Raising Hell

by Ronin Ro

  Chuck D and Hank Shocklee had just left a recording session and were driving by. They saw D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay playing the song for a crowd that had just left the Apollo Theater. “Me and Chuck didn’t go up to the truck, because we couldn’t get through the crowd,” said Hank. “But when we heard that, we said, ‘Let’s pull ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’ out the “don’t do” pile.’”

  In the spring of 1988, six months after filing it, Run-D.M.C.’s lawsuit against Profile Records had got them nowhere: Def Jam still wanted Run-D.M.C.’s new songs on the Def Jam sound track to the upcoming movie Tougher Than Leather, and Profile wouldn’t budge. Jam Master Jay wanted this to end and hoped that no matter where Rush Management led Run-D.M.C., he would be able to sign a contract that would give him an equal share of profits from the group. The delay was killing them, he knew, and would only hurt the Tougher Than Leather album. It was good, but new rappers were changing rap’s sound every day, and their new work might sound old when it was finally released. The worst thing about this lawsuit, Jay felt, was that Rush Management had started it, and all Run-D.M.C. could do was wait it out.

  Rush sent someone to Profile (many people said Lyor Cohen) to finally resolve the dispute. Rush employees felt the group had the upper hand, and that Run-D.M.C. would join the Def Jam family. But by the close of business that day, word spread that Run-D.M.C. had instead signed to Profile for a few more years. They’d receive money, an insider noted, but the long battle resulted in them “renegotiating for a long contract rather than going to Def Jam.” They wouldn’t win the case. They wouldn’t sign a new deal with another label. There would be no huge up-front payment.

  Rush and Profile still hadn’t finished negotiations, but Jam Master Jay headed to Profile’s office with a shopping bag in each hand, and without an appointment. In Cory Robbins’s office, Jay handed him the two bags.

  Cory asked, “What’s this?”

  Jay said, “There are the masters.”

  The issue of the lawsuit had been that Run-D.M.C. supposedly didn’t want to release its next album on Profile. As the lawsuit continued in court, Run-D.M.C. had held on to the master tapes—enormous reel tapes that contained the actual music they had spent the last two years recording. Without these tapes, Profile would not be able to release the new works. Cory was touched, since the lawsuit hadn’t been settled yet, and both sides were supposed to be in a big fight. Softly, he asked, “Why are you giving this to me?”

  Jay wouldn’t take them back. He just wanted the battle over with, and for Run-D.M.C. to get back to releasing hit albums.

  While heading toward a locked closet that held tapes, Cory said, “All right. Well I’m gonna put them in the vault. I’m just gonna put them there. Thank you. That’s a good sign.”

  As part of the settlement with Profile, Jay finally became an official member of Run-D.M.C. by also signing to Profile. Since he wasn’t originally signed to the label, he had appeared in photos only on the back of the first two album covers. Now he’d appear with Run and D in every official group photo, and receive an equal share of the monies Profile Records paid the group for new albums and royalties. Cory Robbins felt it was about time. “He always contributed equally anyway,” Robbins noted.

  Jay was ecstatic, his cousin Doc recalled. “‘Finally. Finally, I’m an official part of the group. Now to get my “official” funds.’” According to Doc, up until that point Jay never felt he was getting his fair share.

  After six heavy months, both sides behaved as if nothing had happened. “It was really like a big cloud had been lifted and everybody was nice again,” Robbins said. But the battle hurt Run-D.M.C.’s fourth album, Tougher Than Leather. Profile scheduled release for April 1988, but Cory Robbins felt “they should have had an album out sooner after Raising Hell. It was two years, a long time in the world of rap, and the longest they had taken between albums. When they handed Tougher Than Leather in, we thought it was great and expected it to be an enormous success, bigger than Raising Hell, but it wasn’t.”

  Run-D.M.C. forgot about signing to Def Jam, which was probably best, since Rick Rubin had told Russell he was unhappy with how things were changing at the label. Rick said to Russell their partnership had to end, and that one of them should leave the company. “Do you want to leave?” Rick asked.

  Russell said, “No.”

  Rick nodded. “Okay, fine, I’ll go.”

