In Part 2 of AllHipHop.com’s interview with Jam Master Jay’s nephew Boe Scaggz (click here for Part 1), the rapper explains what happened immediately following the murder of Jam Master Jay and his thoughts on his friend, Randy Allen. In this portion, Boe explains why he left New Jersey in the days following the death of Jam Master Jay, despite his family’s disapproval.
Boe also confirms that one of the alleged gunmen, Tinard Washington (who admitted to being present but is in jail on separate robbery charges), lived in a house that was owned by Jam Master Jay. It’s significant, because sources told AllHipHop.com that the gun that was used to kill Jay, was taken from this house. Boe also speaks on Jay’s inner circle of friends, as well as Jay’s old foe, Curtis Scoon.
AllHipHop.com: Randy said that there was security cameras up in there that should’ve captured everything, but for some reason that day, the tapes weren’t working. He said that the furniture had been rearranged while Jay was on tour. Do you have any idea why the security tapes were not working that day?
Boe: I was very involved with the studio. The security cameras, the tape not being recorded, I don’t know. I heard a lot of different stories. I heard somebody came in there and stopped the tape from recording. I heard a lot of different stories about that, but I don’t really know what’s really true about that so I don’t want to speculate and say anything about that. They should’ve definitely been recording. They always record. The security cameras is rolling, they rolling all the time, then every now and then somebody might be like ‘you’ve got to go rewind the tape and record again.’ I think we used the same tape, we didn’t even change tapes. Our security cameras wasn’t really for safety, it was to see if people who was coming in was buzzing our buzzer, you know what I’m saying? If somebody buzzed the buzzer then we could see them. There wasn’t really a case where somebody was coming in to do something, that wasn’t a thought, you know what I’m saying? Nobody thought of us having no problems like that.
- Boe Scaggz
AllHipHop.com: With that being said, I know that Jay had a gun in the studio with him that night. Why was Jay carrying heat?
Boe: I won’t say that he was carrying heat. I would say that we’ve got a studio, so we always had things like that in the studio to make sure we were safe still. Even though we didn’t think of nobody coming to do us no harm, but everybody knew that we was there. Everybody in Queens. You want to find Jam Master Jay, you know exactly where he is. It’s the studio right here. So of course we have firearms. You go in anybody’s studio, somebody’s walking around with firearms. S**t…I used to be the one to carry the pistol. Jay would tell me “don’t bring this, what are you doing?”
AllHipHop.com: What about the cat Goldie? I had heard that Jay had a dispute with him and he had to pull the gun on Goldie in the studio.
Boe: Nah, I don’t… nah. Jay and Goldie? Nah. Goldie was like the little homie. Even though Goldie’s older than me, Goldie was like part of Jay’s little army. He’s one of the little rap dudes from Brooklyn. Goldie’s not that kind of person towards Jay, and Jay wasn’t about to pull a gun on Goldie anyway.
AllHipHop.com: Well even though you don’t believe Randy had anything to do with it, why did your grandma get so upset that Randy took you out of New York the night of the shooting? She said it was against your will. Why after the murder did y’all have to roll out?
Boe: After all of that happened, after he got killed and all that, there was so many people outside my house. After my uncle got killed and everything, I didn’t go out of town with Randy. Me and Garnet Reid, I went to Garnet’s house. I called Garnet to go pick me up. I just finished running up on someone that they had said had been involved or had something to do with my uncle getting killed. That was a few hours after Jay had already been dead now, and the rage was starting to set in. So I’m getting back to the hood, so it’s like oh this ni**a, we can’t find him, but that’s one of his best friends right there. Oh, that’s him? And I just pow, pow, pow, so I definitely had to leave from around the hood. I had to leave. And I think somebody wrote about that somewhere too, that I did do that to somebody. I’ve seen that in a couple magazines. But that’s really the reason why I went out of town with Garnet. We went to Jersey, it’s not like I went away, away. We just went across the water so I could cool down. I just finished pistol-whipping that ni**a, so I had to go.
AllHipHop.com: During all this time, what was Terri (Jam Master Jay’s wife) and the family thinking about you and Randy in particular? Did they express any discomfort with Randy or your association with him?
- Rusty Waters – Cornbread
Boe: Towards me, I don’t think my family never felt no kind of way towards me, but I don’t really know how they felt about Randy. Nobody really wanted me to be next to him, but Jay had gave me business to do with him. So Jay put me and Randy together. He gave me business. So while everybody’s saying you shouldn’t be with Randy, I’m saying “I’ve got a job to do with this man.” We signed a contract with a record label and we had a job to do. It’s not just us kicking it in the studio making songs anymore, we’ve got a job to do now.
