Run DMC: Down With The Kings [1993]
|
Run DMC, Queens New York 1985 |
|
UK 1987 |
|
Guru 1995 |
|
Ten years ago Run DMC grabbed the mic and changed the face of music. Their unique blend of tough lyrical artillery and fat-laced B-boy stylings put the street firmly back into hip-hop. They ripped the rhymes, rocked the set, and consigned everyone that came before them to a museum case marked ‘Old School’. Now they’re back after a two year hiatus, during which the group’s musical and personal fortunes had fallen so low that many had written them off completely. Guru: When I first heard your shit, that was one of the things that inspired me to take rapping seriously. I was a freshman in college and you were going “After 12th grade I went straight to college...” I was like “Oh shit.”
DMC: We went to college for two semesters, and that’s when ‘Sucker MCs’ came out. We got a gig in North Carolina, we flew down there, and when we came back home we got more gigs and we had to take a leave of absence. So we’ve been absent ever since. Back in high school I didn’t even know that I was gonna be a rapper or nothin’. Jay, he had his little crew and they called themselves ‘two-fifth down’, and they was the ones from the neighborhood that would bring the turntables to the park, bring out the crates of records and they would just DJ.
Russell [Russell Simmons, Run’s brother] told Run, “Yo, I’ll let you make records but you got to get out of high school first.” Run was like the professional in the neighborhood. He used to rap with Kurtis Blow, go into the park and kick his rhyme, cos they knew him — DJ Run. Everybody else was just nervous and learning, so Run would come and bust his rhyme. It took a long time before I would get on the mic with him. I would DJ for him, or sit in the park holding my beer sayin’ “no you go over I’ll see you later.” I didn’t really start rapping with him until he came and said “Yo D we got a record.” When we graduated he came, “Yo D, the name of the record is ‘It’s Like That’, the second record be ‘Sucker MCs’. Go home and write rhymes about, you know, the world.” So I went home and we went and put it together. And boom.
© Frank Broughton Originally published in Mixmag, 1993 |