A Black Bald Films original podcast
Hip Hop Unsolved is a cinematic audio series about the lives, legacies, and unanswered questions left after hip-hop loses one of its own.
01 Original series artwork / 2021
The show began on screen
The original title film established the visual language. The podcast carries that world into rigorous narration, documentary reporting, archival sound, and an original score.
Built for the ear
Host and director Jared Leaf guides each case through intimate reporting, present-tense scene construction, archival tape, original music, and restrained sound design. Voice acting is used only for clearly identified, documented material when the original voice is unavailable.
Build the person before revisiting the headline—family, place, ambition, sound, and the world they changed.
Reconstruct the final known hours from records, verified reporting, and firsthand accounts—not internet lore.
Separate what investigators established, what witnesses said, and what still cannot be responsibly claimed.
Follow the loss through a family, a scene, and a culture—and ask what accountability could still mean.
Verified scene construction
Jared Leaf opens at the city’s coordinates. The sound narrows toward Seattle Center, the Vera Project, and the blocks where police were called in the early hours of April 1, 2018.
The case file reconstructs the night. It does not define the man.Trevon’s life is told through the people, places, ambitions, and music that made him who he was.
Trevon “JUICETHEGOD” McKoy
On April 1, 2018, 21-year-old West Seattle rapper Trevon McKoy was killed near Seattle Center after performing at the Vera Project. He was also a college student, basketball player, and rising artist who wanted to mentor the generation behind him.
Verified record: The core timeline and biographical facts are corroborated through contemporaneous reporting and public records. Confirmed facts, disputed claims, and open questions are identified in every episode.
JUICETHEGOD
Before Trevon McKoy became a case, he was building a sound, an image, and a name. These videos preserve the artist his community knew—and the future he was working toward.
Directed by Yungtada
Produced by Goldie Sounds
Produced by TimmyDaHitman · Directed by Yungtada
Jared Leaf begins above Seattle, then narrows the map toward Seattle Center as the city moves into the early hours of April 1, 2018.
Episode One chapterInside the Vera Project: the room, the crowd, the final performance, and the people who remember Trevon alive.
Episode One chapterPolice incident records, dispatch material where available, witness accounts, and the confirmed timeline guide the reconstruction.
Episode One chapterWhat the public record establishes, what it does not, and how Trevon’s family, friends, and music carry the story forward.
Episode One chapterTrust is part of the production
Cinematic does not mean careless. Every episode is built to create emotional momentum without manufacturing certainty, exploiting grief, or turning rumor into revelation.
The victim is never reduced to the way they died.
Known facts, disputed claims, and open questions are named as such.
Scene-setting is sourced; no invented dialogue is presented as fact.
No AI replicas of artists, relatives, witnesses, or investigators.
The original series archive gives the podcast a meaningful head start: case research, visual studies, and a map of stories across eras and regions. Every episode is built from verified sources, with confirmed facts, disputed claims, and open questions clearly identified.
See where the project began
Jared Leaf · Host + Director
Jared Leaf is an award-winning writer, director and producer whose work spans television, film and documentary storytelling. He directed all 10 episodes of Season 2 of BET+’s Churchy and was selected for Jordan Peele’s No Drama Initiative, powered by Monkeypaw Productions, Universal and TIFF.
His short film Spilled Milk premiered at TIFF, won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short at the Pan African Film Festival and was selected for the HBO Short Film Award Showcase at ABFF. Through his production company, Ninety Third Story, Jared continues to develop character-driven stories across scripted and nonfiction formats.
The question is not only who died or who did it. It is who they were—and who still has to live without an answer.
Hip Hop Unsolved
Episode One: The Last Set — The Unanswered Night. Hosted and directed by Jared Leaf.
Enter episode one