That’s why I think, my family might’ve been upset that I kicked it with him a little longer than I should’ve, but I was thinking about my career, what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. My uncle had been the head of most of it until now, who’s going to help me? Not my grandmother, not family, they’re not going to help me. This is my career. They don’t get involved with me. So I have to make sure I still keep doing what I was supposed to be doing. And I really didn’t get a chance to learn anything that I needed to learn from Jay, you understand? I got just enough things, but s**t, I didn’t get to learn everything.
AllHipHop.com: It seems like Jay was really working and dealing with, even though he was world famous, he was still dealing with a lot of people he grew up with. He never stopped associations with people from Hollis. His studio was right in the middle of it. Which brings me up to the question of Tinard Washington. What was Tinard’s relationship with Jay like?
Boe: They seemed pretty cool. I didn’t really know Tinard when he first came around. So I’m like who is this guy? How do we know who he was? But like my mom knew him, and Jay knew him. Everybody knew who he was because he was from the neighborhood, but I didn’t know him because I guess he was in jail the whole time when I was growing up. Jay usually helps motherf**kers out when they got out of jail. You just get home, it’s like a party for you, go out and have a good time. Some people get carried away, they don’t want to leave, they don’t know how to just go back. So they wanted to stay, and Jay wanted to give the ni**a a job because now you’re walking around and you f**ked up. You ain’t got no money, so Jay want those ni**as to do something so he can pay them some money. I never really knew why Tinard was around us. I didn’t know what his purpose was. Randy knew him really well, and Randy’s brother Teddy, they all knew him. They’re all older. They’re all really older than me. They’re in their 50’s, like 40-something years old, so it was really Randy and Teddy and even Lydia knows Tinard really well. They all know him.
AllHipHop.com: I asked that because I heard Tinard was living with Jay shortly before Jay got killed. I was just wondering if you heard anything about that?
Boe: What happened was Stephon, this is my cousin, Stephon — he was staying at my grandmother’s house too. I don’t know what he was trying to do. I guess he just wanted to be around Jay. I guess he just wanted to try to make something of himself with Jay. I don’t really know what Stephon’s purpose was for being around either. Stephon and Tinard was hanging out all the time.
AllHipHop.com: Tinard’s doing like 15 years right now for robbing all them motels. But his girlfriend said that he admitted to being one of the people that shot Jay in the studio and admitted to being one of the people that killed Stretch Walker.
Boe: If the man says he has something to do with something, you can believe it, and sometimes he can be saying that he has something to do with something because he’s trying to take the lesser hand in what ni**as are trying to give him. So if they trying to say you’re the ni**a that actually shot Jay, he’s like well I didn’t shoot him. I was there, but I wasn’t the one that shot him. Sometimes it could be the truth or it could be him trying to escape the worst, you understand what I’m saying?
AllHipHop.com: The worst, yep. So that brings me up to one question that I’ve always been wondering. Okay, so let’s say for arguments sake that what Tinard said is true. That leaves the second person. Tinard is of a certain height, certain weight, certain build. I know that at first people thought that it was Curtis Scoon. But then people thought it was Big D and Lil D, the Jordans, because of their height. Did Jay have any enemies?
Boe: The only person that I really remember Jay having a problem with was Curtis Scoon. Him and Jay, they never really was cool for whatever reason. I don’t know, but they wasn’t ever really cool. Big D and Lil D, Big D… he had nothing. I understand Jay put him on, you know what I’m saying? Helped him break into Def Jam. He was a bum from across the street. Jay looked out for him, gave him something. That’s what he did for everybody that he knew. Everybody that he knew was bums around him, and he made them something. All of them.
Boe: I don’t put anything past anybody. Just as well as somebody could do things you don’t expect them to do every day. And people do things and try to hide things. I believe if any one of them knows something, then they’re all part of it, and they’d be just as worse as the ni**a that shot Jay. I believe Big D is capable of doing anything.
Back in the day, Big D used to rob banks, and one of his homeboys got caught and Big D got caught. Big D ended up snitching on one of his partners, put him in jail forever. Nobody believed Big D would do something like that, but then he did, know what I’m saying? He walks around like he’s got street cred, when he’s one of the biggest snitches in Queens, know what I’m saying? I think Big D’s really a good actor. I don’t know half the time when he’s telling the truth or when he’s lying.