by Ronin Ro
However, Russell continued to dream of having Run-D.M.C. signed to Def Jam, and of running an empire that would accurately reflect rap music in all its creativity, exuberance, and rebelliousness. When Profile wouldn’t let Run-D.M.C., the genre’s biggest draw, go, Russell had the band sue the label. “ ’Cause that Tougher Than Leather album was supposed to be on Def Jam,” said Dre. “That was the problem. Raising Hell was their swan song for Profile.”
Profile president Cory Robbins knew it bothered Russell that Run-D.M.C., which included his younger brother, weren’t on his label. And Cory heard that the group had been “entertaining offers from other labels or at least having discussions with other labels besides Def Jam.” And it was to be expected, really, since Run-D.M.C. was coming off a triple platinum album, Raising Hell. “Had they been free agents and had they been able to break their contract they would have been able to get an enormous advance payment to sign with a new label,” Cory explained.
But Profile wasn’t battling just any major label trying to lure an act off an independent once the act sold millions of albums. “It was the major label that Run’s brother was involved with, so it became very personal,” said publicist Tracy Miller. “At the time Russell probably thought he could do a better job, now that he had the resources, to steer his brother’s career,” she continued. “But when he first started out with his brother, he didn’t have those resources.”
Because Profile and Rush had been so close in the past, and the rap business hadn’t yet been overrun by accountants, Miller continued, “people took it very personally and were offended, and from that point on Russell Simmons and the two guys from Profile never ever had the same relationship.”
During the winter of 1987, the holiday season, Run, D, and Jay stopped by Def Pictures’ film-editing studio in downtown Manhattan to see how Tougher Than Leather was coming along, and learned that personnel problems had delayed editing. The first editors worked too slowly, so producers—either Rick Rubin, Russell Simmons, or their experienced coproducer, Vincent Giordano—fired them, said screenwriter Ric Menello, who helped with the editing.
Then one of Rick’s friends at MTV suggested a replacement who would remove scenes from the film without the approval or consent of his employers, Menello added. Rick returned to the studio after a week’s absence, saw the new editor had recut the whole film (putting scenes in different order), and demanded that the editor undo the changes.
Run, D.M.C., and Jam Master Jay watched the movie in progress and were shocked to see how everyone’s behavior on the set affected the final product. Since the film had gone over budget, two additional scenes with the Beastie Boys were not filmed, so the Beastie Boys, who were introduced early in the film, suddenly vanished from the movie. The same happened with Russell’s character: he disappeared halfway through the film but reappeared for a few seconds at the end.
Without these scenes, Tougher Than Leather felt incoherent. Then new editors complained that Rick’s cameras hadn’t provided enough coverage to make for interesting or articulate scenes. Sometimes it seemed he just set up a camera and had people parade in front of it, they felt.
The film managed to include a few explosions, but its look changed from scene to scene: one minute everything was well lit; the next, it was crude and low budget. And Rick Rubin, busy producing albums, didn’t attend many editing sessions. “He’d come and go,” said Menello. “He had other work to do. That’s the other problem.”
But that was the least of it. Since Run and D didn’t always follow the script, they left out pivotal information that drove many scenes. Without certain lines of dialogue, parts of the movie didn’t make much sense. That it was taking so long to edit (Rick Rubin had finished filming in December 1986) meant Run-D.M.C. had to dig into their pockets to pay their part of production costs, which rose from $200,000 to $500,000 and then, “close to a million because of the postproduction,” said Menello.
When they saw their concert footage, however, Run was ready to spend a little more. He watched the footage and shook his head. “Yo, these rhymes are old,” he said.
Menello replied, “No they aren’t. They’re great. They’re still fly. Maybe you’ve seen it a lot.”
“No, no, these rhymes are old,” Run insisted. “This stuff is old. We got to do new songs.”
