Damage Control is appaled at the sheer idiocy of big money commercial rappers these days, and the sloppy means about which they seek to avoid imprisonment. In the gangsta flicks they so often refer to, people show you how to dodge indictments. Were they in the bathroom during these scenes?

We hope for speedy trials and convictions.

February 1, 2000 2 PM PST:

From MTV News and EUR:

According to Sarah Frank, reppin' Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau, Shawn Carter (also known as the Jigga, Jay-Z) has been indicted by the grand jury on "one count of first degree attempted assault and one count of second-degree assault." The maximum possible sentence is 15 years upstate, hard time with hard men. He pled not guilty, and will be arraigned February 22.

Jigga's lawyers claim that their videotape that shows Jay chatting it up with Busta Rhymes while the stabbing occurs in the background was ignored by the DA's office.

From the start, Damage Control has maintained that this entire debacle was some form of publicity stunt, bolstered by Lance "Un" Rivera's declaration that he'd drop charges for six figures and a production deal. It smacked of bad soap opera, a No Limit movie played on cable news. The main argument was that a man as successful and savvy as Jay-Z, who has written hits for half the hot artists out and amassed a huge multi-industry fortune in music, clothes and now encroaching into film, would not be dumb enough to actually commit such a crime.

An arraignment and indictment would throw something of a spanner in the works, unless the entire legal system of the City of New York is in on it (though, if you know the old Boss Tweed days, that's not an impossibility). Could he be this stupid, to throw it all away over a second hand rumor? Damage Control is at a loss to comprehend such raw incompetence from someone who has shown so much cleverness.

January 11, 2000 11 PM PST:

From Raise Magazine:

The newspapers in New York are so damned exciting, bringing rumor and innuendo out as well as alleged facts. According to the New York Daily News, it appears that Lance "Un" Rivera is willing to drop all charges against Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter for a million dollars in cash and a production deal with Roc-a-fella Records. Carter's lawyers, it seem, advise against this as they allegedly have a videotape that shows Jay-Z chatting with Busta Rhymes as the stabbing occurs in the background.

Damage Control maintains our belief the whole thing is a stunt -- Jay-Z ignored questions about the incident on his chat at TWEC.com the day before his album dropped, he has since been charged with sampling a go-go group's song without permission, and he fell half a million short of his end of the year sales projection of a platinum entry into 2000. This move serves to boost sales for everybody.

Meanwhile, Massa seems displeased at the attention the Roc-a-fellas have garnered from law enforcement, and their distribution stands in jeopardy pending the progress of the criminal investigation.

If there was a videotape (they're probably filming it now), it'd be all over Hard Copy and the case would have been dismissed. There's too many holes in this story for it to make sense.

Jay! Take a hint! Grab the money, leave the country, chill in Jamaica your recluse. We'll mail you the checks. It's for the best.

December 13, 1999, 6 PM PST:

From EURweb.com ...

"Jay-Z is telling reporters he may have a secret weapon in his fight to clear his name in the slashing attack on record exec Lance 'Un' Rivera. His lawyers say that they have obtained a videotape they hope will prove Jay-Z's innocence.

"'This tape will show that he wasn't near the [stabbing] scene,' says Def Jam's Lyor Cohen, whose company will ship Jay-Z's next album later this month. 'It shows that others were involved in the incident. Right now the lawyers are examining the tape and deciding what to do with it.'"

What's wrong with this picture?

1. Lyor Cohen, Def Jam's main business and front man, is making the statement. Not the lawyers. Not the city prosecutors. Not even Jigga himself. P-U-B-L-I-C-I-T-Y.
2. Jay-Z allegedly promised 1 million sales of his new album, Vol. 3, Life and Times of Shawn Carter, by the end of the year. The album is being released December 28th. This kind of publicity could drive that kind of sales -- let's watch to see how much Lyor has to say in the next weeks. An innocent man would just want it all over immediately, right?
3. Why the delay? Where has this videotape been that it surface now?
4. Nobody has any authentic quotes on the matter from Jigga himself.

The whole affair still reeks of a setup. Damage Control stands by that assessment until convincing evidence can be shown otherwise.

December 10, 1999 10:30 AM: From EURweb.com, regarding Jigga at the Billboard Music Awards ...

Jay Z was also honored, as Rap Singles Artist of the Year. Picking up his award he poked fun at his recent arrest for assault, after a record producer was stabbed at an album launch in New York City. He was given the statue by two female wrestlers who started hitting each other: "I hope they don't charge me for what just happened just now, too!", he joked."

December 9, 1999:

This is what we got so far ...

