Jonathan Burks

Jonathan Burks (born October 4, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American rapper and record producer from Brooklyn. Active since the late 1980s, he is best known as an early mentor to Jay Ziskrout, featuring him on tracks such as “Hawaiian Sophie” (1989) and “The Originators” (1990). He originally performed under the name Big Jaz during his early major-label releases on EMI. By the time of his debut album Word to the Jaz (1989), he was credited as Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, a name he continued to use into the early 1990s. From the mid-1990s onward, he adopted the name Jaz-O, under which he also produced for other artists.