by Ronin Ro
Upon hearing about Run’s deal, a friend (D never said who) asked, “What would make Run play you like that?”
D answered, “He thought I’d be jealous they were giving him money.”
D.M.C. called Jay to ask if he knew about Run’s solo deal and to inquire if Jay was working on the new songs. Jay told him, “D, if you never rap again, you’re gonna write for me. You’re gonna produce, you’re gonna be fucking CEO of my company.”
D didn’t feel any better. He’d been worrying about how his voice was affecting Run-D.M.C. while Run was signing a solo deal without telling him and Jay was helping Run create new songs. “Profile wanted to sell the label,” D repeated. “They couldn’t sell the label without D.M.C. there.” To give the impression that the new songs were by Run-D.M.C., and not simply Run, D claimed, Run and Jay “went back to early-eighties albums to get all the vocals that we never used. They tried to throw them on new songs so they could tell people this is a Run-D.M.C. album.”
D also contended with doctors who didn’t know what exactly had caused his voice troubles. The doctors heard recordings of his concerts, D performing “It’s Like That,” but could say only, “If you were doing that all night it could have attributed to the condition.” He felt lost, confused, angry, and frustrated until July 1997, when he heard a new song by Sarah McLachlan, an introspective singer-songwriter with a lilting voice. MTV was playing her “Building a Mystery” video nonstop, but McLachlan had also written an album cut called “Angel” in three hours, after reading a Rolling Stone article about heroin use in the rock music industry. “Fly away from here, from this dark cold hotel room,” she sang at one point. “There’s vultures and thieves at your back and the storm keeps on twisting,” she sang at another.
In her words, D.M.C. saw his own situation: smaller shows and cheap hotels; managers he claimed never invited him to meetings; bandmates who seemed indifferent to his voice troubles. The song so affected him that after hearing “Angel,” D changed the direction of his music. Like McLachlan, he wrote about his personal life: “Up in the morning, hit the treadmill. Read the morning paper. Get the head fill.” While Run and Jay worked on Run’s “solo” album, D invited Davy DMX, Run-D.M.C.’s first DJ and coproducer of Tougher Than Leather, and other musicians into a studio to help fill his new song, “Cadillac Cars,” with drums, bass, guitar, and harmonica. Some people felt it sounded like Everlast’s sleeper hit “What It’s Like,” but D didn’t mind. Everlast had also made the transition from aggressive rap, appearing as a member of early-nineties ensemble House of Pain on hits like “Jump Around,” to meditative lyrics and laid-back acoustic rock.
During a meeting at Profile in early 1998, an executive told Run-D.M.C. that the company had decided to purchase and release a remix of “It’s Like That”—vocals set to insistent house music— created by an ambitious young New York DJ named Jason Nevins. Run-D.M.C. had never recorded any house music, and this music would definitely alienate rap fans, but they were in no position to argue. “I didn’t care,” Run said of hearing the remix. “Wow,” he remembered saying flatly. “This sounds good. Okay, whatever.”
D was just as unperturbed. “All right, cool.”
Jay was angry that they hadn’t been consulted. “He didn’t make a deal with us when he made the record,” Jay said of Nevins. “He made a deal with Profile.” Jay also didn’t like that Nevins didn’t invite them into his video, which featured break-dancers and happy teens and was all over MTV. But they stopped grumbling once they heard promoters in Europe wanted them to come over and perform the song in concert.
“Nobody knew how big this thing was gonna be,” said Run.
The remix was number one in Australia, rising quickly in the UK, and popular enough to inspire venue owners to send private jets to come pick them up. Jay told Run and D.M.C. they’d add the Nevins song to their set list. “ ’Cause it was a hit,” D said. “That record took the Spice Girls off the number one rating in the UK.” It also sold a staggering 10 million copies. “We made a ton of money,” Run said. “We had a smash! It was as big as MC Hammer’s ‘U Can’t Touch This.’ It knocked ‘Candle in the Wind’ off the chart.” They played Germany for a month, gallivanted across Europe, and raked in millions. Back in America, they were asking for and receiving $12,000, then $20,000, then $50,000 per show. And one promoter even agreed to pay $70,000. MTV meanwhile kept playing the video, and fans looked forward to Nevins’s remix of “It’s Tricky.”
