Raising Hell

by Ronin Ro

  On September 2, 1985, after playing fifty-five arenas in just as many cities and helping the second Fresh Fest earn over $7 million—twice as much as the original—Run-D.M.C. finally returned to Hollis. And in October they learned that Columbia and Def Jam had signed a historic deal that called for Columbia to manufacture and distribute albums and singles from Def Jam. “L.L. Cool J had no bearing on whether that check was being signed,” Doctor Dre explained. The Beasties’ debut and the promise of Run-D.M.C. were “the two reasons the deal happened. When Russell couldn’t deliver Run-D.M.C. over to CBS,” Dre speculated, “his credibility was shot.”

  On October 25, 1985, Run and D saw Krush Groove arrive in 515 theaters. The film earned a quick $3 million that weekend and emerged as the number-one movie in America. Run-D.M.C. was bigger than ever, but the media focused on L.L.’s cameo and his contribution to the 500,000-selling sound track, the unassuming “I Can’t Live Without My Radio.” Then Def Jam quickly released L.L.’s debut album Radio with Columbia’s major distribution, and Run-D.M.C. saw it quickly sell a million copies (twice as much as the Krush Groove sound track). Suddenly, L.L. looked like he was doing just as well as they were. Though word of mouth said he had only one or two good songs on Radio (and Run-D.M.C. albums typically arrived in stores with at least four or five), the media kept describing L.L. as the new “prince of rap,” comparing him to Run, and congratulating L.L. for selling over a million copies of his Columbia-backed debut album. “So L.L. looking just as good on paper as Run-D.M.C. created rivalry,” said Hank Shocklee, the outspoken producer who had met Run-D.M.C. up at college station WBAU.

  Denjoyed the Radio album. “It was b-boy like us. It wasn’t Kurtis Blow or Hollywood…it was the street.” But he knew Run-D.M.C. was facing serious competition.

  So did Jam Master Jay. “King of Rock wasn’t as good as we wanted. It wasn’t the best Run-D.M.C. could do.”

  Run saw L.L. go from posing near him in photos (wearing the same hat) to making the hat his signature. Run told D, “Damn, I can’t wear the Kangols no more. I can’t wear this. This shit reminds me of L too much.” Now, in pictures for fanzines like Right On— the rap equivalent of Tiger Beat—Run stuck to the black velour hat. And that winter, watching TV, all he saw was L.L. He had to turn it off. Same with the radio: L.L.’s voice was everywhere. “Oh, my God!” he exclaimed. The media were treating Run as if he were Richard Pryor and L.L. was Eddie Murphy. “He said he was inspired by me,” Run explained. “He said he wished he had the sideburns.” Even so, fanzines like Black Beat and Right On promoted L.L. as Run’s successor, as the new heartthrob that also appeared in Krush Groove. “Now you got this new kid that’s got muscles taking all Run’s pussy,” D.M.C. laughed. “Bottom line, he was stealing Run’s shine.”

  L.L. had larger company Columbia Records backing him. He was the darling of Def Jam, with Russell actively promoting his work. He also tapped into a female audience with love-rap B-sides like “I Want You” and “I Can Give You More.” “He was a real threat to Run,” said D. And Radio was selling faster than January 1985’s King of Rock. “That was the biggest beef,” Doctor Dre noted.

  Run had overlooked what he viewed as L.L.’s arrogance. He had let L.L. write “Can You Rock It Like This.” He had let Russell include L.L. on the bill at their shows. But when L.L. asked Rick to use “The Bells,” the “embracing of L.L. in the beginning started to become more of a competition,” Dre remembered. Run-D.M.C. returned to the studio.

  Chapter 15

  Proud to Be Black

  In early 1986, Run-D.M.C. started to record their third album. “The first two records were just, ‘Get on the mike, rhyme, I got a record,’” said their bodyguard Hurricane. The group worked in Chung King, with the Beastie Boys stopping in some nights to keep working on their own debut album.

  Run-D.M.C. didn’t want anyone but studio co-owner and engineer Steve Ett helping them create the new songs. But Russell was going to executive-produce, and with Larry Smith gone, he invited his Def Jam partner Rick Rubin to help. Though Rick and Russell were present, Run and Jay took over. “You could look at Run-D.M.C. perform and realize they were the real producers,” Run explained.

