Raising Hell

by Ronin Ro

  “Well I rock my Kang-ol.”

  Run and D had just come to rap and felt this was fake. Soon, Run, D, and Jay stood across from the Treacherous Three. Holman’s plan was to go back and forth with the Treacherous Three at the show’s end.

  Kool Moe Dee said, “Okay, for the TV shit, I guess we could do a stage version to show what a battle actually is. How are we gonna do the battle? Is it gonna be authentic? Are we gonna have the crowd respond?”

  “Oh, we’re just gonna show what the back-and-forth is,” said Holman.

  D.M.C. nodded, thinking, “Oh shit, we’re gonna be battling the Treacherous Three!”

  Run meanwhile took it all in. “We do our part. They do their part. They come up with this thing called the battle rap, we’re gonna win.”

  Onstage, with cameras rolling, Moe held his mike. “One two one two,” he began. “On the mike at this time, the coolest of the cool. They call me Moe Dee in the place to be. Jam Master Jay, one for the treble, two for the bass; come on Jam Master, let’s rock the place.” Behind the turntables, Jay let the record go. Moe rapped: “When it comes to rap, I’m the epitome: the rapper’s idol and my title is Kool Moe Dee.”

  Run said a rhyme from their upcoming “Rock Box”: “They call me illest and iller there’s no one chiller. It’s not Michael Jackson and this is not Thriller. One def rapper, cold know I can hang: I’m Run from Run-D.M.C., not Kool from Kool and the Gang.”

  Special K of the Treacherous Three did a party rap, and then D yelled, “Well, I’m D.M.C. in the place to be and the place to be is with D.M.C.; and by the time I’m through you will agree no other MCs rock the house like me.”

  Moe stepped up again. “Well I’m the coolest of the cool, they call me Moe Dee, and ain’t another rapper who’s as bad as me.”

  Run followed with a routine he’d been writing: “Now party people, I’m so happy I don’t know what to do ’cause I’m the MC with the rhymes, cold down with the crew. Rock from Africa to France and then to Kalamazoo and every place that I play I hear a yay, not a boo.”

  Special K got on one more time.

  Then D stopped being polite “ ’cause them motherfuckers was talking about their braids and trying to speak sexy.” He shouted: “D-M-C, that’s who I am, I love to perform, but I’m not a ham! My mother said ‘do it’…I said ’yes ma’am’! And I can do it because I know I can!”

  The show ended with the bands standing near each other and singer Shannon (who had performed her dance hit “Give Me Tonight”), but everyone knew Run-D.M.C. had finally ended the old-school era. “ ’Cause that was the first time that people saw the image,” D said. “They felt the difference. We were making it cool to be educated and not a drug dealer.

  “We were just as rough as them,” he continued. “We made not being gangsta ‘gangsta.’ Being educated and going to school, getting straight A’s, you’re not a punk.”

  Chapter 11

  Russell and Rick

  The wrap party for Graffiti Rock was held at Danceteria, and at the club, Russell ran into old friend Jazzy Jay. Jazzy was a member of the Soulsonic Force, the group that joined Afrika Bambaataa on his hit “Planet Rock.” The short, athletic-looking DJ was also featured on a new record Russell liked and kept hearing. On this record, “It’s Yours,” a rapper named T La Rock used big words to describe the actual process of recording the song, and Jazzy scratched a number of horns and singers’ voices over a hard drumbeat. At the wrap party, Russell asked Jazzy, “How you made this record?”

  Jazzy introduced him to its producer, Rick Rubin, a chubby white twenty-one-year-old New York University film student. Russell couldn’t believe that this long-haired fan of Run-D.M.C. and rock music had created the compelling bass-heavy single, but once they started talking, he learned that Rick liked the same records and understood that rap music had to sound hard.

  For his part, Rick couldn’t believe this was the man credited on over a dozen of his favorite rap records. “Back then, Russell used to wear sports coats, penny loafers, and argyle socks,” Rick said. “He used to care what the industry thought of him. I used to tell him as long as the music was good, they’d have to deal with him.”

  Rick grew up in Lido Beach, Long Island. He loved the Beatles and played his guitar to albums by punk pioneers the Ramones. During high school he enjoyed the Ramones-like Sex Pistols, L.A.-based punk band Black Flag, the metal group AC/DC, Aerosmith’s blues-based sound, and early Sugar Hill singles.