Run started developing ideas for new songs to include in the film. “Public Enemy used ‘Funky Drummer’ [for the single ‘Rebel Without a Pause’],” Run said, and he wanted to use the same sample on a new Run-D.M.C. work. In his basement, Run mixed the by then overwrought break-beat “Funky Drummer”—ubiquitous, since most rappers were using “Funky Drummer” on their own songs that imitated Public Enemy’s energetic sample-driven sound—with Michael Jackson’s ballad “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You,” and felt that a rhyme to the same melody Jackson sang would make for an interesting song. D loved the idea, as did Jay, who filled gaps in lyrics with a variety of scratches (including one in which irreverent comedian Sam Kinison yelled, “Dick in your mouth all day”). But instead of using “Funky Drummer,” in the studio Jay fashioned a track from the similar-sounding break beat “Amen Brother,” a few dreamlike bells from Bob James’s “Nautilus,” and a vinyl test pressing of Run and D’s vocals for this new work, “Beats to the Rhyme.”
Run then created another new song for the film, called “Mary Mary,” by mixing the Monkees’ break beat with Run’s beloved “I Can’t Stop.” D and Jay loved its rugged sound. Then D suggested, “Let’s get Rick. He knows this rock shit.”
Rick Rubin visited Run’s house to hear the idea. “I’m scratching ‘Mary Mary’ with ‘I Can’t Stop’ and it’s crazy,” Run told Rick. “We should make a record called ‘Mary Mary Where You Going?’”
“No,” Rick said. “Why don’t you say ‘Why are you bugging?’”
It was another great idea, so Run ran down to his turntables and created the sound track. Rick joined them in the studio to make “Mary Mary” as enjoyable and commercial as Raising Hell’s breakout hit “Walk This Way.” Run-D.M.C. had initially resisted recording with Aerosmith, but in the almost two years since the crossover hit’s release in 1986, they had accepted that a white audience wanted this sound from them; other, newer acts like P.E. had usurped their position as kings of rap; and they really needed a surefire hit to bring in money. “It was short as hell,” D said of the recording session. “That shit was easy. I came in and wrote my rhyme in a second.” They had no way of knowing “Mary Mary” would be the final Run-D.M.C. release produced by Rick Rubin.
While they created more songs for Tougher Than Leather, D noticed Run changing his distinctive style, rapping faster and cramming too many words into each sentence. “He’s fucking bugging out,” he told himself, but he also figured Run wanted to compete with rappers KRS-One, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane, and let them know “I could do it better than you.” Still, D felt it wouldn’t go over well with the audience. “Regardless of what was going on, people wanted to hear us as we were,” he said.
After recording a few new songs, Run told D, “Yo, D, you’re incredible, ’cause your shit is like simple”—the same thing he claimed the Beasties said during the Raising Hell tour. D.M.C. was hurt. “Run was competitive with other rappers and I was just doing what I was doing in my bedroom when I was twelve.”
Run and Russell then pressured D.M.C. to adopt Run’s new style, said Runny Ray. “Russell was stressing them, screaming, telling D, ‘Come on, you got to rhyme like this!’ D was saying, ‘I don’t want to do that shit, man. That’s not the way I rap.’ But Russell kept forcing him and he had to do it.”
To cope, D.M.C. looked to Public Enemy’s Chuck D for inspiration, reciting crowded, Chuck-like lyrics on “Beats to the Rhyme” (their take on P.E.’s “Rebel Without a Pause”), “Radio Station” (informed by a lyric from “Rebel”), “I’m Not Going Out Like That” (which, like “Rebel,” opened with a sampled speech), and “Soul to Rock and Roll” (which included the same Chubb Roc
k sample as “Rebel”).
It bugged Chuck D out a little, but the influential Public Enemy star understood what was happening. If a few Run-D.M.C. tracks evoked the music on recent Public Enemy songs, Chuck said, “That was Jay and [new coproducer] Davy D getting together” and only right since “they influence you and they’re influenced by you, no different from Motown and Stax.”
Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee, however, felt Run-D.M.C.’s decision to imitate P.E. records was “the recipe for disaster. Your record is your voice, your way of communicating. If you’re looking at everyone else, trying to emulate what you see out there, you’ve lost your voice.”
His bandmates had D.M.C. confused about how he should rhyme. He’d listen to cassette tapes and personal copies of songs from Tougher Than Leather, and question whether songs that featured his original, simpler style were any good. So before Tougher Than Leather was released he asked Jay: “Yo, how are my rhymes on this album? Because it is really starting to mess with me.”
Jay said, “Are you stupid? Eric B and Rakim were flipping over everything you said. D, everybody loves you. Your fans can say all your rhymes.”