• Shawn Carter, also known as multiplatinum rap artist and Roc-a-Fella Records CEO Jay-Z allegedly stabbed fellow urban mogul/producer Lance "Un" Rivera in the back and stomach during the album release party for Q-Tip's Amplified.
• The story that's told in the press is that Jay-Z and an "unidentified associate" walked up to Un at New York's Kit Kat Club after partygoers noticed tension between the two upon Un's arrival, after not being invited to Jay-Z's album release party earlier that evening at the Irving Plaza nightclub. Jay-Z allegedly said something like, "Lance, you broke my heart." The "associate" beaned Un over the head with a bottle of liquor, after which Jay-Z allegedly stabbed Un in the stomach and back. Allegedly, Q-Tip cried on stage and when the police got there, Mr. Carter was gone.
• Q-Tip's publicity engine has already issued a statement saying he was upstairs taking publicity photos and never even saw it, thus could not have been crying on stage.
• Wanted for questioning, Jay-Z turned himself in to the New York Police Department and was released on a $50,000 bond. Un likewise has been released from an area hospital last Thursday (December 2, we believe).
• According to sources quoted in Newsweek and the Associated Press, there was a dispute that Un -- through a relative of his, hip hop producer Buckwild -- had allowed an early bootleg copy of Vol. 3 - The Life and Times of Shawn Carter, the latest Def Jam album from Jay-Z to be released to New York radio stations, as well as selling copies of it in Gotham. Buckwild was also punched in the melee, by the way, and is an executive at Untertainment.
• Jay-Z's lawyers vehemently protest his innocence.
• Both Jay-Z and Un have said nothing publicly to anyone about the entire scenario.

This is what people are saying ...

• Publicity stunt? Jay-Z's upcoming album is, more than likely, more of the same thug isht from his prior dedications to slow suicide. His label's publicity department is well known throughout the industry as being highly uncooperative and useless in pushing their artists, who make it through careful placement through marketing and aggressive street teams. The amount of press this story has gotten (Newsweek???) would have been extremely expensive to buy ... Untertainment's artists aren't knocking down the doors saleswise (disappointing debuts from Cam'ron and Charli Baltimore, as well as a delayed Lil Kim sophomore album).
• Sales will inevitably increase as press coverage has always translated into higher sales -- 2 Live Crew, Tupac, Ice T, much of the Death Row catalogue, and so on. Such an "unfortunate incident" could easily push sales up. Def Jam knows that as well as anybody. The projected damage existing bootlegs would cause is $1 million ... how many more sales will this result in? Acceptable losses? Which brings us to ...
• ... the current Def Jam administration, which is a long way from the company that brought Public Enemy to the world. A shimmering corporate creation well targeted towards urban audiences with reins held by Edgar Bronfman's Seagram/MCA conglomerate ... who's to say this wasn't cooked up in some focus group or boardroom?
• Where are the witnesses? Newsweek names "sources," claims "famous rappers" talk to them, but don't there seem to be far more chatty ethnic types than at any of the past criminal engagements of hip hop? Normally they have a hard time getting any comment, everybody at the party is a John-Doe-meets-Chatty-Cathy. No names? No interviews? For the love of Linda Tripp, no book deals? That's a bit far fetched in this day and age of media cannibalism. There's money and blood in the water. Speaking of ...
• Where's the knife, kids? Where's the bloody FUBU jeans? Hospital records? Can we get some forensics up in this bad boy? Don't nobody watch The Practice up in this piece? Did Al Cowlings drive the getaway car or some isht?
• Several people smell a rat, including a number of anonymous industry insiders contacted for this story privately and Bay Area radio jock and activist Davey D publicly.

How much of this makes sense? If a "traditional" (i.e. "white") millionaire has an idea someone is making illicit moves on his business, he makes calls. Perhaps contracts a professional. Can you really see Steve Forbes rollin' up in the club and tryin' to juice Don Trump? It smacks of illogic.

"Yo, Jay-Z is from the streets," the chorus of ignorance shouts, "he's keepin' it real!" That's not a logical argument either. Even if he was slangin' keys the day before, knifing a public name in a crowd is volunteering to sign over your skrilla to the feds, no matter what your beef with them is. If he's smart enough to build Roc-a-Fella, make all that money, write for other artists and get their skrilla ... what sense does it make to be this dumb?

If you were dumb enough to do it, and "be a real thug," where's the bragging? Where's the screaming at cameras or calling in to Hot 97, laughing at a man in the hospital? If a thug did some isht, and don't claim it, what kind of punk thug is he? Slick Rick did the time, you can't?

Damage Control calls it a scam, and that's a quote. If Shawn Carter does time on this, we'll retract. If we get photos of the scars, we'll think about retracting. If witnesses submit affadavits to the public record, maybe we'll retract. But as of press time, we're calling Un and Jay-Z lying beyotches and wishing them nothing but the hell of ill plotted game. Sympathies to the families, dealing with this drama, but we think we see a script pokin' out a mother hugger's back pocket.

Let's throw that all out the window for a sec. Say he did do it. What kind of a moron, with that kind of money and that much to lose, egomaniacally attacks somebody in a packed party? What kind of idiot would believe he could do this and escape unscathed? What kind of knucklehead would honestly believe that platinum plaques are proof against iron bars? If Jay-Z did indeed do the deed, he is without a doubt the dumbest bastard of 1999, bar none, and should be killed before he does some serious damage or worse, turns into another Tupac.

Personally we plan to ask him personally -- he's listed for an online chat at http://www.twec.com/ on December 27th, the eve of his album release. Maybe we'll see you there, and we can all find out what really happened.