  Rick enrolled at NYU and moved into a dorm building downtown in 1981. He started a rock band called Hose that specialized in plodding renditions of Rick James’s “Super Freak,” released a Hose record on his own label, and was a regular at the downtown reggae club Negril. Rick loved to watch DJs scratch and wished more rap records included the sound. “He would roam around looking for new artists to sign and connections to make,” party promoter Lady Blue remembered. “The club was connection central in those days. All the deals went down at the club.”

  In places like Danceteria or the Underground, Rick—who dressed like a Ramones member with a black leather biker jacket, a T-shirt, and faded jeans—stood right in front of the DJ booth, nodding his head while Jazzy Jay scratched. Rick soon introduced himself and invited Jazzy to help with a remix for the Sex Pistols. Jazzy entered a recording studio and did a mix, and while nothing came of it, Rick and Jazzy kept hanging together, and Jazzy took him to real jams up in the Bronx and to clubs like the Fever and Broadway International. “I think I was kind of a novelty,” Rick Rubin said. “They appreciated the fact that I was such a fan and knew so much about the music.”

  At NYU, Rick continued to promote the Hose album he had released on his own label. With copies of the album in hand, he convinced some nearby record stores to distribute it. One day he told his roommate Adam Dubin, “Come on, let’s go for a walk, I’m gonna go check my inventory.”

  Rick stopped in at downtown shops like Rat Cage Records and 99 Records, searched the bins, counted how many Hose albums each had in stock, and told owners he’d return with more. “And he explained the whole punk rock thing was about doing it yourself. You don’t need CBS Records or any company to put your album out,” Dubin remembered. “You can have them, but you don’t need them.”

  Rick soon started scratching at his own parties, and telling people about his respect for Grandmaster Flash. At these events, white college students bombarded him with requests for Top 40 hits like Lionel Richie’s “All Night Long,” and Rick would tell them, “Yeah, yeah, no problem,” but “then he’d put on the Treacherous Three or something,” said Dubin. Rick quickly went from inviting rappers from the South Bronx to his events, and having them rap over beats on his new drum machine, to telling Jazzy in a club one night, “I just made a beat. I want you to listen to it.” The beat was the rough draft of “It’s Yours.” Rick added, “I’m thinking about going in the studio with this.”

  Now Russell Simmons was speaking with Rick Rubin in Danceteria, at the wrap party for the Graffiti Rock pilot episode that featured Run-D.M.C. battling the Treacherous Three. Russell was learning that Rubin loved Run-D.M.C.’s first album as much as Russell loved the raw sound of “It’s Yours.” “Rick hooked up with the only guy he could not miss in the rap world,” said Adam Dubin. “Russell was the rap world because all the bands were his.” It wasn’t hard to get to know Russell back then, he added. “If you went to Danceteria, there was Russell. If you went to the Roxy, there was Russell.”

  Russell soon visited Rick’s dorm room at NYU, where Rick attended film classes, aspired to a career in music, and told himself that if all else failed, he could go to law school and become a lawyer.

  Rubin’s dorm room was a mess but he had equipment: turntables, amps, speakers, and crates of records. Russell learned that in addition to making hard beats, Rubin deejayed as “Double R” for a white rap group called the Beastie Boys, who patterned themselves after the Treacherous Three.

  Russell said he wanted to meet the Bea
stie Boys. He also listened to some of the beats Rick had on his DMX drum machine and felt they were hit records. Rick then stopped by 1133 Broadway, where Russell ran Rush Productions out of two rooms. Rick asked Russell to help promote T La Rock’s “It’s Yours” around the country. They wound up discussing how the industry worked. Rick claimed his distributor didn’t pay him for the T La Rock record. Russell claimed he went underpaid for hits he produced. “So we started hanging out, and he started taking me up to the Disco Fever and Harlem World, and I used to hang out in his office, and we just became friends,” Rick explained.

  During spring 1984, Russell was excited. He’d been seeking a white rap group with the right sound since 1980, and now long-haired Rick Rubin led three white boys up to him at Danceteria. Russell didn’t like the matching red jogging suits and do-rags Rubin had bought down in Chinatown, but knew he could change that.

  Rick introduced the trio as Ad Rock, Mike D, and MCA. “Hearing that was Run’s brother bugged me out,” said Ad Rock. “That he was a manager and managed Kurtis Blow bugged me out. Then I was actually talking with him and he was a different person back then. It was interesting.”

