is my name. This is what I’m accused of. And I haven’t talked to anybody, but I’ll talk to you. Sort the features editor at the time was Christopher Napolitano. he emailed me back. Playboy signed the writer, [Frank Owen] and I also negotiated a 1000 words sidebar, so I could be a published journalist. I used the article to plug my script. Turns out that that article ended up being instrumental in Ethan Brown, securing his book deal.
AllHipHop: I want to talk a little bit about that book “Queen’s Reign Supreme.” At the beginning of that book, he thinks “The Snake Charmer,” which was your handle. What role did you have in that book, “Queen’s Reign Supreme?”
Scoon: I pitched the book to Ethan. Nobody would talk to Ethan. Ethan had tried to get several book deals and failed. That book was his first book deal. And, I guided him through that world. And s###. It worked out for me. It worked out for both of us in different ways. It started me on a TV production where I was working on “American Gangster.” We did the Fat Cat episode, of course, because of the book. I was a consultant on the Fat Cat episode, a co-producer on The Supreme episode. And then I fully produced the Jamaican Shower Posse episode by myself. And keep in mind, Greg, I’m a published journalist. With no journalism degree.
That is just what determination and discipline it gets you if you really want it, man, like, I found a way to make it all work for myself.
AllHipHop: So why did you decide to your latest documentary “Black White & Blue.”
Scoon: Well, what I tried to do was not give us give people the same one-sided view. I tried to provide contrasting views. So that there are Trump supporters in there is Black Lives Matter supporters, Black Lives Matter critics. I wanted an objective piece. I think what we get a lot of times are more like programming and propaganda, pretty predictable which way it’s going to go. I think it’s important if you’re a filmmaker, to get all sides of the story. One of the other things that I found startling is when you look at all these black trauma, documentaries, I don’t care if it’s Kalief Browder, Sandra Bland, Central Park Five, but look at who made them, it’s never us.
That’s the difference with my film. “Black White and Blue” is objective because I funded it. I didn’t get a check from nobody. But that’s also why it was tough to get distribution. I submitted it to so many film festivals, and not one accepted it. But if you go on Amazon, and you read the reviews, and those aren’t paid, people I know who did it. Those are actual real reviews, this film has been seen in 17 countries. But that kind of objectivity is not what anybody wants from black people. You either promote and talk about what “we” want you to talk about, or “we” don’t fund you.
AllHipHop: What projects do you have coming up next with your film production company?
Scoon: I’m working on a documentary called “The American Dream.” And what I’m doing is documenting every step of the way with my guy Coleman A. Young II. His father Coleman Young I was the first Black Mayor in Detroit for five consecutive terms. 20 years straight from 1973 to 1993. His son is a political prodigy. He’s already been an elected official for 12 years. He was a State Rep four years, and he was on state Senator for eight years.
In 2017, he announced he was going to run for Mayor. And I reached out and I was his number one backup. I donated the most money to his campaign. I got him up on The Breakfast Club. He lost, he didn’t have any money. He had about maybe $50,000. I raised most of it for him. And he got 29% of the vote. When you think about it, the incumbent mayor had $2.5 million. See if Coleman can get 30% of the vote with $50,000, imagine what he could do with half a million dollars.
So from there, the next thing we did was, we did the STEM Foundation, the organization, Coleman, Alexander Young II Educational Foundation, CAY2 Foundation.ORg. We started a STEM program for students in Detroit. And our pilot program is at Martin Luther King High School.
AllHipHop: Well, it’s good to see you have moved on with your life because I can imagine that the Jam Master Jay situation is still a chaotic and traumatic situation to be associated with.
Scoon: I just wanted to say to Jay’s people and to everybody who wants to make documentaries and YouTube clips. Just be mindful man that it has been 18 years. It’s clear that I didn’t have anything to do with this. And I’m doing so many good things. And every time people mentioned my name it makes it that much harder not only for me to do for myself, but to do for others. If nothing else at least respect that.
