In the last few months there has been a hand full of deaths in the music Community. DJ AM died of an apparent drug overdose, Mr. Magic died of a heart attack and now Grandmaster Roc Raida. On Sept. 19, the 37-year-old turntablist Anthony Williams, died of complications stemming from an unlikely martial-arts accident that took place a few weeks earlier.
The Harlem-bred toured with Kool G Rap, Lord Finesse and Busta Rhymes, and provided scratches for the under ground including OC’s “Time’s Up” and The Artifacts’ “C’mon Wit the Git Down.” Rapper Percy Carey (formerly MF Grimm) brought Raida in as his touring DJ when they were teenagers.
Raida was member of the acclaimed collective X-Men, Raida spent the first half of the ’90s working the battle DJ circuit.
“Raida was one of those battle DJs [whose] name will stand the test of time,” says his X-Men groupmate DJ Rob Swift. “People will always study him in their own pursuit of a championship. It’s like, if you want to be a good boxer, a champion, you study what Muhammad Ali did.”
via the NPR
The Freak Accident
On the night of Sept. 3, while in a class for the Israeli defense system known as Krav Maga, his sparring partner landed on top of Raida’s spinal cord, by his neck. Details are vague as to what exactly happened — Raida said he remembered nothing — but given that he was a longtime practitioner of the discipline (it’s easy to see parallels between it and the precision of his body tricks), it was likely just an unfortunate accident. Whatever the case, it left Raida paralyzed from the waist down.
Two surgeries were performed in the weeks that followed, and Raida was moved to a Maryland rehab facility, where his condition appeared to improve. Rob Swift and a carload of friends and X-Men alumni made the trip down from New York on Sept. 18.
“His spirits were up,” Swift says. “He was like, ‘Yo, they’re gonna teach me how to get into my wheelchair, and I can cruise around the rehab facility on my own. He just seemed really upbeat. When we left, we all hugged him and said our goodbyes. It was as if we thought we’d see [him] next week.”
The next morning, Raida went into cardiac arrest and died. But his legacy and influence remain.
“I’ve started to incorporate his [routines] in my set as a tribute to him,” Swift says. “That’s what he left us with.”
Carey concurs.
“He’s influenced a generation of MCs and DJs that [are] gonna come up and do the things he’s shown them,” he says. “His energy cannot be destroyed. He’s still here.”