  They wanted greater creative control because they didn’t like any of the ideas they heard from Profile or Rick Rubin, said their friend Doctor Dre. Everyone wanted them to record rock-rap that would cross their album over to a white audience, but Rick and Profile had differing ideas about what rock actually sounded like. Rick wanted an AC/DC sound. “They wouldn’t just be a rap group trying to do rock songs,” said Dre. “‘Rock Box’ was cool but more funk than rock.” Profile, he added, wanted esoteric “pop metal” like that heard on MTV, and created by bands like Whitesnake and Def Leppard. Run-D.M.C. wanted neither. “So Profile felt threatened by Raising Hell because Run and D wanted to return to the roots of ‘Sucker MCs’ and that feeling, and make sure they had the street,” said Dre. “There was a certain point where Run-D.M.C. weren’t sure.”

  Run came up with the main ideas; D wrote most of the lyrics; Jay created beats and arrangements and told a reporter, “No one of us has the formula. We all have it.”

  Run, D, and Jay knew how they wanted to sound, and one day they quickly knocked out four songs. After finishing each one, Run snapped, “Okay. There’s nothing else to do to this.” They didn’t want strings, hand claps, or people singing choruses. They’d play completed works for Rick and Russell, who’d look at each other, nod, and agree that nothing else needed to be done. Once a song had song structure and sounded like it was created with cheap equipment—something Rick strove for, since a rugged, back-to-basics sound satisfied listeners tired of overproduced, chorus-heavy rap—their executive producers were happy.

  Away from the studio, Run relaxed in his basement, playing UTFO’s latest album. UTFO (an acronym for Untouchable Force Organization) was a Brooklyn quartet most famous for the humorous single “Roxanne Roxanne,” but doing R & B now, with their ballad “Fairy Tale Lover.” “He was talking some good stuff,” Run said, referring to rapper Kangol Kid, who used a singsong delivery to compare himself to fairy-tale characters. Run felt he could use this in rap, make it harder, and make fun of those characters. He started a lyric called “Peter Piper” with a line that mentioned Jack and Jill: “Jack’s on Jay’s dick.”

  In Chung King, Jay brought out the Bob James track he’d created. They rapped, and Jay scratched the dramatic “I Can’t Stop” horn blast over their voices. For “Dumb Girl,” about a materialistic and confused young woman, Jay used nothing but an empty drum track and a slow sampled voice chanting, “Dumb.”

  They created another hit while hanging in Hollis one night. They were at “the building,” where D used to sneak cigarettes, when their old friend Butter Love rushed toward them. “Yo, Run! Yo, Joe! I just seen your brother Russell dusted up on Hollis and Two-Fifth.”

  Run said, “Yeah, right!”

  “Yo, he’s up there right now!”

  They walked toward Hollis Avenue and saw Russell on the corner.

  D asked, “Yo, what’s up?”

  Russell quickly whispered, “Yo, guys, here’s what y’all do. You need to make a record about your Adidas and you’re gonna talk about where y’all been and you’re gonna start by saying ‘My A-didas.’”

  D said, “Sounds good to me.” Already, rappers had talked about Bally shoes (the Get Fresh Crew’s “La-Di-Da-Di”) and Gucci (Schooly D, a newcomer from Philadelphia, chanting, “Looking at my Gucci it’s about that time”). And D himself had for years rhymed about b-boy lifestyle accoutrements like Pumas and British Walker brand shoes. But Russell kept them out there for two hours, raving about the idea.

  In Chung King they played a bouncy swing beat on the drum machine and rapped about where they’d worn their Adidas sneakers while Jay again scratched the “I Can’t Stop” horn blast. Their experimentation continued with “Perfection,” in which they invited a sixteen-year-old drummer to play a beat as jaunty as the
one on “La-Di-Da-Di,” and recorded a lighthearted falsetto-driven rap about things they owned (a favorite topic of rappers who created the genre during jams in the South Bronx in the mid-1970s, and of rappers a quarter century later who continue to claim they own possessions many might never afford).

  Another night, Run let Jam Master Jay hear a few rhymes from “You Be Illin’.” Their friend and roadie Ray started banging on a table with his fists, creating a beat while Run rapped. Run told him, “We’ll use that shit,” as Ray kept playing a beat, and Jay hummed a piano melody. In the recording room, musicians translated their ideas into sax and piano riffs that went against the hard-core aesthetic the group had told Russell and Rick Rubin they wanted (but also gave the third album a heavy-music-and-chorus commercial moment that pop radio stations might react to), and D saw Run rap solo on the entire song.

