Paul C McKasty is killed

Why it matters

Paul C McKasty was 24 years old. He was shot to death on July 17, 1989, in his apartment in Rosedale, Queens. The case has never been solved. You probably do not know his name. You almost certainly know his work. Paul C engineered and produced Ultramagnetic MCs' Critical Beatdown in 1988, which is one of the most production-forward albums of the late golden age. More importantly, he was the technical mentor to a generation of Queens producers. Large Professor (who would shortly produce most of Nas's Illmatic) learned the SP-1200 from Paul C. Mikey D and DJ Doc learned from him. He was the guy who knew how to make the machines do the thing. He was twenty-four. He was about to enter the part of his career where producers turn into legends. He never got to. The Queens production school that comes out of the early 1990s (Large Pro, Pete Rock, Q-Tip, DJ Premier in nearby Brooklyn) is the school Paul C would have been at the front of. You can hear his absence on every record he should have produced and did not. He has been missing from the field for thirty-six years.