by Ronin Ro
He complained to D about the verse and tried to personalize it, make it a little tougher by referencing Hollis and his friends from “the building.” “I went to Hollis Ave. just to see who’s there,” Run wrote. “People judge us by how we look and by what we wear. My man Darryl Mack thinks its all a joke. But me, myself: I think it’s wack ’cause I’m a cool-out folk.” Then someone drove him out to a studio in New Jersey, where Gale played him a track with a heavy keyboard riff, commercial-sounding bass, and a computer voice chanting the title, “Street Kid.”
“I kicked the rhymes,” Run remembered. “Some were written and I changed some.” Run also tried to add “fast rhymes” to make it more street, but Gale and his spouse wanted him to plead for understanding. Facing the mike, Run cried, “Adults out there, we’ve all got brains. Why don’t you treat us like you oughtta?” It was all for naught. Gale pitched the idea to various major labels, but found no takers. “Never released,” Run said tersely.
In a way, Run was relieved. Back in his attic, he practiced on his turntables with Jimmy Spicer’s record “The Bubble Bunch”— produced by Russell and Larry Smith—and Kurtis Blow’s “Do the Do,” playing it backward to create an otherworldly sound. Though he sold Larry a few passages from a “Hard Times”–like message rap for $100, Run focused on improving his grades, selecting a college to attend, and dating a schoolmate named Valerie, a serious relationship that would lead to an engagement and then, by 1984, a marriage and the birth of their first child.
In spring of 1982, Run and D felt the pressures of adulthood. High school was ending. Their parents expected them to go to college. They weren’t particularly excited about four more years of school (already both of their grades had slipped because of partying and focusing on music). And they didn’t look forward to having bosses at whatever careers they stumbled into. D had had only one job in his life. He and a friend—he never publicly identified who—had signed on to distribute handbills on the street. But D quickly tired of it and threw all the flyers in a trash can.
Run also didn’t have any idea about what sort of career to pursue. He loved music, smoking marijuana, getting on the mike and doing shows, and dreaming of someday having a hit record and supporting a family.
In their respective high schools, teachers and guidance counselors asked to what colleges they’d be applying, so to buy time until they could figure out what they would do with their lives, and to keep their parents from complaining, the music-minded duo applied to local universities.
At Rice High School in Harlem, guidance counselors asked D to pick a course to study. Exhausted by the night before—he gave the impression that he had been partying—D checked off business management on a list of possible majors given to him, since it was near the top of the list. And since his friend Butter would also be attending the school, D applied to St. John’s University. “I had no idea what the hell I was gonna be,” he said.
At Andrew Jackson High School in Hollis, Run was just as confused. He faced a checklist similar to the one given to D, but on an application for La Guardia Community College. The words “mortuary science” caught his eye. He had an uncle who did that. “And Joe said, ‘Everybody has to die, so that’s what I’m gonna take up,’” said Larry Smith.
He really didn’t care. He had to check something. He applied to La Guardia Community College. “But then I went to the community college and there were no classes for it,” he said. “It was crazy.”
In autumn 1982 Run began attending college and considered applying for work at a nearby Woolworth department store. He decided not to work there. Instead, he attended classes, did his homework, and tried to figure out what he would do with his life. At St. John’s, D did the same but immediately started screwing up. “I’d hang out in Hollis, in the game room, ’cause I didn’t like what I was going to college for,” he said. “I wasn’t able to find something to do.”
Music, they felt, continued to be an option, and Run continued to invite Two-Fifth Down member Jason Mizell to DJ for his group with D.M.C. Jay, who had by now dropped out of high school, earned his general equivalency diploma, spent most of 1982 caring for his sick father, Jesse, at home (Jesse died in October of that year). When Run issued his latest invitation into the group, Jay surprised him by saying, “Let’s do it, baby!”
At Rush Productions, really a desk in someone else’s office space at 1133 Broadway, Russell and Larry Smith wondered what to work on next. As a production team, they had created two solid hits, Jimmy Spicer’s novelty rap “The Bubble Bunch” and Orange Krush’s R & B–rap fusion.
