Raising Hell

by Ronin Ro

  Rick said, “Calm down. Y’all got to do this record.”

  D hung up.

  They returned to the studio the next day with what they thought was the lyric. Run did a huge chunk by himself though he really felt like screaming, “Garbage! What the hell are you doing?”

  D also did his verses alone.

  Neither put much energy into his vocals. They wanted to leave, but Jay walked in and said, “Y’all motherfuckers better get back in there and do this record with some energy like Run-D.M.C. It’s gonna be a big record. I’m telling you. It’s dope.”

  They reentered the booth, shared sentences, gave it a little more energy, then went home angry and hating the song. “They didn’t want to sell out,” said their bodyguard Hurricane. “They just wanted some hard-core beats and rap. ‘Rock Box’ was a different kind of rock. It was still hard-core. ‘Walk This Way’ was straight-up rock.” Rick and Russell forecast that the song would unite white and black people, but D didn’t care. “I just want to be dope on the mike,” he thought.

  The next morning, Jam Master Jay called D to say: “You got to come back and do the lyrics over.”

  “No, we did them,” D replied. “What do you mean? We did them!”

  “Well, now you got to come back and do it over the right way. Rick says Aerosmith is gonna be here.”

  On March 9, 1986, they traveled to Magic Venture Studio in New York. “They didn’t like it,” said their roadie and friend Ray. “They didn’t like Steven Tyler. They didn’t like none of them niggas.” They arrived and saw Jay near his turntable, showing Aerosmith’s long-haired lead singer, Steve Tyler, how he cut their beat up. “And them niggas freshly came out the rehab,” Ray joked of Tyler and Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry.

  Tyler—wearing a headband and shiny shirt with shoulder pads—looked perplexed. “So, when are you gonna hear me?” he asked.

  D stopped sipping from his beer. “That’s the key. You don’t get to hear your voice.”

  Rick Rubin sat at the giant mixing board. He’d already programmed a quicker version of Aerosmith’s beat in his drum machine. He had the thin guitarist play the song’s riffs, then the singer wail the chorus. Jay meanwhile coached Run and D on how to perform this song. “Y’all trying to do a record like they did it. Do it like Run-D.M.C. would do it!”

  Rick kept the music at an earsplitting volume, so they had to shout. Rush Management publicist (and former journalist) Bill Adler, in the room with other employees and friends, stood up and asked Rick to turn it down, but the producer screamed, “No!”

  D was a little buzzed when Rick said they should go into the booth. But Jay was right. They had to do it their way, not soften up. “That’s when we did the switching off, and trading lyrics,” D explained. They passed the rock guys (each reportedly paid $8,000 to be there). “I take the first lyric, you take the second, I’ll take the third, and we out,” D told Run.

  Then in the booth: “C’mon, Joe. Let’s go. You go on that side. I’m here. Yeah.” They did their verse, then saw Rick send Tyler in to shout all over their rhymes. After five hours’ work, the song was finished. Everyone posed for a photo near the board like one big happy family. “They were so happy about it,” said D.M.C. “Jay was like, ‘Yo, this gonna be big.’ But Run and me were like, ‘These motherfuckers buggin’ out. That shit’s gonna flop and “My Adidas” is gonna be dope.’”

  Around them, however, the older executives who managed Run-D.M.C.’s career continued to be most excited about Run-D.M.C.’s remake of the Aerosmith song, and how it could cross them over to a white audience. Run, D, and Jay were asked to film a video for the song.

  The first scenes of the video involved Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler and Joe Perry rehearsing in adjacent rooms. Tyler, holding a mike, heard Jay scratch the song’s familiar guitar riff and looked confused. And before he could sing, Run and D yelled the lyric. Tyler responded by using his mike stand to smash a hole in a wall just in time to shove his head through it, and screech the chorus. As in other videos, Run and D faced a white guest star with disapproval and folded arms.

  From there, the action moved to the brightly lit rock arena Park Theater in Union City, New Jersey. Onstage in a flamboyant, frilly outfit, Tyler performed for a cheering multiracial audience, and was about to sing when Run and D smashed through the back wall of the stage and started rapping again. This time, Tyler and Perry stopped what they were doing and watched these guys in sweatshirts, jeans, and unlaced Adidas. Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C. then danced together. As filming continued, Run gave Tyler a kick in the ass, Runny Ray recalled. “When they were doing the dance,” he said, “that was real. Run was tired. He didn’t want to do that video. But they made him.”

