Reflections on Obedience To My Calling Through Bearing Witness To Sean Combs' 'Reckoning'

Jay Ray reflects on his music dreams not coming true as planned, and ultimately pushing him to honor his real calling: Queue Points, protecting artists, celebrating history, and not worshipping power.

Former location of The Sound Spa Studio, Chester, PA (Photo by Johnnie Ray Kornegay III, 2018)

Sometimes what looks like a dream is actually a bullet to dodge. There’s a peculiar heartache that comes with your dreams crumbling into dust; not because you didn’t give it your all, but because it wasn’t for you to have all along.

I was young, starry-eyed, and working in a recording studio named The Sound Spa while going to college. Convinced I was on my way to a magnificent music career as a taste-maker and producer, I looked to Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs’ career for inspiration. I wasn’t cool, but neither was he, initially. I was talented, and I could be made into cool, too, I thought.

 “So you end up chock full of an industry of money grubbing folks, tortured geniuses, people who are incredibly talented and don’t understand what’s going on. Like there’s just no, there’s no rules.”

- Jay Ray from “The Unspoken Truth: Exploitation in the Music Industry”

In the 90s, I, like so many others, admired Diddy as a visionary, a self-made executive who understood the audacity of turning raw talent into a gleaming empire. But watching his fall, witnessing the architectural way his empire was built on exploitation and control, I’ve felt something I didn’t expect: profound gratitude. Not bitterness. Not disappointment. Gratitude.

The music industry is a treacherous machine. It doesn’t just corrupt; it can manufacture corruption. The industry doesn’t accidentally create monsters. In many ways, it deliberately selects them, polishes them, gives them money, and sets them loose.

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Watching the documentary, Sean Combs: The Reckoning, made me feel like I was protected from something I couldn’t have handled. I glimpsed younger versions of myself in the stories of the artists who dreamed of bright lights. Back when I wanted to be accepted, to be “cool,” and didn’t have the strong sense of self to heed warnings to stay away.

I’m grateful that somewhere along my journey, I felt the darkness of the industry, obeyed my internal compass, and chose to do things my own way towards the light.

 “We got to change the way that we hold people up because they achieve a certain level of success and money in this white power structure. Because I’m telling y’all something in that milk don’t be clean all the time.”

- Jay Ray from “The Unspoken Truth: Exploitation in the Music Industry”

No, I didn’t become a music producer in the traditional sense. But I found my way back to music, to supporting artists who make it as a manager, to documenting its history, analyzing it, preserving it, and amplifying the voices that the industry tried to silence. I obey a different calling now. One that feeds my spirit instead of consuming it.

My heart aches for all the artists who signed away their futures for a moment of validation and promises from someone who was already corrupted before they ever met them. Sometimes the most extraordinary grace is being diverted from the path you thought you wanted.

My liberation wasn’t refusing to pursue ambition. It’s redirecting it toward paths that don’t require me to sacrifice my soul or anyone else’s.

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Watch “The Unspoken Truth: Exploitation in the Music Industry”