New over at Cuepoint, Unkut’s Robbie Ettelson delves deep into the history of forgotten Run DMC / Whodini producer, Larry Smith. Gaining access to Larry’s last recorded interview, Smith has suffered a stroke and is currently in state hospital, unable to afford decent care. Read this story, it’s an imporant one.

The Triumphs and Tragedies of Larry Smith

From Rolling Stone Films: “Def Jam was started 30 years ago in Rick Rubin’s NYU dorm room. Watch him go back to the place where it all began for the very first time.”

Friday December 20, 2013, adidas Originals and DMC pre-launched the “Christmas in Hollis” RUN-D.M.C x Keith Haring Superstar 80s during an in store event at Packer Shoes, Teaneck NJ.

Dropping today, December 21, 2013, the limited edition Superstar 80s will be available at select adidas Originals retailers and http://www.adidas.com/originals.

EPMD DJ Scratch talks about Jam Master Jay helping him out on the road and paying his dues with Run-D.M.C. and Public Enemy.

Run DMC collide with A-Trak in a brand new interactive video for #UniteAllOriginals. Take part in the interactive film at http://www.adidas.com/unite.

Run… Check, D… Check, A-Trak… Check, Microphone… Check.

It’s official. We’re back with the masters of collisions, Run DMC, and the prince of clubs, A-Trak, as we Unite All Originals.

Hold tight for something BIG coming up…

#unitealloriginals

Run DMC and Mick Boogie teamed with Adidas to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the seminal track with the release of the My Adidas mixtape. Several of today’s generation cover a handful of Run DMC classics, including Rapper Big Pooh, Skillz, Tanya Morgan, Kidz In The Hall, GLC, Bun B, Kid Daytona, Money Making Jam Boys, Travis Porter, and a little help from DJ Jazzy Jeff.

1. Intro: 6th Sense
2. Rapper Big Pooh & Skillz: Run’s House (produced by Mick Boogie & nVMe)
3. Interlude: Rapper Big Pooh
4. Tanya Morgan, 6th Sense & Nitty Scott, MC: Down With The King (produced by 6th Sense)
5. DJ Jazzy Jeff f/ Senor Kaos: Peter Piper (produced by DJ Jazzy Jeff)
6. Interlude: DJ Jazzy Jeff
7. Kidz In The Hall: Sucker MC’s (produced by Double 0)
8. GLC: Rock Box (produced by Makeshift)
9. Interlude: GLC
10. Bun B, The Kid Daytona, & Chip Tha Ripper: It’s Like That (produced by Amtrac)
11. Money Making Jam Boys: Beats To The Rhyme (produced by nVMe)
12. Interlude: Sugar Tongue Slim (MMJB)
13. Bonus Track – Travis Porter: My Adidas (produced by Greg Street and FKI)

Mick Boogie – “My Adidas” (Mixtape)

]]> http://www.hiphopsite.com/2011/11/14/mick-boogie-my-adidas-mixtape/feed/ 2 http://www.hiphopsite.com/2011/03/29/run-dmc-crashed-at-yelawolfs-crib-in-1987/ http://www.hiphopsite.com/2011/03/29/run-dmc-crashed-at-yelawolfs-crib-in-1987/#comments Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:50:26 +0000 http://www.hiphopsite.com/?p=32151

Yelawolf tells the story to Tony Touch on Shade 45, about his moms’ boyfriend at the time was down with Run DMC, who crashed at his crib during a tour with Aerosmith.

     Raising Hell came into my hands via a cassette dub given to me by my junior high friend, Jo-Man Wong. I actually ran into Wong at an MC battle
years later except now he was calling himself Don Mega – a five-foot tall Chinese American guy rhyming with a dancehall patois like he was one of those Jamaican Wongs and not an L.A. suburb Wong. I digress though.

     The tape had Run DMC’s Raising Hell on one side and the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill on the other. I didn’t realize either artist were part of a genre called “hip-hop,” I knew nothing about the crews except that one was from Queens, the other from Brooklyn, but either could have been Istanbul for all I could really fathom from the tiny universe of the San Gabriel Valley I knew. All I did know was that there was something here that captivated me unlike any music I had heard before.

