DJ Kay Slay, Fiery Radio Star and Rap Mixtape Innovator, Dies at 55

The onetime graffiti artist and New York D.J. for Hot 97 was known for breaking artists and stoking beefs that gave fuel to the careers of Nas, Jay-Z, 50 Cent and more.

DJ Kay Slay, who served as a crucial bridge between hip-hop generations, developing from a teenage B-boy and graffiti writer into an innovative New York radio personality known for his pugnacious mixtapes that stoked rap beefs, broke artists and helped change the music business, died on Sunday in New York. He was 55.

Slay had faced “a four-month battle with Covid-19,” his family said in a statement confirming his death.

Few figures in hip-hop could trace their continued presence from the genre’s earliest days to the digital present like he could. In late-1970s New York, Slay was a young street artist known as Dez, plastering his spray-painted tag on building walls and subway cars, as chronicled in the cult documentaries “Wild Style” and “Style Wars.”

Then he was the Drama King, a.k.a. Slap Your Favorite DJ, hosting the late-night “Drama Hour” on the influential radio station Hot 97 (WQHT 97.1 FM) for more than two decades before his illness took him off the air.

“Cats know it’s no holds barred with me,” Slay told The New York Times in 2003, when the paper dubbed him “Hip-Hop’s One-Man Ministry of Insults.” In addition to providing a ring and roaring encouragement for battles between Jay-Z and Nas, 50 Cent and Ja Rule, Slay gave an early platform to local artists and crews like the Diplomats, G-Unit, Terror Squad and the rapper Papoose, both on his show and on the mixtapes that made his name as much as theirs.

READ FULL ARTICLE: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/18/arts/music/dj-kay-slay-dead.html

”R.I.P TO A LEGEND. I STILL FEEL LIKE HE DIDN’T DIED OFF OF COVID…..SOMETHING IS FISHY ABOUT THAT. COMMENT DOWN BELOW LEMMIE KNOW ANY MEMORIES YOU HAD OFF OF MUSIC.