by Ronin Ro
Larry Smith was also disgruntled. “See, I didn’t hang with Rick,” Larry said. When Rick arrived at a session, he’d immediately be “in Russell’s ear” with his ideas, Ray said, and Larry felt, “Damn, Russell. You were just talking to me, and now you over here with him?”
They recorded “Jam Master Jammin’,” a tribute to their DJ, but the rock-style bass line—played by Run-D.M.C’s Larry-approved first DJ, Davy DMX—was dour. Jay scratched a boring sound effect (“Whoo”). Someone then decided Davy DMX’s rock riff wasn’t forceful enough, so Rick—who usually sat and practiced a few riffs on an electric guitar while Russell and Larry worked with Run-D.M.C—plugged his guitar in and got ready to play a melody that evoked the metal group AC/DC. “He couldn’t do solos or anything,” said Adam Dubin. He was good at punk-style bar chords and choosing what sounded good but “wasn’t a good guitar player.” Even so, Rick played his riff alongside one by Davy DMX. “That was foul,” Runny Ray felt, especially since Rick’s sounded identical.
Another weekend, Run and D heard Russell say, “L.L. got an idea for your record.” The idea was “Can You Rock It Like This,” a rant about reporters, fans, and groupies, set to another guitar-heavy track.
Since their epic battle at Rush, Run and L.L. had continued to butt heads, said Ray. “Every time they’d meet they had a battle. Run was the instigator. L.L. was like, ‘All right, nigga, whatever. You got your shit.’ But Run would keep instigating and then it would make L.L. rap.” Run would say, “You ain’t deffer than me. Your shit is weak.” Crowds formed. “Then L.L. would say his shit and everyone would say ‘Run is better’ ’cause everybody was on his shit. Run-D.M.C. was on the radio, and Run had records out: ‘You’re def, you’re def; nigga, you’re def.’”
L.L. arrived at Greene Street that day despite the fact that Run didn’t want him involved, said Runny Ray. “I don’t even think he should get royalties,” he remembered hearing Run say. “I think we should just pay him and let him go.” And when L.L. tried to coach them on how to say the lyric, Run asked his brother, “Why we got to do his record?”
“ ’Cause we need another song.”
“Well why we got to do his shit?”
L.L. kept coaching, Ray added, and Run snapped, “Don’t tell me how to do them. I’m’ a do it my way.”
Larry stood up from his chair. “Certain times I would just walk out the studio and leave.”
Jay told Run to relax, but, D said, “Run wasn’t too happy with L.L. telling him what to say. But we laid it. You know what? That particular day they were friends.”
The group left the studio with mixed feelings. “King of Rock was uninspired,” said Run. “It wasn’t as good. The best record was ‘Kings of Rock.’ Some of that other stuff was just okay. And we did ‘Can You Rock It Like This.’ We obviously didn’t write that ourselves. ‘You’re Blind.’ We didn’t write that. ‘You Talk Too Much’ wasn’t half as good as ‘It’s Like That.’”
Larry felt the same. “If you notice, Rick Rubin’s on there,” he said of the album’s production. “That’s when Russell and Rick’s relationship started gelling, coming together.”
Russell liked “Kings of Rock” and “You’re Blind” but felt they all should have taken more time and made it as unique as their debut. “A lot of the problem was economic,” he later wrote; “we had to deliver the second album to Profile in order to get paid for the first.”
Right after Run-D.M.C. finished recording their second album, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons publicly launched Def Jam Recordings by releasing L.L. Cool J’s November 1984 single “I Need a Beat,” and placing a triumphant ad in Billboard that announced, “The purpose of this company is to educate people as to the value of real street music by putting out records that nobody in the business would distribute but us.” Rap fans flocked to the single, which cost $700 to produce and quickly sold 100,000 copies, while Run-D.M.C. waited for Profile to release their still-untitled second album, which they had mixed feelings about because Larry Smith and Russell had drowned their beats in commercial music. (Even though Rick Rubin was present during sessions and Russell liked Rick’s “It’s Yours” production, Russell and Larry stuck with the tried-and-true musical sound that had helped Run-D.M.C.’s debut sell over 500,000 copies.) Profile president Cory Robbins heard their song “Kings of Rock” and decided to make it “king, singular,” and that it would make a good album title. And when they planned to shoot a video for the title track, Robbins (“a big Dave Letterman fan”) suggested including comedian Larry “Bud” Melman, who appeared on the highly rated talk show Late Night with David Letterman (then airing on NBC) every weeknight.