     It came down to the sonic force of the song and lyrics and I know that’s sort of a cliche thing to say but seriously: most of the music I listened to at that time was modern rock and new wave. That’s not to say those genres couldn’t throw down when they needed to – “Blue Monday” by New Order is still hard as fuck in any era and Mobb Deep showed us that Thomas Dolby was funky all along – but put that up against Run DMC dropping “My Adidas” on your ass? No comparison, no equal.

      Despite how often I listened to Raising Hell, I can’t profess to have loved the entire album start to finish. There’s a few songs that, even to this day, I’d still fast forward past: “Is It Live” (the Go-Go percussion is cool but this just never sparked anything for me), “Raising Hell,” “Perfection,” and “Dumb Girl.” There are other songs that I thought were “ok” back then, like “You Be Illin’” with its comedic storytelling, or “Hit It Run’s” beatbox chorus.

     “Walk This Way,” which was just starting to blow up the video countdowns and radio shows and I liked it well enough even though I had no clue it
was an important rock/rap hybrid. Hell, I was so ignorant, I thought “Walk This Was” was a Run DMC song that just happened to cameo these long-haired rockers named Aerosmith.

      I definitely remember “Peter Piper,” partly for its nursery rhyme familiarity but even though I had no fucking clue as to what “sampling” was about, I definitely found the beat to be intriguing. I could hear, in the background, this voice saying, “it’s time to rise and shine” but for the life of me, I didn’t understand what it had to do with the song or its lyrics. But those bells? Those bells sounded amazing to me.

       “It’s Tricky,” was one of my favorites off that album for a long time: I just couldn’t get enough of how the track kicked off. I loved how it began slow with, “this speech is my recital/I think it’s very vital,” and then knocked everything into overdrive with those mega-aggressive drums and the rock guitar that accented every point Run and DMC had to make.

      Last but certainly not least, the last two songs on the album left an indelible imprint. “Son of Byford,” was just so goddamn ill to me with that beatboxing and DMC declaring, “I was born…son of Byford, brother of Al!” and “it’s McDaniels/not McDonalds/these rhymes are Daryl’s/these burger’s are Ronald’s!” It was a short, less than half a minute, but made the most of every second. Then to drop “Proud to Be Black,” after that was the coup de grace, not the least of which was that I had never heard pop songs affirm identity with such fervent passion and pride.

      I can’t say if Raising Hell is Run DMC’s “best” album (though obviously, it was their most popular) especially when compared to how seminal their eponymous debut was. But for myself and a generation of nascent rap fans, this was our entry point, the album that opened our ears and minds to the world of hip-hop. To anyone else, the tape I had was just a plain cassette dub but even as I wore it to static with each repeated listening, hip-hop’s call only became louder.

    Before Rick Rubin put his minimalist stamp on the group, Run-DMC was the first hip-hop group to make Rock and Roll cool in the hood.  With King Of Rock, that standard was furthered, as the trio did not stray far from the formula they crafted on their self-titled debut; wailing guitars, booming kick drums, crisp snares and more cowbells please then Will Ferrell could shake a stick at remained evident on “King Of Rock,” “Can You Rock It Like This” and “Rock The House.”  Though King Of Rock was bigger and louder, it was also the trio’s first foray into expanding their repertoire, as they delved into reggae and dancehall (“Roots, Rap, Reggae”) and their hooks even got a bit catchier, as “You Talk Too Much” & “It’s Not Funny” could not help but become instantly ingrained into your memory.

     One of the discs most alluring re-issue features are its bonus tracks, one of which includes the “Slow And Low” demo, which Run-DMC eventually gave to the Beastie Boys after determining it sounded too much like “Together Forever”; Rick Rubin would later re-work it into one of the more rowdy and hook driven tracks on the Beasties landmark debut Licensed To Ill.