  When he learned Rick was leaving, Chuck D of Public Enemy got Rick an advance copy of the just-completed Nation album as a parting gift. On an airplane headed to his new home in Los Angeles, where he’d start producing rock bands, Rick listened to every groundbreaking track, and felt no one had ever done anything like this. Instead of Rick’s slow and low Def Jam sound, rapping to one beat, P.E. sped the tempo, piled hundreds of samples on, and kept changing beats every few bars. “And that was the album where Chuck really started getting political,” Rick recalled.

  After hearing a few songs, Rick felt tears stream from his eyes. “I was so proud,” he said. “Because to me it just took it to a whole new level and I remember crying, thinking that this is just such a beautiful thing that’s evolving and growing.” But he also felt something had ended. The era of albums like Raising Hell and Licensed to Ill, and the innocent early Def Jam sound that had helped Run-D.M.C. carry rap to the mainstream, was over. “It was really sad,” Rick said, “really sad.”

  Profile released Tougher Than Leather in April 1988. Despite the delay, fans and radio stations reacted positively to both songs on its first single, “Run’s House” and “Beats to the Rhyme.” But to Cory Robbins, the single was “not like the hits from Raising Hell that were bigger.”

  Profile remained optimistic, shipping advance orders of 1.25 million copies, but reviewers described Run-D.M.C.’s new lyrics as timid compared to “Hard Times,” “It’s Like That,” and “Proud to Be Black.”

  Some reviewers rejected the funk guitar on “Miss Elaine,” dubbed “Mary Mary” a failed attempt at another “Walk This Way,” and unfavorably compared “Soul to Rock and Roll,” “I’m Not Going Out Like That,” and “Run’s House” to Public Enemy’s critically acclaimed It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (released during the same month). “While the members of Run-D.M.C. aren’t yet in danger of losing their self-applied titles as the kings of rock,” Rolling Stone felt, “the future is far less certain than it was two years ago.”

  In June, Rush Management told them they had to tour. Run didn’t want to. He’d coped with his depression for months by keeping busy, devoting himself to writing new songs. But he didn’t want to face an audience and perform songs he had mixed feelings about. But Rush Management said deals were signed, and they had to honor commitments. “I had to!” Run said. “They pushed me! They knew something was the matter with me and they pushed me out there.” Run’s resentment showed in a few performances, and in some of his interactions with opening acts Public Enemy, Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, EPMD, and other groups Russell managed. “He was mad at everyone,” D.M.C. said. “He thought niggas was stealing from him and everything.” Run felt they deserved more.

  Jay didn’t like seeing Run like this. “Because that’s his man,” said Jay’s cousin Doc. “‘Damn, my man ain’t feeling right. Things are not going right for my man right now.’” But Jay understood why Run was angry. Jay was facing just as many money problems because of financing their upcoming movie and the unsuccessful two-year battle against Profile. And in some ways, Jay had it even worse. Though the group had toured a little, Jay had reportedly neglected to pay income tax on some of his Raising Hell earnings, and the IRS was charging him interest and penalties that brought his debt to the IRS above the six-figure mark. And with Run falling into a depression that could potentially ruin a much-needed money-earning tour, Jay stepped forward to assume a position of leadership, keep the tour going, and keep money coming in.

  When the Run’s House tour (in support of Tougher Than Leather, which had sat in stores
since April 1988) reached Philadelphia, Jam Master Jay learned that Chuck D planned to hang a Ku Klux Klansman doll in effigy onstage. Jay and towering road-crew employee Big D Jordan combed the halls of the Spectrum Arena, seeking the defiant rapper. They found Chuck backstage, and Jay calmly told Chuck he couldn’t do it. “So me and Jay got into a discussion where Jay was being nice about it, I was being kind of aggressive, and Jay had to pretty much put me in check by saying, ‘This is a Run-D.M.C. tour, this is the Run’s House tour, and when Public Enemy headlines a tour, then you guys will do what you want,’” Chuck recalled.

  Jay then explained that it was a matter of safety, Chuck said. The Run’s House tour would play all kinds of venues. “You know, you got nonunion crews,” Chuck remembered Jay explaining. “Some places down south, you got straight crackers. ‘Yo, they could put a stanchion up wrong and have a light fall on somebody’s head.’ When he explained that, I was, like, ‘Cool.’”