One winter day in 1984, Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay bundled up in black leather coats and rode toward upstate New York during a snowstorm. Cory and Russell had agreed to pay the wizened old comedian’s manager $1,500. As cameras rolled, Melman (in blazer, white shirt, and black-framed glasses) blocked the entrance to a building. As Run and D (in their black leather blazers, pants, and turtlenecks) ran up some steps, Melman said, “This is a rock-and-roll museum. You don’t belong here.” They shoved him aside, then pushed through two doors. “I’m the king of rock, there is none higher!” D yelled.
Both rappers stomped on Michael Jackson’s sequined glove, smashed Elton John’s sequined glasses, set a black hat onto a bust of the Fab Four, then crossed their arms, looked at a television set airing footage of Little Richard and Chuck Berry, and shook their heads. When Jerry Lee Lewis appeared on-screen, playing piano, they turned the set off. The video concluded with the duo nodding approvingly while viewing “Rock Box” footage on another set. Although “King of Rock” hewed closely to the “Rock Box” blueprint—metal, funny lyrics, white guest stars, and a story—some MTV executives were offended. “ ’Cause of the rock-and-roll museum,” D explained. “They didn’t like us pulling the plug on Chuck Berry. We had the audacity to dis rock and roll legends.” But Russell defended the “King of Rock” video during meetings with network executives. “We’re not moving it,” Russell told them. “This shit is art.” Then D attended an informal gathering at MTV to “explain the glove-stepping thing. I had to bring a glove and demonstrate what I did.” The network relented, realizing the mock destruction was in line with rap’s self-aggrandizing, competitive spirit, making Run-D.M.C. bigger than ever. “We took the crown from the Bronx and Manhattan,” D.M.C. said happily. And as the single became a hit, fans took to calling Run-D.M.C. the kings of the rap genre. But Kurtis Blow called Run the day King of Rock was released to stores in January 1985. “I was just in record stores in Harlem,” Kurt told him. “Niggas said it’s wack.” Days later, Kurtis spoke with D when Run left Run-D.M.C.’s dressing room after a concert. “Kurtis Blow happened to catch me one minute when Run wasn’t around and said, ‘Yo, D, man, you got to stop saying you’re the fucking king!’” D claimed. When Kurtis left the room, D thought, “Whoa. What should I do? Should I really stop? Out of respect?” Run came back in, saw D’s expression, and asked what had happened. D told him. Run was livid. “What!” Run yelled. “Motherfucker!”
Run charged through the crowd, ran up to Kurt, and yelled, “Motherfucker, you leave fucking D alone! You don’t play my man D like that! Number one, he says what he wants! You fake!” The crowd was stunned. “That was probably the day Run came out from under Kurt’s shadow,” said D.
Run, who was twenty at the time, disagreed. “I had stopped being the son of a Kurtis Blow a long time ago,” Run said.
King of Rock (released in January 1985) emerged as another record-breaking Run-D.M.C. hit—the first million-selling rap album—and Rolling Stone, the biggest rock magazine on earth, raved about every note. D’s claim of being the king of rock was outrageous, but “damned hard to refute,” the review noted, and while other rappers might be better in some areas, “Run-D.M.C. attacks on all fronts.” The review described Run-D.M.C. as a “hip-hop Black Sabbath,” questioned whether rock fans would accept their music, and stressed,
“these guys are no mere pretenders to the throne.”
Suddenly, Run-D.M.C. was the most famous rap group in the world. That they wore maroon jackets with prominent gray Def Jam logos in public caused the million fans that bought King of Rock to express interest in the company. “That was just to show that we were down with Def Jam,” said D. During interviews for King of Rock, they’d talk about how great Def Jam was, promoting the label as much as their own music. “ ’Cause it was his brother’s company,” Runny Ray said of Run. Jam Master Jay also helped Def Jam during this period by agreeing to give opinions about new records Rick Rubin and Russell planned to release. Of the three members in Run-D.M.C., Jay was the only one who had really hung out with neighborhood toughs, regularly attended parties in other boroughs and embraced new sounds, kept his ear to the street and learned about sounds and trends and the audience’s changing tastes. “Jay was the barometer for Rick Rubin and Russell,” said Hank Shocklee, part of the circle of DJs at WBAU. “So, with everything, if it didn’t go through Jay, they weren’t messing with it! Or if Jay didn’t like it and they did mess with it, it fell off real quick.”