  Jam Master Jay went along with whatever Rick and Russell wanted. But Run and D were wary of how Profile would market the album. The whole point of producing Raising Hell themselves had been to recapture their black audience, not to do more rock-rap that might alienate rap fans and black radio stations that didn’t want their rap set to rock. Run and D.M.C. called Profile directly and said “My Adidas” and “Peter Piper” should be the first single. “If y’all don’t do it, we’re gonna give it to radio and fuck everything up,” D told them. A few executives and people close to them tried to persuade them that their audience wanted, expected, even needed to hear “Walk This Way” first, so they could all make a lot of money, but Run, D.M.C., and Jam Master Jay—who had agreed to record the Aerosmith song as a concession to Rick and Russell and pop radio but still wanted the group to be known for the competitive hard-core sound Jay brought to songs like “Peter Piper” and “My Adidas”—stood their ground. “We fought hard to make sure those two records were the first single,” Run explained, and they finally won a battle concerning their career.

  Chapter 16

  The Mainstreaming of Hip-hop

  In June 1986 Russell and Rick were operating Rush Management and Def Jam out of 298 Elizabeth Street, a three-story building in downtown Manhattan. “It was not any kind of fancy place,” said Rubin’s friend Adam Dubin. “There were crack vials in the street and it was one foot from the Bowery so there were a lot of bums and drug addicts all over the place. And across the street, many drug addicts would be getting their food from a church that was a soup kitchen. It was just a rundown street.” Rush Management was on the first floor. Def Jam’s overcrowded offices were on the second. Rick Rubin lived on the third. The basement would supposedly hold a new, state-of-the-art recording studio.

  Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay used to stop by to visit Russell, Rick, or Run-D.M.C’s former road manager Lyor Cohen (young, tall, white, with black hair, now working for Russell at Rush) and listen to the plan for the third Fresh Fest. Run-D.M.C. was excited. They had a great album finished, and Profile Records had already received advance orders for 600,000 copies. And at Def Jam–Rush, everyone said they loved “Peter Piper” and “My Adidas,” and predicted “Walk This Way” would be the biggest thing on MTV. In fresh new outfits, new hats, and new Adidas, Run-D.M.C. met with Lyor Cohen, who reported that promoter Ricky Walker, creator of the Fresh Fest, wouldn’t be involved with the new tour. Lyor (pronounced “Lee-Or”) had handled negotiations, and disagreed with Walker over how much Rush should earn from each show, so Rush would do the tour without Walker. The new tour also wouldn’t feature the Fat Boys (a group always managed by Charles Stettler, the music executive who discovered the group at a talent show), Kurtis Blow (who was moving to California to pursue a career in film and had severed ties with Rush Management after appearing in Krush Groove), or break-dancers. It would feature mostly Rush clients—Run and D, Whodini, L.L., and the Beastie Boys—and be called the Raising Hell tour.

  Run-D.M.C. didn’t say anything about the Beasties being on their tour. They liked the group’s new song “Hold It Now, Hit It.” Instead of their usual ass-dragging drums and stiff rock chords, “Hold It Now” featured funny lyrics over a track that evoked “Rock the Bells” and “Peter Pipe
r”: “Now I just got home because I’m out on bail!” one line went. “What’s the time? It’s time to buy Ale!” For its chorus, Rick used samples, a blaring Kool and the Gang horn, Kurtis Blow on “Christmas Rappin’” yelling, “Hold it now,” Slick Rick’s “La-Di-Da-Di” cheering, “Hit It,” a DJ scratching a whistle over bongos, and a sample of funk singer Jimmy Castor calling, “Yo Leroy!”

  Run and D thought the Beasties were cool, and onto something with this new song. But Run and D also felt the Beasties and other Def Jam artists were imitating their sound, benefiting from an association with them, and, in some cases, riding their coattails. “Listen, ‘hip-hop body rocking doing the do’ from ‘Hold It Now, Hit It’ is rhymes from off of ‘Together Forever,’” said Run. “‘Pulsating, dominating up above, cold chillin’ and I’m willin’, my name’s Run love.’ That’s my flow.”

  Then there was L.L. Cool J, Def Jam’s other big act. Run felt L.L., eighteen now, was still imitating Run-D.M.C. Run had seen L.L. perform “I Can’t Live Without My Radio” and “Rock the Bells,” on the March 22, 1986, episode of Soul Train. Run’s mother, Evelyn, by his side, turned to him and said, “He’s imitating you guys.” And when Run-D.M.C. stopped by Def Jam’s building in the city, they heard many of the young employees gossip about how L.L. had stopped by and told everyone that during the tour he would “take Run out and take the crown,” said Bill Stephney, the former WBAU employee turned Def Jam publicist. “ ’Cause obviously at that point, Run considered himself the king.”