By late 1982, rappers mixed with whites in downtown nightclubs. Graffiti artists like Fab Five Freddy and Phase II released singles like “Change the Beat” and “The Roxy” on Celluloid Records. Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” sounded like German duo Kraftwerk’s radio hit “Trans-Europe Express” and sold a whopping 600,000 12-inch singles. “It was all about dance music at that time,” party promoter Kool Lady Blue recalled.
Russell figured they could position Orange Krush as part of the dance-rap scene downtown, and by Christmas of 1982 he’d told Larry they should include Kool Lady Blue, an Englishwoman who worked in fashion by day and promoted mixed-race events at the Roxy. They could include Blue in the lineup, call the group OK Crew, and have new members rehash the beat from “Action,” Russell felt.
And since Run kept asking to record, just as Run was deciding to apply for a job at Woolworth, Russell told him, “Here, let’s do this.” As Run worked on lyrics and planned to rap over the beat from “Action,” Kool Lady Blue recalled, “Russell kept pestering me about joining them.” She told Russell her days in a punk band had soured her on being in a group, but Russell kept asking her to sing on the record. “He handed me the demo and would call me at the Chelsea Hotel daily and proceed to sing ‘my part’ to me over the phone, thinking I’d change my mind,” she said. “I thought he was out of his tree. It was funny.”
Then, D.M.C. remembered, Run insisted that the group name change to DJ Run and the OK Crew. (Run denies this.)
Ultimately, nothing came of this Run solo project, either. Kool Lady Blue would not join the OK Crew. “No, thanks,” she told Russell. Run also backed out of the musical group, telling Russell and Larry, “I want D with me. We’re gonna do what we do when we in the attic, in the basement.”
That would have been it, but then Run’s next-door neighbor Spuddy—who taught him how to play drums when Run was ten, and was also Russell’s trusted friend—told Russell, “Man, you better get with these kids. Your brother and Easy D—they’re off the hook. These kids are amazing!” Russell called Larry Smith to say he wanted to work with Run again, on something like “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, which the New York Times had just named most powerful single of 1982.
Run got D on the phone. “D, I’m really gonna make a record this weekend. It’s called ‘It’s Like That.’” He wanted help. “Go home and write about how the world is.” Though he already had a few message raps from his high school English class, D sat and filled another fifteen pages with writing. When he saw the new lyrics, Run was excited. “These are great! We’re gonna make that record!”
D, however, felt something was lacking. That night, he considered the chorus; Run yelling “It’s like that” felt plain. Something like Flash and the Furious Five’s “Message” sequel, “Survival,” would be better: “Its called survival, survival, survival.”
The next morning he called Run to say, “I’m thinking, when you go ‘It’s like that,’ there should be something to answer: ‘It’s like that/ and that’s the way it is.’” Run liked it. So did Russell, who told Run he should record it.
Run didn’t want to do this alone. He wanted a partner onstage. “I’m not making a record unless you put D on it,” he said.
Russell admired D’s fashion sense but felt Run was going too far. “Because he didn’t like my voice,” said D. “I was like ‘Peach to the apple, apple to t
he core,’” he yelled as an example. “‘I am the man with the rhymes galore, from the Hollis Crew, and I’m doing it too….’ And he was so used to ‘Clap your hands every-body!’”
Another concern was that Run’s hyper voice and D’s monotone wouldn’t mix well, Larry Smith explained. “And you had Spoonie Gee out there. Maybe we figured it would be easier to lock down one person than to have a group. And Russell knew he could control his brother. He didn’t know about D.M.C., if his parents would go along with it because they were still in school.”
In the end, Russell said all right. They performed for him in Run’s living room, and he told them to bring their lyrics over to Larry’s house in Jamaica, Queens.
Larry and Russ were already there when they arrived one afternoon in the autumn of 1982. Larry stood near his eight-track reel-to-reel tape recorder, mixing board, microphones, guitars, and other instruments, and played them what he and Russell had created—their take on “Planet Rock.” Run and D loved its stark beat, intimidating horn blast, and quirky little synthesizer effects. Instead of the live music and disco grooves on Sugar Hill singles, Larry recorded a pummeling track.