Russell in turn worked to make Run-D.M.C. even more successful by arranging a surprising new deal. One night in February 1985, after 1:00 a.m., D.M.C. heard someone ring the doorbell at his parents’ house in Hollis, where the laid-back twenty-year-old rapper still lived. D threw the door open and saw Russell with a rotund film producer named George Jackson, who had attended a Fresh Fest concert in California two months before and tried to interest Russell in the idea of filming a documentary about the tour.
Russell extended some papers. “Yo! We’re gonna do this movie. You got to sign here. We’ll be starting in three months.” D was shocked; there had been no talk about a Run-D.M.C. movie. But he happily invited them in and got his parents out of bed. “It was me, my mother and father, and Russell, George Jackson, and another producer,” D remembered, all standing and discussing the deal in his kitchen. Then he signed the contract.
Run was in his basement when Russell and Jackson caught him later the same night. “They just came with contracts and I signed them,” Run recalled. For the film Rap Attack, Russell would be paid $15,000. Rick Rubin would receive $15,000. Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay would share $15,000. Jay was euphoric, telling his Hollis Crew pal Hurricane, “Yo, kid, we’re doing a movie. It’s wild. I can’t believe they’re shooting a movie.”
The movie, quickly renamed Krush Groove, supposedly sprang from a conversation producer George Jackson had with Kurtis Blow at the Disco Fever nightclub one evening. One Blow confidant claimed Jackson had approached Blow with black director Michael Schultz of Car Wash fame in tow to say, “I want to make a movie with you and I want to call it ‘The King of Rap.’”
Producer George Jackson soon became interested instead in fictionalizing the story of Russell’s success in the music industry and his cocreation of Def Jam Recordings.
Run-D.M.C. didn’t mind, because they wanted to leave Profile Records and commercial-sounding production for Russell’s new label and the hard-core sound Run-D.M.C. inspired and Rick Rubin brought to L.L.’s single “I Need a Beat.” But since they couldn’t join Def Jam—because of their contract with Profile—Run-D.M.C. had to compete with L.L. Despite the fact that King of Rock sold ten times as many copies as L.L.’s single, Run-D.M.C. saw the young rapper smirk at them when they ran into each other. And when they did concerts, L.L. was in the front row, studying their performances and, people claimed, taking notes. They didn’t mind this, since Run-D.M.C. supported and hoped to be on Def Jam soon, but they also showed rap fans they were still the roughest rap group in the business with a new b-side that found them turning a line from the children’s book Hands, Fingers, Thumbs, which Run read to his daughter Vanessa before bedtime, into an unforgettable routine, Jay cutting up Billy Squier’s “The Big Beat” while both rappers shouted, “D.M.C. and DJ Run, dum, diddy dum, diddy diddy dum, dum.”
Then, with Jam Master Jay already assisting Def Jam (by suggesting refinements to artists’ images and ideas), Run-D.M.C. decided to become more involved with the label by bringing it a group called the Hollis Crew (their old friends Butter and Cool T), and producing their single “It’s the Beat,” which evoked L.L.’s articulate approach with lyrics like: “The force that invades every musical tone. It sounds so def when the beat’s alone. It’s not the funky fresh rhymes or the cuts galore. It’s the beat! Word! And that’s for sure!”
At Profile, Cory Robbins didn’t mind seeing Run-D.M.C. wear Def Jam jackets in videos and photos or work on the Hollis Crew single for Def Jam. And if Def Jam records evoked Run-D.M.C.’s “Jam Master Jay” single, it was because “Rick Rubin was doing them,” said Cory. “But, um, that’s okay. Many records sound similar. I didn’t think they were rip-offs.”
But then Run-D.M.C.’s historic success with King of Rock attracted interest from other major labels, and Russell allegedly signed Jam Master Jay (not included in the group’s contract with Profile) to Def Jam. “Russell was gonna sign Jay and put him out separately and Profile kept refusing to put Jay on the covers at first because they didn’t want to blow him up and not have him signed,” said Profile artist Spyder D.