  In the past, D.M.C. didn’t mind if Run recorded longer verses on songs like “Sucker MCs.” They were still both appearing on records and sharing stages during performances and videos. But after “You Be Illin’,” D wanted his own solo moment. “And I got a little souped. I said, ‘I’m gonna go home and write the baddest rhyme I ever wrote.’” In the studio, he let Run hear his lyric before adding, “When I say, ‘hit it, Run,’ you’re gonna do the beat box every time.” Over a fast drum machine, Jay scratched the “I Can’t Stop” horn, and Run beat-boxed during each break. They called the song “Hit It Run.”

  They were happy creating hard-core, but Rick and Russell eventually wanted some rock-rap. Run and D had a few of their usual boasts written and recited them over a churning metal track. Since one lyric said they were “raising hell,” Russell decided the phrase would be the song title. Run bristled at the suggestion. To him, it sounded like “some white people stuff.”

  Then they saw a Cold Crush Brothers–style routine turn into more rock-rap. In Run’s basement one night, D watched Run mix “I Can’t Stop” on his turntables, and heard him say, “D, we’re gonna use these beats.” D recited a new rap he set to the rhythm of Toni Basil’s lyrics on her new wave hit, “Mickey.” But where Basil had chanted, “Oh Mickey, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, Hey Mickey,” D rapped, “It’s tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme, that’s right on time, it’s tricky!” Rick Rubin heard the idea and said it would be cool if they said the rhyme over a track that used portions of the Knack’s popular “My Sharona.”

  And through it all, the Beastie Boys were “lurking,” Run recalled. “They would come and hang out. And the Beasties knew they were getting ready to do their album,” said D.M.C., implying that the Beasties were absorbing ideas to then apply to their own new songs. “But it was all good,” D.M.C. added.

  Another day at Chung King, Doctor Dre led WBAU producers Chuck D and Hank Shocklee into the studio and toward Russell. By now, D.M.C. had heard a tape by Chuck on WBAU, and felt Chuck was rap’s next big star. The tape, a promo for Chuck’s radio show, was called “Public Enemy No. 1.” Chuck had written its rap after conversing with his friend Flavor Flav (born William Drayton), who had his own show on WBAU. Flav needed a job, so Chuck provided one at his father’s furniture store in Queens, helping Chuck deliver orders in a truck. They were driving toward a customer’s home one afternoon to deliver furniture when Flavor told Chuck that a rapper named Ron D—a member of the unsigned Long Island group Play Hard Crew—had heard Chuck on the radio and wanted to battle him. “Man, they want to like take you out!” Flav added.

  “Take me out for what?” Chuck asked. “I ain’t battling.”

  There were people who considered Chuck to be a has-been, since his first single, “Check Out the Radio,” as part of the group Spectrum City, had flopped in the early eighties. So Chuck wrote a battle rhyme and set it to Fred Wesley & the J.B.s droning break beat “Blow Your Head.”

  After taping Chuck’s promo off WBAU, D.M.C. traveled to Manhattan to tell Rick Rubin, “Yo, there’s this guy and his sidekick. These motherfuckers are ridiculous.” Rick Rubin heard D’s tape of “Public Enemy No. 1” and offered Chuck D a contract with Def Jam Records. “He liked the whole Melle Mel approach that everybody thought was kind of old at that time,” said Chuck D. While Chuck considered whether to sign with Def Jam—thinking, “I don’t know about making no records”—Rick tried to get his hands on a clearer-sounding tape of Chuck’s song. Since the song aired on Dre’s radio show on WBAU, Doctor Dre arrived at Def Jam’s 298 Elizabeth Street offices with a tape. (Rick and Russell had bought the building shortly after signing Def Jam’s distribution deal with CBS in late 1985 and had moved into it with new employees by January 1986.) In an office, Dre saw Rick sleeping on one side of a rolled-up mattress on the floor. Russell slept on the other side. Both had presumably been working all night on Def Jam projects. Dre played the tape for Rick, but Rick went back to sleep. “And then Russell rolled over, got up, and said, ‘Are you crazy? This is the worst shit I ever heard!’ Russell went to the machine, took the tape out, opened the window, and threw it out.”