  Russell still smoked dust and drank excessively. “This guy would be out drinking, like, twelve screwdrivers and going to three clubs every night,” said Beastie Boy member Mike D. But Russell signed on to manage Rick Rubin and the Beasties.

  One day that spring Rick Rubin stopped by Rush Productions’ office and played Russell a tape of rapper L.L. Cool J’s song “I Need a Beat.” Russell cried, “It’s a hit, I love it!”

  Rick asked, “Well, do you know what I should do with it? How’s this gonna work?”

  “This is really good,” Russell said. “Maybe we should put it out on Profile.”

  Rick had already been there, and Profile executives had rejected the song. “Look, all you do is complain to me about how they don’t pay you and it’s terrible and it’s frustrating and it’s a waste of time,” Rick said. “Why don’t we just do it ourselves?”

  “No, no, I’ve got a bunch of artists, and I’m hoping to get a production deal with a major label at some point and this would get in the way of that,” Russell explained.

  “Well, let me. How about if I make the records and run the company and do all the work and you can be my partner?”

  Russell said, “Okay.” He’d put up some money. But he wanted to meet L.L.

  “He’s kind of fucked up, Russell,” Rick warned.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see.”

  L.L. (born James Todd Smith on January 14, 1969) started rapping at the age of nine. By 1983, he and a friend named Cal rapped as a duo called the Freeze MCs. They met Hollis-based DJ Finesse, who knew Run from neighborhood house parties and jams in 205th Street Park and who hoped to form his own group and achieve as much success as Run-D.M.C. L.L. and Cal started recording demo tapes in Finesse’s basement. One day, L.L. and Finesse recorded without Cal and easily filled three ninety-minute tapes. Finesse told L.L., “Okay, I ran out of tape. Are we finished yet?” L.L. kept rapping.

  L.L. wanted to make it in music, so he reportedly dropped out of high school. Like Run, L.L. was known for battling at jams, growling, “Yo, you want to battle? Boom. Right here, right now.” His technique was to let a challenger say half a lyric, then interrupt with a humiliating punch line. “It reached the point where brothers around the way hated him,” said Finesse. At block parties, L.L. embarrassed MCs until hosts surrounded him and said, “Move away. You are not invited here anymore.” He was everywhere, said producer Larry Smith. “He would perform in the backyard if necessary.” And at home, L.L. bought every rap single he could and studied them all. Run-D.M.C. was among his favorites, but for demo tapes he also recorded a Melle Mel–style message rap called “Heritage.” And for another song, Finesse recalled, “He sang some shit on the demo tape and he can’t sing.” Then after his mother bought him a small $200 drum machine with her income tax check, L.L. had Finesse tap out drumbeats while L.L. rapped articulate lyrics like “I Need a Beat.”

  While creating demo tapes in 1983, L.L. learned that Run-D.M.C. would play the United Skates of America roller rink in Jackson Heights. In the crowd, he watched them perform their early singles. When they were done, he approached to challenge Run. “Yo, we could do this right now!”

  That day, Run answered, “Yo, when you get a record deal, step back to me.”

  L.L. glared at him for a second, then said, “Yeah, all right,” and left to go home and write more battle raps.

  After hearing “It’s Yours,” L.L. sent a demo to Rick Rubin and called every day to ask if Rick had heard it yet. Rick didn’t, but Beastie Boy Ad Rock did. “I wasn’t going to school or doing anything at the time,” Ad explained. “I was just staying at Rick’s dorm room. So I would mess with his drum machine and turntables. I had nothing to do.” He rifled through a box of tapes, found L.L.’s demo, and played it. He enjoyed every note. “L.L. was mathematical and used very big words,” he said of what drew him to the tape. “It’s funny because you learn all that weird shit in school and forget it the day you leave. But he had all those words and an attitude. He sounded like Kool Moe Dee [of the Treacherous Three] and he was good.” Ad Rock and Rick Rubin soon had L.L. in a studio. L.L. had one hundred songs, choruses, and verses memorized. The producers had ten beats on Rick’s DMX drum machine. Midway through one Ad Rock had programmed, L.L. decided, “I like that one.”

  Rick told him, “Okay, let’s make a song over it.” The result was the aggressive number “I Need a Beat,” which Rick Rubin played for Russell in his office at Rush Productions.

