DJ Kay Slay, who died on Sunday after a four-month fight with COVID-19, will be honored with a larger-than-life service at New York City’s famed Apollo Theater on April 24.
“Keith Grayson, P.K.A. DJ Kay Slay, was born August 14, 1966, in New York City and raised in East Harlem. As a child, he was drawn to disco, dancing the Hustle; when early Hip Hop DJs began turning breakbeats from those songs into proto-rap music, he traveled to the Bronx to observe and participate in the rising culture,” the late DJ’s obituatury reads.
It continued, “Keith would hop on the 6 train and go up to the Bronx River Center to see Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation rock. Keith took up the affiliated art forms of breakdancing and graffiti, even casually rapping with his friends, mastering every element of Hip Hop culture. Street art became his chief passion, first under the tag Spade 429 and later Dez TFA, which he shortened to Dez.”
“Amid the city’s crackdown on graffiti. Dez took the name Kay Slay and developed a fascination with turntables. In 1989, after serving a brief stint of incarceration, Keith found solace in the Nation of Gods & Earths and fully immersed himself into his craft of performing as a DJ and releasing exclusives mixtapes.”
