![]() The trio became Run-DMC and released their first single “It’s Like That / Sucker MCs” in 1983, with their self-titled debut album released the year after. They recruited their DJ, Jason ‘Jam Master Jay’ Mizell, while hanging out in Two-Fifths park, which was the hangout in Hollis for DJs and rappers to perform, compete, and hold cyphers in the early 80s. Joseph ‘Run’ Simmons and Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniels were childhood friends from Hollis in Queens, NYC, who began writing and rapping together as teenagers. The music and the branding remain relevant 35 years on. To this day you see their t-shirts everywhere, and those awful, stylized logos with anything that remotely rhymes with Run-DMC, bearing no cultural connection whatsoever. We thought we were so cool, and that was the 90s. We’d sit on the steps in the alley behind the pool hall, surrounded in graffiti, brandishing our laceless Adidas, and we’d listen to Run-DMC. Run-DMC were really the pinnacle of pre-golden age hip hop, and Raising Hell was not only their crowning achievement, but probably the first great hip hop album, period. ![]() In the interim, we got people like Rakim and Kool G Rap setting a new benchmark for lyricism, and digital samplers which transformed the possibilities of hip hop beats. That’s how much hip hop changed between 1986, when Raising Hell was released, and the early 90s. When I first began listening to Run-DMC (I was about 13 or 14), Raising Hell was already 7 years old, and it sounded like it was 20. ![]()
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