  “Yo, what are you doing!” Dre yelled.

  They argued until Russell ordered him out of the room. Near the door, Dre turned and said, “You know what? You don’t know your ass from your elbow. I don’t care what anybody says. Man, you’ve lost it.” Rick, who slept through Dre’s playing of the tape, never said a word.

  Despite Russell’s reluctance to sign Chuck D to Def Jam, Rick Rubin kept offering a contract. Then Rick told Def Jam employee (and former WBAU program director) Bill Stephney, “Yo, if you don’t sign Chucky D you’re fired!” Stephney was stunned. “For what?”

  “Because you should be able to sign him; that’s your man.”

  But Chuck had heard artists from many labels complain to him about going unpaid. “So we said, ‘Why would we want to get involved with some bullshit like that?’” Hank Shocklee recalled. Although Stephney promised that Def Jam would treat them well, Chuck still hesitated.

  But Chuck did go to Chung King with Hank Shocklee to offer Run-D.M.C. a song for their next album. The song was called “God Bless U.S.” “It was a political rap about the state of the world done to a Chuck Berry beat,” said Hank Shocklee. Russell rejected it. Hank remembered him saying, “Rap is not supposed to be talking about some political shit. Rap is supposed to be on some party shit.”

  But Run and D wanted to tackle the issue of race, so Russell invited a lyricist to help write lyrics. Doctor Dre and T-Money of Original Concept were in the studio that day observing and laughing at the outside songwriter’s ideas. “That ain’t gonna work,” Dre said of one. “That ain’t gonna work,” of another. “That ain’t gonna work,” of a third. Finally, in an adjoining room, Dre and T-Money created an elaborate hard-core beat on a DMX drum machine. Reentering the studio, Dre said, “Yo, we got a record y’all should do.” The heavyset DJ played Run-D.M.C. the tape he had just recorded. D.M.C. said, “Yo, we got to do this! We need a songwriter!”

  “Well, I know the cat to do it,” Dre told him.

  Dre called another Original Concept bandmate, Rapper G, and requested a cross between James Brown’s “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud)” and the Isley Brothers’ timeless “Fight the Power.” G banged it out. The next day, back in Chung King, Dre said, “This is how it goes,” and played the tape. Everyone was excited.

  “Wow.”

  “Yo! We got to do this, we got to do this!”

  Rapper G recorded a reference vocal (which suggested how Run-D.M.C. should perform certain phrases). Dre recorded the beat on a studio reel. Russell heard the new song, “Proud to Be Black,” and told Dre, “Aw, that was cool.”

  The third album was finished, but D and Jay wanted another hard-core cut. They arrived at Chung King early on the afternoon of March 7, 1986, and looped the Aerosmith break beat “Walk This Way.”

  “We were just gonna do the normal ‘I’m D.M.C. on the mike’ and call it a day,” D recalled. But Rick Rubin walked in, heard the beat, and asked, “Do you know who this is?”


  D said, “No. Poison Ivy?”

  “This is Aerosmith! Toys in the Attic by Aerosmith! It would be really great if you did this record.”

  “We are,” D said.

  “No, let’s make the whole record. Do a remake. Take the lyrics home and learn them.”

  Run and D.M.C. hated the idea, D said. “We were like, ‘Y’all takin’ this rock-rap shit too far! That shit’s gonna be fake!’”

  But Jam Master Jay—who agreed with Russell and Rick’s ideas about hooks and story raps lending commercial value to their otherwise formless rap boasts—said it would be cool.

  D disagreed with him. “You know, they’re trying to ruin us.”

  In D’s basement, Run and D had pens and pads ready. D put the record on a turntable. They had never heard anything but its opening beat. “It was the scariest moment in our lives, to know what was coming after these guitars,” D said.

  They heard the guy singing, and Run wanted to cry. He couldn’t hear what the guy was saying. “I had no lyric sheet,” he recalled. “What is he saying? ‘Backseat lover on the hiding ’neath the cover’?” Then the guitars played what they perceived to be hillbilly music, and they felt even worse.

  D reached for the phone and called Rick. “We were crying again,” he said, and when Rick answered, he yelled, “Yo! This is fake! This is hillbilly bullshit! You’re gonna ruin us! Everyone’s gonna laugh! Y’all buggin’!”