Russell thumbed through D’s rhyme book and allotted lyrics to Run and D. They entered a recording room and yelled their lyric, but the music stopped. Russell wanted them to sound more like DJ Hollywood and Kurtis Blow. They deepened their voices and tried again.
At home, Run played the studio tape for his father. Ray was also there, nodding along.
Run’s father pointed at Ray. “Watch his head! When he bob that head that means that record’s gonna be a hit!”
Russell had second thoughts, Larry recalled, and in a formal Pilgrim-like tone, he asked, “What’s my little brother saying?” A record label wouldn’t sign a group cursing as much as this. The group edited their verses. “We had better lyrics,” Larry sighed. “But that was the most commercial of them all. We had some profanity. And Joe, even at a young age, didn’t like cursing.”
Back in Larry’s attic again, they recorded “It’s Like That” with the inflated, Blow-like voices. But D.M.C. yelled, “Nah, let’s do it like ‘Planet Rock’! Let’s make this shit flow! Let’s be loud! Bring some energy to it!”
Russell wasn’t there, but Larry—who usually preferred commercial elements like live music and party lyrics—let them try it.
D faced the mike and Run, who stood across from him. Then he yelled: “Un-em-ploy-ment at ay wreck curd high!” Larry was stunned. He called Russell on the telephone to say, “Yo, this shit is def. We got a hit. We need a name.” Larry then extended the telephone to Run.
Run grabbed it and listened, then started to look defeated. D knew this couldn’t be good. Run was near tears from stress when he passed him the phone.
Russell said, “The name of y’all is Runde-MC.”
D felt rage billow inside him.
“See?” Russell asked happily. “It sounds so good, Runde-MC.”
They wanted something as descriptive as the Furious Five, Fearless Four, or Treacherous Three. Even the “Tough Two,” D recalled. “Not fucking ‘Runde-MC,’ the fakest name in the world.”
They literally cried. “Russell, you’re ruining us!
“It’s stupid…it…
“Runde-MC?
“Please don’t call us that! Please!”
Russell ignored them. “Joe was younger—he was on the street—and Russell looked at it from an old perspective,” said Larry. “So Joe had to shut up and learn.”
Russell started acting as their manager and saw every major label reject the song. “They’re bourgeois blacks,” Russell complained about label executives. They wanted “sophisticated” upscale images like Chic (who performed in suits), or gentle music like Peabo Bryson’s ballads. “It’s also too black for them,” he felt. Rejections piled up, but then Russell stopped in at Profile Records.
During the past two years, the two young white guys (Cory Robbins and Steve Plotnicki) who started Profile in 1981 with $34,000 had enjoyed the demos Russell brought, but not enough to actually sign any of his acts.
Instead, they released dance music singles before investing $750 of their final $2,000 on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde’s “Genius Rap,” a November 1981 12-inch that was set to the Tom Tom Club’s hit “Genius of Love,” and sold a remarkable 150,000 copies, keeping Profile in business.
Runde-MC was harder than anyone signed to the label—Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, the Disco Four, Hurt ’Em Bad, and dance music singers like Sharon Brown (“Specialize in Love”)—but Russell handed young label president Cory Robbins, a former DJ from upstate New York, the tape. There was only one song on it, Robbins recalled. “And not only that, Run-D.M.C. was spelled differently: R-u-n-d-e, one word, ‘Runde’ dash MC.”
Robbins asked Russell, “Why is it called that?”
“Oh. ’Cause my brother’s Run and the other guy is D.M.C.”
“Well, why isn’t it ‘Run-D.M.C.’?”
“Yeah, okay, we’ll do that!”
Robbins listened to “It’s Like That” and had to make a decision. “We were very familiar with all the rap records out at that point because there weren’t that many,” he said. “Sugar Hill was having a lot of hits and everything had a full band and a lot of instruments. And this had bass and drums and was very, very empty sounding, sparse and different.” He’d never heard anything like it. That night he drove around town, playing it repeatedly. “And I kept liking it more and more every time I played it.” He enjoyed the chorus, “It’s like that and that’s the way it is,” and told himself, “Oh, that’s a pretty good line. That’s a good hook. And this record is really so different. I don’t know if people are gonna like it, ’cause it doesn’t really have many instruments, but it’s different, it’s original, the lyric is really good, the hook is great, and it’s worth…let’s give a shot.”
