Blender, April 2004
“Yo, I’m just glad Chris was there for me,” says Jin Au-Yeung, lowering his voice to a respectful whisper in the greenroom of BET’s 106 & Park in midtown Manhattan. The 21-year-old MC, known professionally as Jin, glances in the direction of his friend and fellow Chinese-American rapper Christopher Louie, a.k.a. L.S., a lanky 23-year-old who did what many gangstas talk about but few actually do: He took a bullet to save his friend’s life.
The two rappers haven’t seen each other since November 9, the night of the shooting, which occurred in a small Manhattan Chinatown bar called Yello. Jin, the latest member of DMX’s Ruff Ryders recording crew, has returned to BET this afternoon to make an appearance on Freestyle Friday, the weekly battle that launched the Miami-born MC’s career in 2002, when he won it an unprecedented seven straight weeks. His highly touted debut CD, The Rest Is History, due on March 23, will be the first major hip-hop release by a Chinese-American. L.S., leaning on a wooden cane and grimacing from the pain of the .40-caliber slug that tore through his back, has limped his way out of Bellevue Hospital and into the CBS Broadcast Center, where BET tapes, to show his support.
New York’s tabloids played up the shooting as a case of Asian gang violence invading hip-hop: an aspiring rapper, linked to the notoriously violent Ghost Shadows gang, shooting at a fledging hip-hop star who had gone Hollywood (Jin starred alongside Ludacris in 2 Fast 2 Furious). Online fan forums buzzed with rumors about Jin’s supposed criminal affiliation (“What! Jin’s a gangsta?”), L.S.’s uncommon display of courage and the biggest mystery of all: Who shot L.S.? The official response from the New York Police Department offers little information beyond the bare-bones facts. “Male Asian shot in the lower back at 2 o’clock in the morning after arguing with five other male Asians,” an NYPD spokesperson read to Blender after checking the logbook of Manhattan’s Fifth Precinct.
L.S. is understandably circumspect about a shooting that remains officially unsolved. “It was some stupid shyt,” he tells Blender. “But when I saw it poppin’ off, I just had to jump in. I brought Jin to Yello,” he says with a trace of remorse. “I showed him that spot.”
For his part, speaking softly and cryptically in the crowded BET greenroom, Jin calls the incident “unfortunate.” “The papers tried to make it out like it was some big Asian gang war,” he demurs. “But there’s not an Asian gang war. Whenever you put yourself into the public eye, not everyone is going to love you. It doesn’t go beyond that.”
On November 9, when L.S. invited Jin to come hang out at Yello ― it was Jin’s last time setting foot in the bar ― there was, according to one patron, “this group of cats hatin’ hard on Jin. Just jealousy. That’s all it was. And also this attitude of ‘OK, let’s see what this nikka’s made of.’”
This group of five men, the NYPD asserts, included 22-year-old Raymond Yu, a reputed Ghost Shadow member known throughout Chinatown by his rap moniker, G-Kay. Sometime around 2 in the morning, G-Kay and his crew drew two guns, intending to rob Jin. Jin dashed behind one of the 20-foot-high maroon curtains and disappeared into Yello’s kitchen. “It was made to look like a robbery,” says one witness. “But really, they were trying to punk Jin, make him look like a bytch. They wanted to take away any street cred he might have. But what they didn’t count on was L.S. This nikka got more heart than anybody I’ve ever seen.”
L.S., according to everyone interviewed, saved Jin’s life by stepping up to the assailants even though he was unarmed. Heated words were exchanged, and, witnesses allege, G-Kay shot L.S. in the back with a .40-caliber semiautomatic before fleeing.
G-Kay is now on the run from the law. Remarkably, though, he still has an active Web site filled with lyrics, MP3s and photos that display a fondness for Yao Ming jerseys, handguns, cash-strewn tables and classic gangsta bravado.
From his Web bio, posted long before the shooting at Yello: “There are a few dozen New Yorkers who are sleeping easier these days now that Queens-based rapper G-Kay is spending the majority of his time in a recording studio. Among them are the people he shot, robbed, beat up, stabbed and ― oh yeah ― chased down with a machete.” The site goes on to list other highlights of G-Kay’s résumé, which includes membership in the Ghost Shadows, a gift for witness tampering and a prison stint for attempted murder.
None of the witnesses interviewed by Blender in Chinatown disputed G-Kay’s none-too-subtle self-portrait, although one described him as more of a “wild cowboy” than a respected figure in the Chinese underworld.
“He’s in deep shyt with the Ghost Shadows for this,” says one source. “This nikka is so stupid. He really fukked up by shooting L.S. He fukked himself and his whole career.”
In his book The Gangs of New York, Herbert Asbury paints a vivid portrait of a legendary top-ranking Chinese tong member of the early 1900s named Mock Duck, who was shot at more often than any other gangster in Chinatown but felled by bullets only once: “Mock Duck was in the Hudson Hospital for three weeks, and then came out whole and healthy and filled with a craving for revenge.”
A century later, the same description might apply to L.S., although his chosen method of revenge, for now at least, is the dis track.
Early in 2004, L.S. dropped a devastating song (available on mix tapes and the Internet) called “Last Laugh.” While L.S. is still reluctant to discuss his alleged assailant with Blender, the lyrics of “Last Laugh” couldn’t be more explicit, rhyming furiously over the beat to Mobb Deep’s “Shook Ones (Part II).”
“What was you thinkin’ when you went after Jin/That I was gonna sit there and not jump in?/Don’t you know I’m as real as they get?/You a coward-ass nikka, ’cause you shot me in my back!”
The track ends with a diatribe laced with the most genuinely murderous rage since Tupac recorded his classic anti-Biggie primal scream “Hit ’Em Up”:
“G-Kay, you ain’t shyt, claiming you the most feared gang member in Chinatown!” L.S. spits. “fukk! You think the Shadows got your back? nikka, they laughin’ at you right now! You can’t even show your face on my streets, nikka. Don’t even come to Chinatown. You hidin’ like Osama bin Laden right now. fukkin’ bytch-ass nikka!”
One of the Yello regulars nods in somber agreement. “It’s true. G-Kay can’t even show his face in Chinatown now. And right now he better hope that the NYPD catches his ass first.”
http://forum.yorkbbs.ca/showtopic-60565.aspx
at that whole article @Supa posted
shyt, scheming and plotting what he was gonna do to Jin. Not only did he not do anything but dude doesn't even come across salty about it, that takes character imo