  On the Raising Hell tour, Timex Social Club, not signed to Rush but known for their rhythm and blues song “Rumors,” opened with two songs. Then the Beasties did their fifteen-minute set, including “Slow and Low” and “Hold It Now, Hit It” (then on the black singles chart). Then L.L. Cool J did a few Radio numbers, Whodini performed some of Escape and Back in Black, and Run-D.M.C. performed hits from their three best-selling albums (the double-sided single “My Adidas” b/w “Peter Piper” and Raising Hell were both released by early June 1986).

  On June 21, 1986, a month into the tour, Run-D.M.C. played Philadelphia’s Spectrum Arena. Lyor Cohen held a video camera. With Lyor taping his every move, Run went onstage and introduced Run-D.M.C.’s “My Adidas,” then in the black singles Top 5, by yelling that he wanted the crowd of twenty thousand to remove one of their Adidas sneakers and hold them above their heads. Five thousand people did as told. Six days later, thirteen thousand excitable fans showed up to see Run-D.M.C. sign autographs at an Adidas outlet in Baltimore. The mob was so large that local authorities decided it’d be safer to close the entire mall. Along with his videotape of the June 21 concert, Lyor Cohen sent Adidas a report about the large crowd Run-D.M.C. attracted to the outlet, in the hope that the sneaker company would be interested in making them the first nonathletes signed to an endorsement deal.

  As the tour continued that summer, Run and L.L. Cool J continued to go at it. Run-D.M.C.’s bodyguard Hurricane felt they were like heavyweight boxers Ali and Frazier. Said Run, “He was young, hot girls were going nuts, and I was not having it. I was trying to beat him. I was trying to make sure this kid didn’t steal my shine. The crowd was cheering very loud for him. I had to keep him off my tail.”

  On tour, Run and L.L. couldn’t be in the same room without arguing, and Jam Master Jay and D.M.C. stayed out of it. “I used to hang with L ’cause he would always have girls following him around,” said D. And L.L. stopped by D’s house one day to proudly show him his new red Audi and cry, “D! Look! I got a car, man!” After shows, D and L would hang out and talk about their careers. “Even though a lot of people thought he was arrogant, he was funny,” D said. “He was normal and he kind of looked up to me ’cause I was the only guy that would talk to him sensibly. He and Run talked about competition and the business and fame. When he talked to Russell and Rick it was about music and trying to get money. When he talked to me it was just talking, being normal, and I think he needed that balance in his life.”

  But Run continued to resent L.L.’s new stage show. L.L. already wore a Run-like hat, tracksuit, gold chain, and sneakers. His DJ Cut Creator’s glasses, gold chain, and strong, silent presence evoked Jam Master Jay. Now L.L. had a new group member, E-Love, who wore a multicolored Adidas sweatshirt, the same black mobster hat as Run-D.M.C, and a fat gold chain, and folded his arms onstage. “Oh, the fucking arms,” D.M.C. chuckled. “You notice how E-Love used to stand there and just be looking like, ‘I’m Bad’? That was L.L.’s D.M.C., of course. He was biting everything. He had to go make fucking love records,” D said with amusement. “You know what I’m saying?”

  The more Run watched L.L. take the stage with his DJ and E-Love, the angrier he felt. Finally, Run told L.L., “That’s your D.M.C.! You trying to bite? Right? You trying to bite?” He kept telling him this, but E-Love continued to carry a huge radio onstage, then put it down, fold his arms, and nod (like D.M.C.) while L.L. rapped. “He needed a sidekick,” Run sighed. “E-Love was his D.M.C. That was cool. I fought him.”

  Having three people—one with folded arms—evoked his stage show, Run felt. “Maybe that’s why my mother said that,” he reasoned, “ ’cause he was trying to come out of them Melle Mel clothes and look like me.”

  Another night, promoters wanted L.L. to close the show. After L.L. ended the concert, he approached Run-D.M.C.’s amiable roadie, Runny Ray, backstage to ask, “Ray, how was I? Was I good? Did I rock the crowd? Was I def?”

  Ray, supportive as ever, said, “Yeah! Hell yeah, it was def! Nigga, you rocked! You rocked!”