Robbins made an offer.
Russell wanted more money.
Robbins said, “No. We’ll do it for half that money.” Profile was ready to let it go.
Russell thought it over, then accepted Profile’s offer of 10 points and a $25,000 advance for an album.
D.M.C. was confused. It wasn’t Mercury. “It wasn’t a major label.”
Profile drew up a contract. “Actually Russell was signed to Profile,” D.M.C. explained. “He was signed to bring Profile Run-D.M.C. records. And we signed to Russell.” In addition, Robbins said, the group signed a contract directly with Profile. This way, if Russell and Profile stopped working together or had a falling-out, the group Run-D.M.C. would still be signed to Profile Records. “They had to sign the Profile contract also, but the money got paid to Rush, and Rush paid Run-D.M.C.,” Robbins explained. “Rush collected all the money from Profile and then paid it out to the artists.”
The contract covered “It’s Like That” and gave Profile the option to request more singles and albums.
As Rush Productions and Profile finalized terms in March 1983, Run and D found themselves spending more time in the city. “We had to bring contracts from the label to the lawyer’s office,” said D. “We had to do the footwork.”
Russell and Larry called Greene Street Studios in lower Manhattan and played engineer Roddy Hui the demo for “It’s Like That.” Hui (pronounced “way”) had helped with Kurtis Blow singles when the studio was known as Big Apple. Hui now called studio owner Steve Loeb into the room and put Russell and Larry on speakerphone. Loeb heard the song, and said they could record, and pay him later.
Run and D were excited. “Larry’s house was good,” Run said. “Greene Street was better.”
They recorded “It’s Like That,” and then Russell began creating something else. On a drum machine, Larry tapped in the beat that drummer Trevor Gale played on Orange Krush’s popular single “Action,” the same beat Russell had wanted Lady Blue to sing on.
Run was about to record an old routine about riding in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac to buy marijuana uptown when Russell said, “Just be sure to m
ention Orange Krush and tell them where you go to school.”
Run revised his opening lines. Then D let Russell hear his verse about St. John’s University, what D called his light skin, living in Queens, and eating chicken and collard greens. “Russell was like, oh shit,” D recalled.
Russell and Larry let them rap the entire song without stopping, and while mixing it, they took the drums out when D started rapping and had DJ Davy DMX—Kurtis Blow’s DJ until he and Kurt had a falling-out for unspecified reasons—scratch behind D’s voice. Run and D wanted Jason Mizell in the group, but Larry included Davy instead. “ ’Cause he was the DJ for Kurt, he was the DJ for the Orange Krush band,” said D.M.C. “They were cool. It was their little clique: Larry, Kurt, Russell, and Davy.”
Russell and Larry then alienated Run and D by saying they should add melody at certain points.
Run and D objected.
“Turned out they were right,” Russell said later in his autobiography.
Eight hours after they started, Run-D.M.C. left Greene Street Studios with a tape of a song called “Sucker MCs (Krush Groove 1).”
In Hollis the next day Run and D faced Jay and explained why they hadn’t attended the going-away party Jay had thrown for their pal Nellie D at neighborhood club Dorian’s. By the turntables all night, Jay had dismissed MCs. “I wasn’t letting anybody rhyme,” he said, even after he sensed they wouldn’t show up.
Now Run stood there in his black leather jacket and white Lees, with his Afro and sideburns; D, in his cloth trench coat and glasses, his hair cut in a severe round Caesar style that, combined with his square-framed glasses, made him look odd. They told Jay they’d been in the studio, and then played “It’s Like That.” By the fadeout, admiration had replaced anger on Jay’s face, and he nodded and said, “Okay.” Run and D then reported that they were heading over to Hollis Avenue to shoot their publicity photo, and told Jay they wanted him to join them. Jay understood that they really wanted him in the group, that it wasn’t just talk. He happily slipped into his black leather bomber jacket, his billed black leather cap, and his chunky brass belt buckle that spelled out “Jay.”