Run DMC

To properly map out an evolutionary timeline in the historiography of hip hop, it's worth setting a few clear boundaries to work within. First and foremost, it's important to keep in mind the sharp distinction between old school and new school, or rather between everything that shaped the scene roughly between 1979 and 1983, and the period immediately following. The distinction between the figureheads of the two schools lines up two very specific entities: on one side, the old-guard veterans of the first urban posses, as festive as they were socially explosive, like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five; on the other, we find the powerful rap of LL Cool J, but above all Run DMC, made up of the two MCs Joseph "Run" Simmons and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, and the disc jockey Jason Mizell, aka Jam Master Jay. They were the first in their scene able to step out of the ghetto's rhythmic revelry to flirt with rock, setting off a series of small but emblematic shockwaves through the popular music of the time, and contributing, de facto, to the future birth of genres like crossover.

The story of this trio is among the most important of the genre. Run DMC brought hip hop and rap in general from the streets of the ghetto to the uptown neighborhoods of the Big Apple. The birth of this New York outfit began in the early Eighties. At the time, brothers Russell and Joseph Simmons were both avid music listeners. The former, sensing the excellent health of the record market, already had very clear ideas about his future: becoming a big-time manager. So he decided from the outset to pursue this career with the passion of someone who had all the human, geographic and logistical means to navigate the twists and turns of a particular path, that of the hip hop genre, coming into contact with a heavyweight like Kurtis Blow, before founding, together with his lifelong friend and partner Rick Rubin, a monster of a label: Def Jam.

Meanwhile, his brother Joseph was a young man studying mortuary science at LaGuardia Community College in New York. And it was precisely in front of a corpse that the young man found the right inspiration to write his first verses, helped by his close friend Darryl, initially opposed by Russell, who saw him as a weak lyricist and MC. The two friends' subsequent meeting with the highly skilled Mizell would pay off instantly. The single "It's Like That / Sucker M.C.'s (Krush-Groove 1)" came out in 1983 on Steve Plotnicki and Cory Robbins' Profile Records, and preceded the trio's debut LP "Run-D.M.C." the following year. The stark, mean-spirited swagger of "Sucker M.C's (Krush Groove 1)" is, for many, the very first example of hardcore in the genre. But it's with the anthem "It's Like That" that hip hop would never be the same again; plundered by a long line of musicians from Snoop Dogg and Freestyle Fellowship to Macy Gray and Armand Van Helden, it's one of those tracks that defined an era, pushing an entire genre into every corner of the globe.

With their second album, "King Of Rock", the trio's intent to weld together the shards of rock and hip hop was made even more explicit to the world through a series of tracks that don't skimp on samples from rock heavyweights like Billy Squier. The exchange went both ways, and Run DMC themselves were in turn sampled by bands like Anthrax ("You Talk Too Much", sampled in the irreverent "I Am The Man"). The album also features the first-ever encounter between rap and reggae, in the track "Roots, Rap, Reggae". However, it's with the follow-up, "Raising Hell", that everything truly comes full circle. Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons were both actively involved in producing the album, and right from the opening bars of the intro track "Peter Piper", compelling and innovative ideas take shape, such as alternating scratches with jazz samples from musicians like Bob James and John Davis and the Monster Orchestra. Then comes the riff from the Knack's "My Sharona" in "It's Tricky", chewed up and spat back out by Jam Master Jay with the swagger of someone out for a good time, merging the stylistic hallmarks of rock and rap into an irresistible collision, propelled by Run and DMC's brash, direct verses like "I met this little girlie, her hair was kinda curly/ Went to her house and bust her out, I had to leave real early/ These girls are really sleazy, all they just say is please me/ Or spend some time and rock a rhyme, I said 'It's not that easy'.

"Raising Hell" isn't just a hip hop album that's technically flawless and strikingly seminal on a stylistic level. In many respects, it fully embodies the aesthetic iconography of this musical style. A manifesto of rap culture made of baggy, flashy clothes, caps and chains, but above all brands elevated to status symbols for entire generations, like the German Adidas, worshipped to the core in the track "My Adidas". What Run DMC set in motion is a total, all-encompassing endorsement, marking the start of a bond, at times unbreakable, between rap culture and the most unbridled capitalism. The lyrics also point to a hilariously autobiographical angle, referencing Run DMC's own appearance at Live Aid the year before: "I stepped on stage, at Live Aid/ All the people gave, and the poor got paid/ And out of speakers I did speak/ I wore my sneakers but I'm not a sneak/ My Adidas touch the sand of a foreign land/ With mic in hand, I cold took command/ My Adidas and me close as can be/ We make a mean team, my Adidas and me/ We get around together, we down forever/ And we won't be mad when caught in bad weather/ My Adidas... my Adidas...". Darryl McDaniels would later claim that the inspiration for this track actually came to Russell Simmons while he was smoking PCP along 205th Street.

If with "King Of Rock" Run DMC had openly shown their eagerness to get dirty and mix things up with good old rock 'n' roll, their cover of "Walk This Way", put together with none other than the song's own authors, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith, represents the highest, most celebrated peak of that ambition. The track was a massive hit and helped the album go triple platinum, while also giving Tyler and co. — who were stuck in a kind of commercial limbo at the time — a much-needed financial boost.

The magic continues in the mischievous tension of "Hit It Run", with an unstoppable Mizell behind the console and DMC reeling off proclamations like "Born to rock around the clock/ You can't say I'm not/ And in case you forgot/ I'm the king of rock!", topped off by a sample of Cerrone's "Rocket In The Pocket", picked up again in the following title track through a web of rhythmic interlocking and blistering riffs. The playful bassline of "You Be Illin'", complete with sax and a sample of their friend Kurtis Blow's "Aj Scratch", raises the bar even further, showing just how important Run DMC were to everything that would go on to define the scene, starting with the global takeover of those cheeky pranksters the Beastie Boys with the album "Licensed To Ill". And of course there had to be a track paying tribute to their own roots and community: "Proud To Be Black". It's an intense track in its own way, and it also contains a sample of "Catch a Groove" by disco-funk duo Juice — a sample that, as it happens, was picked up at the same time by the Beastie Boys themselves in "Posse in Effect", and two years later by the divine EPMD in "You Gots to Chill", from the equally seminal "Strictly Business".

After "Raising Hell", Run DMC would go on to produce great work like the follow-up "Tougher Than Leather", which was followed by a whole series of disputes with Profile Records over the presence of the Def Jam logo in the film of the same name, in which the trio starred. Likewise, the success they achieved in their early years was never truly repeated, and toward the end of the Eighties the first troubles began: Simmons was accused of raping a woman in his hotel room in Cleveland, only later managing to clear himself legally of the charges, while McDaniels struggled with serious alcohol problems, which he later overcame. All of this was followed by both men's conversion to Christianity, which in artistic terms added nothing of note to their writing. The trio stopped making music in 2002, after the death of Jason Mizell, who was shot dead in the head in a recording studio in Queens. On the band's official website, Simmons would state: "Run DMC has officially retired. I couldn't get on stage with a new DJ. Some rock bands can replace the drummer, but I wouldn't know how to perform any other way than with the three original members. We've retired — does anyone out there have a job going?"

N.W.A., Public Enemy, Boogie Down Productions, and many others would go on to freely follow Run DMC's lesson in the years to come. Anyone who has made hip hop music since 1983 owes something, one way or another, to Run DMC. And "Raising Hell" is "nothing less" than the high point of their career. Not bad, all things considered.

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26/03/2017