Jim Jones: "Stack Bundles Was Like a Little Brother"

Jim Jones spoke to VIBE about Diplomat affiliate and Byrd Gang member Stack Bundles, the 24-year-old Jones mentored until he was gunned down in the lobby of his apartment building in Far Rockaway, Queens Monday.

Jones said he met Stack Bundles, real name Rayquon Elliott, five years ago, while he was just a burgeoning rapper on DJ Clue's Desert Storm label.

"I would see him in different places, and I was really becoming a fan of him. I told him, 'I got an offer for you, you pretty much can't refuse. I see you over there with Clue and them, but you seem smothered . . . they don't really know what they got as far as you being talented and what you got to offer as an artist.'"

Jones said that Bundles inspired him as an artist, "because he represented everything that was going on in the world - I've gotten a bit older, but he was 24, really out there."

Jones said he heard of the rapper's death the morning after the shootout. "I was sleeping, and there were people calling my phone all morning. I figured that something was wrong. I called my man Chubby, and he was like, 'Yo they killed Stack.' And it's just been downhill since then."

For Jones, coping with the reality of Stack's murder has been his greatest issue.
"I'm really not coping," he says quietly. "I'm just trying to keep my mind off of certain things. But it's hard when you lose somebody who's like your little brother. I've been robbed of someone so real to me."

Before Bundles was murdered, word began to circulate that the rapper was encouraged by friends to leave his old neighborhood in Queens once his career began to take off. Throughout history, artists have been victims of the conditions they rhymed about - the late rapper Big L, for instance, was gunned down outside his home in Harlem. Jones said he was one of the main people encouraging Bundles to leave his neighborhood.

"I had penthouses and everything for Stack. It's just that, he was so stuck on . . . he can't move without the closest people he had next to him. Far Rockaway was his own little world," Jones said, emotionally, before pausing. "You don't know what I - the type of back and forth I use to go through with little bro. And all I can do is offer opportunities, you can’t make a grown man do nothing."

In regards to helping out the police - a question of particular interest after Dipset associate Cam'ron seemingly condoned "no snitching" on an Anderson Cooper CBS broadcast - Jones said he has no intentions to cooperate with the police regarding Stack's murder.

"I have nothing to say to police. I want the police to do their job when it comes to Stack, and go about their investigation the right way. But where we from, we say, 'Don't do the crime if you can't come back and bite you on your ass very hard. But everybody has their own way they deal with certain situations, and there's nothing wrong with NYPD. I show them nothing but respect."

Jones said he's now indebted to taking care of Stack's family. And with the current discussion of hip-hop's violent and misogynistic culture, particularly after the Imus incident, Jones had this to offer: "I keep telling people, this shit is no different than the hustle on the streets," he said. "And it's not fair. It's king kills king, but we still set the precedent for all music - unfortunately, in our own little world, we can't seem to get it right at all. I'm no angel, but it's still savages and wolves, and they don't know the value of life. They at the bottom."