     While Run and DMC were never more than average emcees, it wasn’t so much what they had to say, but how they said it (“the baddest of the bad/the coolest of the cool”) as their chemistry and charisma (which if witnessed live was even more alluring) were off the charts.  Jam Master Jay’s contributions were often overlooked, but along with Larry Smith, the duo’s aggressive, rock infused production became the group’s backbone and propelled them to visionary status; and not to be ignored, the last two-minutes of “Darryl & Joe” (Krush Groove 3) became the blueprint for anything instrumental based for the remainder of the 80′s.

    While King Of Rock is not a classic LP in the typical sense, it remains forever indelible because of the era it punctuated (Run-DMC) and the one it would spawn shortly thereafter (Raising Hell).   It was the sound, the vibe, the style (Adidas should still be cutting them checks) of the trio that made Run-DMC more then a Hiphop group; it made them a movement that would forever alter the hip-hop landscape.

   Prior to RUN DMC was the furious, fantastic, romantic, cold crush era, which found early microphone masters sampling funky disco breaks – many using the same ones over and over again – almost making hip-hop in it’s earliest incarnation a branch of disco music. But when Run DMC appeared on the scene in 1983, their brand of hip-hop was much more raw, taking a much more bare bones approach. Hard hitting drums, nasty guitars, and rhymes with attitude separated this upstart crew from Hollis, Queens from everyone else out there, and people took notice. 

   Like other groups of the same era, their 1984 full-length debut was a collection of singles that had been rocking on turntables a year before. Their first single was a powerful entry into the rap world – a double sided treat that boasted the conscious party jam “It’s Like That”, back with “Sucker MC’s”, which had arguably one of the dopest beats in hip-hop ever, and that classic verse that every longtime hip-hop fan can sing along to. Following this was the promo only single “Here We Go (Live At The Funhouse)”, which never appeared on this album (UNTIL NOW!), but was one of the crew’s best early recordings, featuring Darryl and Joe ripping up Billy Squire’s “Big Beat”, as Jay cut the record down to the bone. This was the beginning of Run DMC.

  Run DMC was the first rap group to appear on MTV, however they took a Trojan Horse like approach in doing so. While their second official single “Hard Times” and “Jam Master Jay” (the first of many living tribute songs to the great JMJ) sold more copies than their first single, it’s impact wasn’t nearly as big. It was “Rock Box”, an it’s accompanying video, that took Run DMC from being buzz-worthy to celebrity. However because MTV, at the time, had absolutely NO hip-hop in rotation (a far different animal than the MTV of today), they disguised themselves as a rock group to get on. “Rock Box” was the first rap-rock fusion record, which featured the sleazy but lovely guitars of Eddie Martinez meshed with Larry Smith’s trademark big drums. This was the first of many records that would later help define Run DMC as the “Kings of Rock”, when in fact the opposite was true. Oh, the irony.

  At nine cuts, there was little room for error, and the impact of Run DMC’s first LP cannot be denied. Not only did they reinvent hip-hop, but they turned rock and roll on it’s ear as well. Think “mash-ups” are something new? Try “Walk This Way” from 1986 on for size; even “Rock Box” counts to some degree. They were rap’s first household names, influencing an entire generation of emcees and deejays. Even twenty years later homage is paid, as fellow Queens native, Nas recently borrowed samples from “Jam Master Jay” for “You Know My Style”, while J.M.J. discovery 50 Cent (yes, it’s true), almost channels “It’s Like That” for his own club-banger, “Disco Inferno”. Meanwhile, El-P chops classic Run DMC drums for many of his incredible beats, and Mos Def jacks their logo for his own. The list goes on.

  Run DMC’s sound evolved over the years, especially when Rick Rubin came in to produce perhaps their greatest LP, “Raising Hell”. It’s no secret that in attempts to change with the times, Run DMC fell hard, trying on different styles for size, from New Jack Swing (“Pause”) to Pete Rock beats (“Down With The King”) to the embarrassing “Crown Royal” LP, but it was never the same as their golden era, captured on their first four albums. But you all know how the story go.

