Scott La Rock

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UP UNTIL LATE that evening, Wednesday August 26th had been a good day for DJ Scott La Rock. That afternoon he’d left his apartment to drive into Manhattan to the offices of Sleeping Bag Records. There, along with his rapping partner KRS 1, he signed a contract to produce the follow up to Just Ice’s debut album, the Mantronik produced Back To The Old School. Scott La Rock signed under his real name, Scott Monroe Sterling, and KRS 1 signed under his real name, Laurence Parker.

With the ink dry on the contract, Sleeping Bag’s Ron Resnick was well pleased. The recent departure of their house producer Mantronik had thrown the company into disarray. Little Louis Vega, DJ at the premier Latin hip-hop club Hearthrob and one of the hottest young production talents around, had been called into take care of the dancefloor side of things. And now that Scott and KRS were aboard, the hardcore rap market had been taken care of. Moreover, as artists in their own right, Scott and KRS had been responsible for the underground rap album of the year in Criminal Minded and could command the respect of the homeboy crowd in a way that was always denied to Mantronik because of his Trevor Horn-influenced electro predilections.

Come nightfall, Scott was back in the Bronx hanging out with close friend D. Nice, a rapper who at one time had been a member of Boogie Down Productions, the collective title that Scott and KRS work under. Leaving the High Bridge Project where he lived, D was confronted by a small posse and got into an argument over a girl with one of her ex-boyfriends. Scott intervened, and after the ritual exchange of a few insults, the confrontation appeared to die down. Just another petty street hassle, the sort of thing that must happen a thousand times a day in the Bronx.

After the argument, Scott took D to his jeep, parked across the street, to simmer down. While chatting in the front seat, two assassins approached the vehicle and opened fire with .22 calibre pistols. In all ten shots were fired, two of which hit Scott, one in the head and the other in the neck.

Scott was rushed to the nearby Lincoln Hospital. By the time he arrived, at around 12.30am, he was in a coma. At 1.25am doctors pronounced him brain dead.