Then Run-D.M.C. started telling friends they wanted to be on Def Jam. “Badly!” D said. “But we couldn’t ’cause Russell always had problems with Profile. We signed a multialbum deal and sealed our own destiny. But what could you do? We had fun doing what we were doing. Although Def Jam should pay me for advertising ’cause Run-D.M.C. endorsed Def Jam and put in work in the beginning.”
When major labels began to ask Rush Productions if Run-D.M.C. would be willing to sign a better deal with them in mid-1985, Run-D.M.C. saw Rush employees feud with Profile so acrimoniously that representatives from both companies could not be in the same room without shouting at each other, Spyder D recalled. “Because of money, renegotiations, and the threat of Run-D.M.C. slipping off to Def Jam.
“It hurt my career because I couldn’t get Russell to speak to Profile about my album,” Spyder continued. “They couldn’t have a conversation without a shouting match about Run-D.M.C.”
Run-D.M.C. on Def Jam would make the new label bigger, Spyder explained. “If Russell could have had his way they would have been gone from Profile.” But Profile would not let Run-D.M.C. go because their songwriting abilities created a valuable catalog that would continue to earn money, through reissues and performance fees, even if the burgeoning rap genre faded from popularity.
Russell, however, continued to dream of having Run-D.M.C. serve as the centerpiece for a new rap empire he now felt he could build. Only twenty-eight years old, he had already made history by coproducing Run-D.M.C’s Gold-certified debut and Platinum-selling second album, and less than a year after he co-created the record label Def Jam, Hollywood was already creating a major motion picture about his life. If he could bring Run-D.M.C. to Def Jam and land a distribution deal with a major label, which he and Rick Rubin were actively seeking in 1985, Russell felt there would be no limit to the heights to which he could take this musical genre. The only obstacle, however, was the contract he’d had Run-D.M.C. sign after every major label rejected “It’s Like That” in 1983. (Though Rush Productions received payment from Profile, then distributed it to Run-D.M.C., both Russell and Run-D.M.C. had signed agreements with the label.) “The Profile contract was almost like they put the lid over the coffin and said, ‘You’re here for life,’” producer Larry Smith claimed. “And if Run-D.M.C. had gone to Def Jam, Profile wanted to be paid every cent they had. You gotta realize two smart men ran Profile. Cory Robbins and Steve Plotnicki were smart to not let Run-D.M.C. go.”
That spring of 1985, Run-D.M.C. kept hearing about interest from major labels. Def Jam released singles by L.L. Cool J, the Beastie Boys, rapper Jimmy Spicer, and Beastie member MCA and engineer Berzootie. Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons offered Def Jam music to major labels. Larry Smith and Russell grew further apart. Larry rep
ortedly alienated Russell by selling his part of publishing rights to certain songs to another label even though Russell had included these specific publishing rights in an offer for another deal. Larry also signed on to serve as music supervisor for an upcoming movie called Rappin’ even though Russell had met with its producer, Menachem Golan, to discuss collaborating, and decided not to work on Rappin’ with Golan’s movie studio, Cannon Films. And as Run-D.M.C. worked on a Hollis Crew single for Def Jam, and filmmakers were preparing in May 1985 to start shooting Krush Groove, a work that would show Run-D.M.C. signing to a Def Jam–like independent label, Profile executives suspected Russell of trying to sneak Run-D.M.C. onto Def Jam.
Chapter 13
The Silver Screen
For the opening scene of Krush Groove Run, D, and Jay had to get into blue coveralls and shower caps, and scrub cars at a car wash. Jay stood behind a nearby set of turntables while break-dancers mounted car roofs and spun on their heads. In the next scene Run stood facing his real-life father, playing a reverend, said he wanted to quit his job and make music, and heard his pop give him a tongue-lashing. Then they hung in their trailer while director Michael Schultz filmed a scene where Russell’s character, Russell Walker, and Rick Rubin, playing himself, tried to convince a bank to give them a loan to start Krush Groove Records. In the scene, both of them kicked one of L.L.’s lyrics: “An insurmountable beat, subject of discussion. You’re motivated by the aid of percussion. There’s no category for this story. It will rock in any territory.” The bank rejected them, and Russell borrowed the money from a suit-wearing cigar-chomping older gangster. Run and D then reappeared in a red-lit studio: D wore an Adidas tank top, Run wore a Kangol, and they yelled their recent hit “King of Rock.” Then Krush Groove started selling the record from their cramped one-room office.