The group’s inability to get Crown Royal off the ground has been well-documented; the project was in pre-production for nearly two-years, saw numerous release dates get pushed back, and the group was virtually held hostage by guest-artists demanding ridiculous payoffs for their lackluster contributions (Fred Durst). However, most distressing was the fact that we saw the pioneering group’s internal diffusion on a VH-1 Behind The Music special. Which focused on painting Run as being so hungry for the spotlight that he was unable to come to grips with the groups demise. Not to mention, chronicling DMC’s voice problems, and his reluctance to even partake in another LP.

Let’s just be honest and get this out of the way, with Crown Royal Run-DMC has undeniably sold out. This LP is a slap in the face to anyone who “truly” calls themselves a supporter (and a fuck you very much to longstanding fans). Some eighteen years after their inception, the script has been painfully flipped on Run-DMC. Worse, some of the individuals, Fred Durst (“Them Girls”), and Kid Rock  (“The School Of Old”) who looked to the group for inspiration, are unfortunately in on what we can only hope will be the trio’s swan-song.

Crown Royal spirals so recklessly into contrasting segments, it’s easy to forget you are even listening to a Run-DMC record. Lacking any discernible sense of direction, or continuity, the once cutting-edge trio has mutated into a virtual 3-headed beast. They miserably play the role of alternative genre rockers on “Rock Show” feat. Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind, and “Here We Go” feat. Sugar Ray, use Everlast’s moody guitar blues to lazily interpolate Steve Miller’s “Take The Money And Run” then top it all off with the ho-hum R&B stylings of “Let’s Stay Together” feat. Jagged Edge. The group’s previous successes dabbling in the rock arena with Aerosmith are nowhere to be found on Crown Royal, as these groupings lack the same ingenuity, and conviction. And though the tracks with Fred Durst, and Kid Rock may eventually strike a chord with TRL fanatics (their intended destination), these calculated attempts to generate revenue come at Run-DMC’s own expense.

The most pressing question that arises while listening to Crown Royal is—where the fuck is DMC? There is no need to wonder what a Reverend Run solo LP would sound like, because Crown Royal is basically just that. Reason being, DMC appears briefly on a sparse 3-tracks. However, in an attempt to combat DMC’s limited contributions, Jam Master Jay does employ some studio-wizardry, as he cunningly tries to mask his very noticeable absence by cutting up, and inserting snippets of his voice whenever possible.

So what’s left for the fan that was weaned on Run-DMC? Not much, as they have seemingly lost touch with their original fanbase. Sure, they throw the hip-hop populace a few bones on “It’s Over” feat. Jermaine Dupri, “Queens Day” feat. Nas & Prodigy, and “Simmons Incoroprated” feat. Method Man. But even these ordinary tracks are not nearly enough to quench a thirst.

If hip-hop has proven anything since its inception some twenty-years ago, it’s that few emcees, or groups age gracefully. And there comes a time in everyone’s career when they are faced with an inevitable decision—should we continue to make music just for the sake of doing so, or leave on our own terms. Unfortunately, not many choose the latter, and with the heartbreaking Crown Royal, the legends from Queens have missed out on their opportunity to bow out gracefully. Hopefully, with their legacy still intact, Run-DMC will now trade in the shell-toed Adidas, fat gold chains, and leather pants for a long overdue and deserved bow.

According to the Museum’s head of security, Larry “Bud” Melman, the duo busted the door down, into the Hall, declaring themselves to be of royal stature.

“The taller one was rapping at me,” said Larry, “He kept going on about how he was the king of rock or something. I was scared, so I just agreed with him.”

Video surveillance cameras show footage of the duo desecrating many of the hall’s exhibits. One instance shows one of the men removing Michael Jackson’s famous silver glove, and throwing it on the floor, then stepping on it. Another instance showed them breaking a pair of plastic sunglasses from the Elton John exhibit.

“They just tore the place apart, and then they would fold their arms, and look at me, just waiting for a reaction,” said Larry, “At one point, they threatened me with an electric guitar. I was scared stiff”.

Police are currently investigating the scene, with only one lead to go on, a spray painted wall in the Hall that says, “Run DMC Kings Of Rock”.