  After hearing Rick play the tape, Russell asked D if he would like to come meet his client, producer Rick Rubin. Since Run had married his high school sweetheart, Valerie, and then had a daughter Vanessa in 1984, Run didn’t hang out much. D, who usually tagged along with Russell and who also enjoyed “It’s Yours,” agreed to accompany Russell to NYU dorm building Weinstein Hall that night. In Rick’s dorm room, D met the heavyset white kid with long hair and dark glasses, heard a few of Rick’s jokes, and liked him immediately. “Rick was just a cool pizza-eating white boy with rock ’n’ roll, rap, and punk records,” said D.

  Rick’s dorm room was small and cramped with two beds. Two desks shoved together held a pair of Technics turntables and a mixer. Two chests of drawers on each side held industrial-size Sterling-Vega speakers. Power amps were strewn about the room. “There was no place to put books or anything having to do with school,” Rick’s roommate Adam Dubin recalled.

  Thumbing through albums in milk crates, D.M.C. saw half of Rick’s collection consisted of Kurtis Blow, “Rock Box,” “It’s Like That,” Treacherous Three, and other rap music. The rest were punk rock and hard metal bands like the immortal Ramones, Aerosmith, the Dictators, Motorhead (“Ace of Spades”), AC/DC, and Minor Threat. D, who was getting deeper into rock, liked Rick even more. “Big dirty white boy in college,” D joked. “It was a sight. He was National Lampoon, John Belushi. I don’t know how they let him in there.” D soon started heading to Rick’s dorm room without Russell to hang out, and during one visit Rick said, “Listen to this.” Rick played him L.L.’s tape. “This guy, he’s from Farmer’s Boulevard, right over by you. You know him?”

  D heard the rapper call himself “Ladies Love Cool J.” He didn’t recognize the name but liked his “computerized pitch,” and the raw beat Rick had recorded in the studio. “Whoa,” D said, and when “I Need a Beat” ended. “Who is this young kid?”

  Rick Rubin arranged for L.L. to stop by Russell’s office. In the waiting room that day in 1984, L.L.—attired in “Fearless Four [lace-up] boots and straps around his legs like some break-dancer,” Russell recalled—approached Reggie Reg of the Crash Crew to gush, “Yo, Crash Crew! My grandma got your record. Yo, I like that one ‘Breaking Bells’ and I want to do it over.”

  “Yeah, kid, sure,” Reggie said.

  Then Russell met L.L.
, took one look at L.L.’s outfit, and asked, “Where you from?”

  “Hollis,” L.L. claimed, though he was actually from St. Albans.

  “Where the fuck did you get those pants?”

  As the meeting continued, L.L. said, “I want to make records like Run.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “They’re selling,” L.L. replied.

  Then L.L., his former DJ Finesse said, signed a deal that granted Rush Productions 50 percent of the money. “Management, producer, talent scout, whatever hat there was, Russ had it on,” Finesse claimed. “People automatically say it’s highway robbery, but Russell was putting that money right back into what he was doing. The 50 percent from L.L. Cool J went into Run-D.M.C.” L.L. received 40 percent, Finesse added, while his new DJ Cut Creator accepted 10.

  Another day, Run stopped in to see Russell at his office and was shocked to discover Russ’s new artist was the kid who had challenged him at United Skates of America after one concert in 1983. “You looked up and there he was with ‘I Need a Beat’ and Russell and them had a new project,” Run said.

  Russell wanted L.L. to open Run-D.M.C.’s concert at the Encore. L.L. arrived for the show with braids, spiked bracelets, and knee-high boots. D stammered, “L, take those shits off! Find some sneakers!”

  Run laughed at his appearance. “He was a little corny at the start,” Run felt. “He didn’t know how to dress. He came in with the Melle Mel style. ‘I thought that’s what y’all do.’ He had on boots and spikes.”

  The embarrassed young rapper quickly changed his image. “He didn’t know,” D explained. “He was thinking, ‘I got to do what these cool motherfuckers are doing.’”

  On another occasion, Run stopped by Russell’s office and saw L.L. with a Kangol hat and a tracksuit. Run, who sometimes dressed the same onstage, felt L.L. was imitating him. Said D, “Everybody saw Run. Run saw Run and he checked L.L. for it.”