Paul C’s obituary published on July 24th, 1989 in the New York Daily News. (source: Dan Greenpeace’s Twitter)

Part VIII: Anger, Fear, Suspicion and Heartbreak

When the Almighty RSO arrived at 1212 the following morning, they noticed that Paul wasn’t there yet–which was unusual for him. Undeterred, they sat around killing time and working on rhymes. But as the minutes turned to hours, they started to sense something was very wrong. “An hour goes by he doesn’t come,” Twice Thou remembers. “We asked the people at the front, ‘Did he call? Is he on his way?’ Nobody knew nothing. Another hour goes by and now we’re starting to worry.”

As time ticked by they decided to go to Paul’s house to make sure he was okay. After they arrived, their worst fears were confirmed. “When we pulled up on his house, we seen a crime scene,” Twice Thou remembers. “We get out and as we get closer we realize it’s his house that all of this attention is geared towards.”

When the group started talking to the NYPD officers on the scene, the situation took a turn for the worse when they became suspects. “They didn’t put any cuffs on us or anything like that, but they were treating us like we had something to do with it,” he says. “They brought us in, they divided us up in different rooms and questioned each one of us separately. Everybody’s story was the same because it was the truth and it was really simple. But they were trying to see if they could pull a rabbit out of a hat.” Once the police realized they weren’t responsible and released them, the group had to deal with the brutal emotional aftermath of the situation. “After it settled in we were really heartbroken. We didn’t know what the fuck to do.”

That same feeling of overwhelming grief and shock rippled throughout Paul’s close inner circle. Large Professor, one of Paul’s closest friends and co-creators, was attending the New Music Seminar the day after Paul’s murder and had not yet heard the news. After a friend at the event told him that the rumor mill was buzzing with news of Paul’s passing, Large Pro hurried to the nearest phone to call Paul. “I was calling. No answer. And then I called the studio, and the studio manager, Mick, answered the phone,” Large Pro told the Microphone Check podcast. “I’m like, ‘Yo, can I speak to Paul.’ And Mick just like wailed, ‘Nooo! No, you can’t! Paul is dead.’ I’m like, ‘Ah, man.’ It just sent chills into my brain.” [10]

Beyond initial suspicions surrounding The Almighty RSO, rumors swirled around Queens and people developed their own opinions about who the responsible parties were. Every artist Paul had worked with was interrogated and the once friendly atmosphere of 1212 grew tense. Though none of the artists who worked with Paul were arrested in connection with his death, some of their reputations were forever tarnished and several careers were never the same.

“We were dropped from our label, our management gave up on us, people that were for us weren’t anymore. To me, it felt like we were blacklisted.” –Casanova Rud

Super Lover Cee & Casanova Rud, who were coming off a Billboard charting album and two hit singles, were cast in a negative light despite being cleared of having any involvement in Paul’s murder. “They [the police] had the nerve to implicate us in his murder. Why? I don’t know,” Casanova Rud told Platform 8470 magazine in a 2012 interview. “The truth came out eventually, but it was too late. The damage was done.”

Paul’s mentoring and musicianship helped Super Love Cee & Casanova Rud’s “Girls I Got ’Em Locked” album sell close to 500,000 units.

In the years following Paul’s murder, the once proud Queens’ representatives Cee and Rud were now personas non grata in the eyes of many of their peers. With several top-notch Paul C-produced songs already recorded for their sophomore album, the duo found their career in an unexpected downward spiral after the death of their friend and mentor. “We were dropped from our label, our management gave up on us, people that were for us weren’t anymore. To me, it felt like we were blacklisted,” said Rud.

When Paul died at 24 years old, the reactions from his 1212 cohorts ranged from anger to disbelief, with artists like CJ Moore, Mikey D, and Stezo taking an extended hiatus from music. Many had difficulty accepting the reality of a young man with such a promising career losing his life [11]. Pharoahe Monch, who recorded a demo with Paul and Organized Konfusion groupmate Prince Po, planned on having McKasty handle the bulk of production duties on the their debut album. With Paul’s passing, the album’s trajectory was altered, and more importantly, Monch lost a close friend and mentor. “I just remember having so much anger about the situation and hate and really wanting to go out and fuck somebody up for no apparent reason,” Monch said in the film Memories of Paul C. McKasty. “I didn’t know what to do with the anger, I never experienced something like that.”

And for Stezo, losing someone he had connected with so quickly and planned on working with for the rest of his career was more than he could fathom. “We’d have grown old and been over each other’s houses, playing with the kids and shit. It hurt me man, it definitely hurt me man. It was all cut short. It took me a few years to get my shit together–my mind was fucked up,” he says.

Adding to the emotionally tense aftermath of Paul’s murder, many artists who had once been close with Paul’s family saw the relationship fizzle out and turn cold. “I put ‘In Memory of Paul C’ on ‘Freak The Funk’, the second single that we put out. I put his picture up there and I was the only artist that ever did that. When I did that, I got a call from his family,” recalls Stezo.

Although they expressed gratitude for the tribute to their deceased family member, they made it clear they wanted to sever ties with the artists from 1212. “I can understand why they were feeling like that,” says Stezo. “You just lost your son, you just lost your brother. Of course I would be the same way, especially at first. But it hurt me because the family wasn’t even like that. Paul wasn’t even like that. It made people change their attitude and the way they feel about certain people. And that was the last time I talked to them.”

“I didn’t know what to do with the anger, I never experienced something like that.” –Pharoahe Monch

As the search for the guilty parties continued, a potential lead developed when an eyewitness reported seeing Derrick “Little Shine” Blair leaving the McKasty residence with another unidentified man the night of the murder and later identified him in a lineup. Blair, who was also wanted on a Texas warrant at the time for a narcotics charge, was arrested four months later in Fayetteville, North Carolina in February of 1990 after the McKasty case appeared on New York’s Most Wanted and Crime Stoppers. “It makes a big difference,” McKasty’s sister Patricia said at the time of Blair’s arrest. “Paul was a very loving person and extremely talented. It’s very hard to feel like there’s any joy left in the world.”

The family’s hope for some sort of closure was short lived, however, when Blair was let go due to lack of evidence. Though several of the people closest to Paul have strong opinions about who the guilty parties are, the case remains unsolved today.