  By July 1988 Tougher had sold over a million copies, but some critics still described it as a flop. “They were comparing it to Raising Hell,” said publicist Tracy Miller. Others harped about the dearth of rock-rap songs. “They got the hard-core that Run-D.M.C. started with,” said Hurricane. Lower sales by at least a million didn’t bother D as much as the fact that they wouldn’t be able to rush-release a better, new album. “Actually I was jealous of people on Def Jam,” D said. “Profile would never let us put albums out when we wanted. I had so much material in me and in my book and Chuck and L.L. were able to make albums every year. It seemed they had freedom and we would have to wait three years and ‘wait to see the success of the single.’ I was like, ‘Put Tougher Than Leather out, and six months later put the next album out.’ And that shit was frustrating.”

  Meanwhile, Run was growing despondent. Onstage in twenty-thousand-seat arenas, Run noticed eight thousand seats were empty. And since Tougher was nowhere near matching Raising Hell’s sales, Run worried that peers, reporters, and fans would say they had fallen off. He was competitive to the point “where his biggest enemy is himself, as with many great cats,” Chuck D said.

  Obsessing over low sales figures depressed Run even more. “I didn’t know any better,” said Run. “You kind of go nuts when you’re Michael Jackson in your mind. You sell 4 million and then…It was too much, too much pressure to worry about.” He was also angry with Rush Management for pushing him to tour. “They were like, ‘The show must go on,’ I guess.”

  On tour, Run would withdraw to his hotel room to brood about falling off and to wonder why everyone seemed to be ignoring his displeasure. “If you study up on depression you’ll see what I went through. Study up on deep depression. That’s where Run was at: clinical depression.”

  Onstage, Run performed with his usual energy, but offstage, “He’d just stand there,” said Ray. “People trying to talk to him but he ain’t saying shit.” When it became apparent that Tougher Than Leather would sell only 1.5 million copies, Run believed he was right: people were gossiping about how Run-D.M.C. was over. He didn’t even want to go onstage. “They just pushed me out there and said, go. I would get pushed onstage every night.”

  His tourmates—Public Enemy, Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, and EPMD, all inspired to begin rapping because of Run-D.M.C’s early albums—noticed Run’s shift in mood, and sympathized with his situation. “Run had success for a long time,” said P.E. producer Hank Shocklee. “When you’re out there on the road, in the public, and your record is ‘number one,’ ‘blowing up,’ and ‘doing all kinds of great things’ and everyone admires you, adores you, and that happens for years, well, when that stops, there has to be something inside you that dies. And everybody deals with that differently.”

  D.M.C. partied with road-crew members and crates of Olde English 800. He tried to bond with Chuck D over forties, but learned Chuck didn’t drink or smoke. Humbled, he retreated to his dressing room to continue drinking with his pals.

  Midway through the tour, they reached Houston. Run continued to regret making the movie Tougher Than Leather with their money. As he now understood, film studios financed production if executives liked a script. Quincy Jones and New Line had both wanted to foot the bill, but Rick and Russell had insisted they do it on their own. Run worried that the movie would flop like the album and cost Run-D.M.C. what little remained of its audience. Run also felt his managers—Russell Simmons; Russell’s right-hand man at Rush, Lyor Cohen; and their various subordinates—didn’t care about his feelings. They just wanted him to keep making money for them. Nothing could cheer Run up. He didn’t even want to smoke weed anymore, and wondered if he should even be alive.

  “I was beyond depressed,” Run explained. “Not because records weren’t selling but because depression is an illness.”

  D.M.C., however, felt Tougher’s sales were somewhat responsible. “Once it wasn’t as big as Raising Hell he got depressed.” D urged him to lighten up, and reminded him that Run-D.M.C. had made history with Raising Hell and many other achievements. “We just sold 3 million Raising Hells!” he added.

  At a truck stop between shows, Run bought some sort of product that could prove fatal if ingested. No group member ever revealed what it was, but Run poured some of it into a can of cola in his hotel room, set the can on a table, and stared it down. I may be crazy, he thought, I may be depressed, but I’m not drinking it. Another time, he stepped onto a balcony outside of a hotel room, and considered the fifty-story drop. I may be depressed, I may be crazy, but I’m not jumping, he thought.