After a nod, D asked, “Yo, Jay, you really like this album?”
Jay wasn’t sure but said they needn’t worry. “He was like, ‘Yo, the shit is dope because Eric B said it was dope,” D remembered.
Rick Rubin handled reshoots for Tougher Than Leather in January 1988. “Rick reshot at least three songs,” Menello remembered. Since Profile eventually let Def Pictures have the sync rights— how this came to occur has never been revealed and sources interviewed for this work did not discuss the subject in detail—Run and D could be shown performing the new songs in the movie.
“They wanted ‘Mary Mary,’” said Ric Menello. “They had ‘Tougher Than Leather,’ ‘Beats to the Rhyme.’” And they were excited about “Run’s House,” another new song set to a “Funky Drummer”–style beat. “They said, ‘This has to be the song at the end; we can’t have that other song. We got to have “Run’s House,” ’” Menello added.
But not as many people attended the reshoot at the Manhattan rock club the Ritz, so filmmakers faked the audience by editing scenes of crowds from earlier sequences. And though the Beasties were still suing Def Jam in 1988, trying to officially leave, and had no intention of recording for Rick and Russell again, Run-D.M.C. wore Beastie Boys T-shirts for a scene in which they performed “Mary Mary” at an outdoor jam. “It was love!” D said.
Then Rick and Russell decided they needed to show more of Runny Ray, and had a second-unit film crew create a montage of scenes—Ray walking the streets, helping fellow citizens, looking very nonthreatening and sympathetic—that would play while Run-D.M.C. performed “Mary Mary” on tour and more fully introduce the character to viewers. Costs spiraled even more. “Oh hell yeah,” D snapped. “There were a couple of things we had to reshoot, like the very end. In the beginning, I’m heavy and at the end, I lost about ten pounds since I had started working out. We lost a lot of money on that, too. We took about $250,000 of our money, reshot it, and the movie flopped.” But they were to blame, Menello recalled: “Run-D.M.C. wanted to reshoot the songs.”
Things got even worse. During the final days of postproduction, for whatever reason, the film editor cut the ending (Run-D.M.C. backstage considering D’s proverb: Every man is every child’s father). “Put that scene back in!” Rick demanded. The editor said he would, then shipped the film without it. With the film behind them, Run felt depressed. They’d be following their 4-million-selling Raising Hell with an album that featured a new P.E.-inspired sound he lacked confidence in, and a movie that had sucked up $250,000 of their earnings. “We didn’t really think about it till the end and said we’ll never do it again,” D.M.C. sighed.
Run-D.M.C. had an album finished but couldn’t release it, since they didn’t know which label they’d be signed to. Profile would have put it out, but for six agonizing months, Russell and Rush Management insisted on feuding with the label over contractual terms. Russell also wanted to see how the lawsuit he encouraged Run-D.M.C. to file would turn out. He and other Def Jam executives hoped Profile would finally allow Run-D.M.C. to leave the label, sign to Def Jam, and fill the void left by the best-selling Beastie Boys, who had now moved to California to sign a new deal with major label Capitol Records, and record their follow-up, Paul’s Boutique.
When the Beasties left Def Jam, Rick Rubin started working with rock bands, and Russell began to sign more R & B groups to the label. Once Russell saw his signing Oran “Juice” Jones score a number one hit with “The Rain,” Russell began to seek out other R & B singers and to devote his attention to creating the sort of romantic ballads he had enjoyed during his childhood in Hollis. (He even convinced his hard-core artist L.L. Cool J to record a love rap to an actual ballad for L.L.’s chart-topping pop hit “I Need Love.”) But none of Def Jam’s other acts could match the Beastie Boys’ historic sales of Licensed to Ill (which remained the best-selling rap album of all time).
“Let’s face it, Def Jam was technically over with,” said P.E. producer Hank Shocklee. “The Beastie Boys were the crossover act for the entire label. They were the ones getting white kids into hip-hop while maintaining the credibility of the streets. With the Beastie Boys gone, no one could fill that role, so Rick started making rock records, and Russell started trying to make rap records, which wasn’t the formula. The formula was Rick makes the records, Russell promotes the records, and the Beastie Boys gave Rick credibility to produce hip-hop.”
