'Clockers' Actor, Hip-Hop Activist Honor 'Greatest DJ of All Time'
/UCWE/ - Rap legend and acclaimed actor Sticky Fingaz recorded a radio PSA
with Canadian music personality Raoul Juneja (a.k.a. Deejay Ra),
commemorating the January 21st birthday of the hip-hop founder
responsible for Sticky's big break - Jam Master Jay.
The
'JMJ' tribute PSA was recorded for Deejay Ra's 'Hip-Hop Literacy'
campaign to encourage reading of Jam Master Jay's "Heart of Hip-Hop"
biography book amongst students, in the hopes more youth will continue
learning about the 'greatest DJ of all time' known as Jazon Mizell to
close friends Joseph 'Run' Simmons and Daryl 'DMC' McDaniels, with whom
Mizell formed a mid 80's music group which would soon after spread a
new art called hip-hop around the world.
Run-DMC were
responsible for rap's first top-ten single, multi-platinum album and
music video on MTV, not to mention their personal accolades of the
first emcees to receive a Grammy nomination, be on the cover of Rolling
Stone and act in their own feature film, as well as Run-DMC signing the
first known shoe deal designed specifically for non-athletes.
Sticky
Fingaz, whose rap group Onyx with Fredro Starr and Sonee Seeza has
often been described as a harsher version of Run-DMC, credits Onyx
signing to Jason Mizell's 'JMJ' Records in 1991 as the jump-off for
their now 15 years in the hip-hop game and over 10 years of movie roles.
The
critically praised appearance of Sticky and Fredro in Spike Lee's 1995
"Clockers" film is often credited as what opened the door to today's
flood of rappers turned actors, and both Sticky and Fredro have since
gone on to star alongside such Hollywood heavyweights as Tiny Lister,
N'Bushe Wright, Dennis Quaid, Julia Stiles, Robert Forster and Rosario
Dawson among others.
Deejay Ra, who launched a
November 2003 Run-DMC tribute with the support of Adidas Canada, has
since continued setting up giveaways of Run-DMC "Together Forever"
greatest hits CDs and DVDs across campus radio stations along with
biographies of Run, DMC and JMJ to give students "a dose of hip-hop
history and a love of reading at once," as Juneja described it to KPFK
90.7 FM California radio personality Fidel Rodriguez during a live
radio vigil they held the same year for the Jam Master.
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