  Russell somehow learned about Run’s suicidal mind-set— perhaps from Rush employees, road-crew members who had grown up in Hollis with Russell, or even other members of Run-D.M.C.— and tried to help, D recalled, by asking, “Yo, Run, what the fuck are you buggin’ out for? Motherfucker, you’re stupid! You sold a half million records and bands wish they could do that.” Then: “Do you know how many people would want to sell a million and a half records? Do you know what you’re throwing away?”

  “He tried to talk to me but it was going in one ear and out the other ’cause I was nuts,” said Run.

  Chuck D also tried to cheer him up. “I would counsel, and sit with Run,” Chuck recalled. “It’s very hard to know you made the greatest rap album of all time. You think you’re supposed to be better than that but the fact that he wasn’t kind of threw Run into a little spin.” Run was as impervious to Chuck’s pep talk as he’d been to Russell’s.

  After a concert in Phoenix, Arizona, road-crew employee Runny Ray stopped by Run’s hotel room to see how Run was doing, and saw Run had turned the heat in his room up to maximum. “We in Phoenix, Arizona!” Ray said. “What you doing with the heat on? What is wrong with you, man?” The tough-love approach didn’t work, so Ray sat and listened to Run say, “Yo, man, I’m depressed.” Ray became so sad he said, “Yo, Joe, you fucking me up, man.” Ray added: “I used to go sit in his room and cry with this nigga.”

  Ray tried to cheer Run up on the tour bus by playing him Michael Jackson’s inspiring song “The Man in the Mirror.” “I would always play that in my bunk. Him and me were right across from each other. I would open his curtain and play it.”

  The tour ended but Run was still sad when Run-D.M.C. traveled to MTV’s midtown studios in August 1988 to be the first guests on a new show called Yo! MTV Raps. On the colorful set, cohost Doctor Dre, who had also left Def Jam, stood behind the turntables. “They were still pretty huge,” Dre recalled. After taping the segment, Dre told Run that fans still loved Run-D.M.C.

  “It’s hard,” Run replied. “I don’t know. I can’t believe this. We were doing 4 million. Dre, you remember….”

  “Nah, dude,” Dre said. “Everything grows and moves on.”

  Before they left, Jam Master Jay asked Dre, privately, what he thought about Jay creating his own record label. Jay realized Run-D.M.C. was in decline, sales had dipped, and that Run was suffering from severe depression. Jay asked Dre if he thought starting a new record label without
his bandmates would be disloyal to Run-D.M.C. Dre told him absolutely not: “Try to take a vacation so you guys can just enjoy your lives a little and the fruits of your labor,” Dre added. “And then start thinking about something else.”

  At home during the autumn of 1988, Run’s depression persisted. “It affected everything around me,” he said. “I couldn’t think straight. I really should have been on medication.” He was also reclusive, said Jay’s cousin Doc. “He would stay in the house. If he needed something from the store he would send someone like Runny Ray because he couldn’t handle that much attention.” Run also neglected his personal hygiene, and began to balloon in weight, Ray recalled. “He’d get a cheeseburger, order of fries, order of onion rings, a chocolate shake, and have the big apple pie à la mode. He’d always get that. He was also a sloppy eater. He had ketchup all over his face.” If people rode with Run in his impressive 735 BMW, they might see moldering slices of pizza tucked in the door pockets, Ray said.

  Russell’s big plan for a book, a movie, and an album to arrive in stores and theaters at the same time had failed. Their authorized biography was released first to critical acclaim. Thankfully, Tougher Than Leather was described in the L.A. Times “Calendar” section, the New York Times entertainment section, and many national magazines as a major production, not a low-budget action film. “People were comparing it to Beverly Hills Cop, so audiences were expecting this big slick film,” screenwriter and costar Ric Menello recalled.

  Before the movie’s release, and before his departure, Rick Rubin and Menello created a TV ad that included action-packed scenes, and Public Enemy’s Flavor Flav saying, “Yo, it’s the brother man versus the other man!” But New Line, the studio that had wanted to distribute the film since seeing its screenplay and also the company that paid Def Pictures for the right to distribute the film, “didn’t care,” Menello felt, and didn’t pay TV stations to air the commercial, since the distributor felt the low-budget film would earn more money as a videocassette sold exclusively in stores.