Both partners were creating music, and heading in different directions (Rick signed metal band Slayer and comedian Andrew Dice Clay, and Russell recruited R & B acts Oran “Juice” Jones and the Black Flames). They were also divided on the issue of Rush employee Lyor Cohen, who had risen through the ranks to act as Russell’s right-hand man at the management company. Russell kept involving Lyor, who had helped with Run-D.M.C.’s Adidas endorsement deal, in creative decisions that affected Def Jam. “Lyor was trying to tell Rick what to do with Def Jam,” said Doctor Dre, “and Rick was like, ‘You just take care of…get Run-D.M.C. off of Profile!’”
The more Lyor was involved, the less Rick reported into Def Jam’s offices. “He just wasn’t there,” Adam Dubin remembered. Run-D.M.C. also wasn’t dropping by Def Jam as much. “Russell was at Rush Management sometimes but he got Lyor in and Lyor was running that,” said Dubin. “Then all these people showed up that were not there in the beginning and it became a ‘record company.’ It became like business.”
To earn money, Run-D.M.C. turned to touring, performing hits from their first three albums in various arenas. Otherwise, the still-respected trio would have been at home, angry and embittered about their career coming to a halt. The irony was that they were battling to sign to Def Jam after seeing the Beasties emerge triumphant from their lawsuit against the label. When the Beastie Boys broke free of Russell and Rick Rubin, D.M.C. revealed, “I was jealous. And I was like that was a good thing and we should have done it but we were trying to show too much loyalty to Russell and Profile, and not getting enough money. I was fucking jealous,” he repeated, “ ’cause they were taking control of their own careers. When a band does that, they move on to bigger and better things. We just stayed under the wing of Russell and everything.”
Run-D.M.C.’s lawsuit against Profile was getting them nowhere. The lawsuit also delayed the release of their fourth album so long that even their new songs were beginning to sound old-fashioned. In his apartment at 111 Barrow Street, right under Russell’s place, Jam Master Jay regularly played every song from Public Enemy’s upcoming second album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.
Everyone was excited about Public Enemy’s new album, said Def Jam promotions man Bill Stephney. “I remember playing Rick most of the stuff we finished and him basically saying he was retiring from producing because he can’t top Public Enemy.”
Jay was just as amazed by its sound, w
hich was created in various studios, where producers the Bomb Squad—Chuck D, Hank Shocklee, Hank’s brother Keith, Eric Sadler, William “Flavor Flav” Drayton, and sometimes Bill Stephney—had sifted through huge record collections, sampled break beats, and then added their own personal touches. Each producer had different approaches. The result was an album with beats as energetic as those by new producers Eric B and Scott La Rock, songs as powerful as those made by Run-D.M.C. and Larry Smith, and a sound as funky as singles by WBLS radio DJ and producer Marley Marl. Once the Bomb Squad created a beat, Chuck tried various lyrics on it; then they piled on horn blasts, guitar riffs, recorded speeches, and two-part scratch solos (blurred guitars and prominent vocal chants from other rap singles). And on songs like “Don’t Believe the Hype,” they mixed the break-beat “Substitution” on two turntables before piling on dozens of samples from other records.
Jay, who received a copy of P.E.’s finished album from one of its producers, kept playing and enjoying it. “Just heavy, heavy rotation,” said Bill Stephney. “Wouldn’t even play any of the stuff they were working on.”
D.M.C. also played borrowed tapes of songs from the P.E. album, and felt the collection was a work of genius. Once Hank Shocklee supplied D.M.C. with an advance copy of the entire album, D.M.C. kept playing it on his truck’s sound system. “You could hear the shit from fifty blocks away,” D bragged, and he kept blasting “Don’t Believe the Hype” even though Public Enemy felt they should leave this song off the album because its tempo was too slow and Chuck’s lyrics about radio and the media were too cerebral.
However, D.M.C.’s and Jam Master Jay’s opinions soon changed that intention. One evening, after midnight, D drove Jay to 125th Street in Harlem, where they’d hang out with friends like heavyweight boxing champion and rap fan Mike Tyson in front of Dapper Dan’s clothing store. Since Jay wanted to hear P.E.’s new song “Don’t Believe the Hype,” D.M.C. said, “I pulled up in front of Dapper Dan’s with the shit blazing: ‘Don’t believe the hype, hoo-ah!’”