Raising Hell

Run-DMC

album cover

A Fistful of Hip-Hop Firsts

Run-DMC was the first hip-hop act to embrace rock in a musically astute way (its breakthrough single was this album's collaboration with Aerosmith on the rock band's signature "Walk This Way"). The trio from Hollis, Queens, was the first hip-hop act to earn airtime on then-dismayingly-white MTV, the first to sell a million copies (this album eventually sold more than three million), and the first to establish many of hip-hop's narrative tropes—like rapping about sneakers ("My Adidas"), or boasting about vocabulary ("It's Tricky").

But with this, its third album, Run-DMC (rappers Joseph Simmons, aka Run, and Darryl McDaniels, aka DMC, and Jason Mizell, aka DJ Jam Master Jay, who was murdered at a recording studio in 2002) did something even more significant: The trio showed that hip-hop, then mostly a singles medium, could be album music. Its raps contain lyric references that function as recurring leitmotifs, animating several of the album's twelve tracks. These not only unify the work as a whole, they provide rappers Simmons and McDaniels (masters of the withering put-down) with a never-ending supply of material for riffing.

Raising Hell's fiery wordplay is matched (and sometimes overshadowed) by its genre-blind musical backdrops. These are the work of producer Rick Rubin, who'd started Def Jam with entrepreneur Russell Simmons (Joseph's brother) three years before work began on Raising Hell. A child of punk rock, Rubin offsets the Run-DMC raps with guitars that crunch even harder than Aerosmith's did—on "It's Tricky," Rubin transforms the guitar riff from the Knack's "My Sharona" into a massive goth attack. And he often runs DJ Jam Master Jay's turntables through rock sound effects too, with sometimes terrifying results.

Shrewdly, Rubin leaves the vocals untouched, so that it's possible to hear every last bit of the electrifying volleys between Simmons and McDaniels. These endure as some of the most intense point-counterpoint rapping in hip-hop history.

Genre: Hip-Hop
Released: 1986, Def Jam
Key Tracks: "My Adidas," "Raising Hell," "Walk This Way," "It's Tricky."
Catalog Choice: Run-DMC.
Next Stop: LL Cool J: Mama Said Knock You Out
After That: The Beastie Boys: Paul's Boutique
Book Page: 663

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About 1,000 Recordings

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