  “Did I rock harder than Run and them?”

  “Hmm, no, not that much,” he said. “But you rocked though.” Ray remembered having this same conversation on numerous occasions. Then L.L. started going onstage to yell, “Hollis is in the house” even though he was not from Run-D.M.C.’s neighborhood. Run accepted this, but was infuriated when L.L. started asking the crowd, “Whose house?” L.L. wanted them to say “L.L.” but the crowd was accustomed to Run asking this. To L.L.’s chagrin, they would yell: “Run’s house!”

  Doctor Dre, on the tour as DJ for the Beastie Boys, remembered, “Run-D.M.C. was the headliner, and L.L. would go out and do their show before they’d come out.” Dre saw L.L. do this every night, and thought, “What is wrong with you? You don’t do that!” Saying “Hollis in the house” wasn’t like using the standard, nonspecific crowd-pleasing shout, “Everybody say Ho!” L.L. was taking specific things he knew Run-D.M.C. would come out and perform once he was done, said Dre. “It’s not good. You have to respect people, especially when you’re on their tour.”

  Backstage, Run was furious. He watched swaggering young L.L., his stocky DJ Cut Creator, and thin, silent E-Love enter L.L.’s dressing room. Run ran into the room, got right in L’s face, and yelled, “Stop saying you’re from Hollis! You ain’t from motherfucking Hollis! This ain’t yo’ house, motherfucker! I know you’re coming for my crown!” L kept doing it, D recalled, and Run kept barging into his dressing room to yell, “This is my tour!” Soon Hurricane and other Run-D.M.C. road crew employees started getting into arguments with L’s crew while trying to separate Run and L.

  By the Fourth of July, Jam Master Jay called his cousin Doc in Brooklyn to say, “We’re fighting every day, man. It’s getting really crazy out here.”

  In addition to backstage drama, Run-D.M.C. was contending with jealous tough guys in every town. “Because these successful MCs are coming to your town where you’ve been living all your life,” Jay’s cousin Doc explained. “And these guys had been trying to get at ‘Mary Sue’ for the last five, ten years and couldn’t get ’em. But these new rap guys step in one day, so of course there’s jealousy. And that’s the worst, when you have to fight your own people for your success. They call it ‘crabs in the barrel.’ Every positive black man trying to be successful has another trying to pull him down.”

  Five weeks into the tour, Raising Hell matched King of Rock’s sales of 1 million. One night when R
un and D left the stage, a Rush Management employee asked if they had heard about “Walk This Way.” They didn’t know what he was talking about.

  “They put ‘Walk This Way’ out last week,” the man explained.

  Run asked, “Huh?”

  “Did you hear it’s the number one most requested song in Boston?”

  “On what station? The black station or what?”

  “No, it’s a whole other thing going on.” Radio station WBCN in Boston played it first, then yanked it after white listeners called in to shout racial epithets and label the rap version of an Aerosmith classic sacrilegious. But then, when the song emerged as WBCN’s most-requested song of the week, the station immediately started playing it again. “You’re up to 1.5 million in sales.”

  Run told D, “Man we’ll go platinum like regular.”

  “We were like, ‘Aw, they’re buggin’,’” D.M.C. recalled. “We didn’t care.”

  But within a week, someone told them Raising Hell’s sales had climbed to 1.8 million. “How?” Run asked. Other influential stations and MTV had sat up and taken notice.

  “They did whatever they wanted with it and made it a smash,” Run said. “We looked up and it was selling more. Then next thing you know this thing caught on and took us beyond our dreams in sales.”

  Run-D.M.C. were busy touring and hadn’t even been told the song would be their next single. Though “Walk This Way” became the first Run-D.M.C. single to appear on Billboard’s pop chart (at number 4), and continued—along with the Raising Hell tour—to attract more Americans to rap music, D.M.C. worried that its classic rock sound would disaffect the black audience they wanted to recapture. He feared that fans would cry “sellout” until he heard “Walk This Way” included in mixes of hip-hop records aired every Friday and Saturday night on New York rap station WRKS (KISS-FM). “Red Alert started playin’ it,” said D. “That’s all we cared about: what the motherfucking b-boys were gonna think. Our whole shit was ‘All right, they want to go after white people with “Walk This Way,” let them. Just don’t let it fuck with our b-boy Cold Crush shit. If it would, then we don’t want that shit. That’s why me and Run were like, ‘We got to put out “Peter Piper” and “Adidas” so people don’t get thrown off.’”