After years of playing colleges, small rock clubs, and radio station festivals, in February 1998 Jay and Run invited Rick Rubin to produce a song for their new album. Since leaving Def Jam, Rubin had become one of rock’s most respected producers. He had changed a bit—he was heavier, spiritual, and more mellow—but still wore shades and had a long beard and still knew how to create hard rap tracks. In the studio, he created a beat based on Kraftwerk’s classic “Numbers.” Run-D.M.C. recited a lyric with the same title, but Run explained, “D didn’t have a voice that day, either.” Even so, D was excited enough to tell a reporter in Vegas, where they played a fashion show at the Hard Rock Café, “It’s an extension of what Jason Nevins did” and that “it should be coming out soon.”
However, the song went unreleased because, D said, Kraftwerk refused to “clear,” let them use, the sample on the record. “We love Run-D.M.C. and we would love for them to do it but it would be wrong because we didn’t let anyone else use our music and we don’t want to play favorites,” D remembered the avant-garde German duo saying.
Despite this setback, things were still going the group’s way. The Gap called in March to invite Run-D.M.C. into a thirty-second television ad, and on the set, with cameras rolling, they did their rap live: “Now Peter Piper wore khakis but Jay rocked jeans and D.M.C. bought a pair from a Gap out in Queens.” They did more shows in Europe for higher fees and learned that, in America, fans treated the Gap ad like a new record.
They met Nevins for the first time at Manhattan nightclub Tramps before going onstage one night, but didn’t hit it off with him. “It was unbelievable,” Nevins said. “They didn’t have that much to say to me, which I thought was kind of weird but all in all I guess they were cool.”
Jay felt Nevins had insulted them during an interview in a European magazine. “I think that Nevins was complaining in the press that he wasn’t compensated,” Tracy Miller explained. “The group made a lot of money off of that record since they got royalties from the use of ‘It’s Like That.’” In response, Jay told a reporter his interpretation of events. “Somebody asked him if he thought the group was appreciative and he said that he didn’t think we were.” Jay said Nevins had done nothing but “a remix of a record that we do every night, something we already know is a hit.” Jay said using the same tempo and adding a kick drum “wasn’t the hardest thing for him to do,” and that it wasn’t hard for “radio stations over there to make it the biggest thing in the world,” since Europeans already loved house music.
If Run-D.M.C. was big, Jay continued, it wasn’t only because of Nevins’s remix. “It was because of the history of Run-D.M.C. It was because of the Gap commercial. It was because we were on television shows and the fact that we toured before that without a hit record and we ripped shit up.”
By May 1998 the remix had sold 100,000 copies in America, and they kept playing shows for higher fees. But the issue of Run’s solo deal meant they weren’t speaking much when offstage. D’s voice not being what it used to be was also a problem. Yet fans kept paying to see them do what they viewed as their new hit, the Nevins remix, and their old classics, so Run and D stayed on the road. And if D’s voice faltered at a crucial moment during a show, Run explained, “I’d jump over him, trying to make nobody notice his voice.”
During this time, some fans turned to Run-D.M.C. for a reminder of what the music used to be. Their show began with Jay— wearing an Adidas running suit, gold chain, and hat—coming out to lead the crowd in chants that praised old-school values a
nd sounds. He was no longer the silent third member. On his turntables, he’d scratch “Peter Piper” and call D to the stage. D, his tracksuit jacket open to display the Phat Farm logo on his T-shirt, adopted a folded-arms b-boy stance at center stage. Run then joined him for parts of “King of Rock,” “Rock Box,” “Sucker MCs,” “Here We Go,” “Together Forever (Krush Groove 4),” “My Adidas,” and the Nevins remix. Some fans shouted for “30 Days,” “Dumb Girl,” “Hard Times,” “It’s Tricky,” “You Be Illin’,” “You Talk Too Much,” and “Walk This Way,” but instead, Run would test-market new speed raps, and Jay human beat-boxed. Before leaving the stage, they performed “Piper” again, and “Down with the King.” Shows ended with either Jay or Run mixing Cheryl Lynn’s break beat “Got to Be Real,” and when Run did it, he’d scratch it so it evoked L.L.’s oldie “Going Back to Cali,” one review noted. Once he was finished, he’d let the record play, yell “I love you” into a mike, and run offstage.
But fans would see Run minutes later, at a table with D, selling autographed T-shirts. D would nod along as fans told him how their next album should sound. Jay, standing nearby, chatted with fans about fast food, DJ Premier’s obvious talent, and their own next album. Run wouldn’t say much aside from “Here” after signing a shirt and shoving it at a fan, one witness remembered. He’d sign another, say, “Here,” and throw that one. Then another, “Here,” until the shirts were all sold and they each had about a thousand extra bucks in their pockets. One night a fan told Jay that Run seemed to have an attitude. “That’s the Russell in him coming out,” Jay quipped. “Sometimes he gets a little uptight. He does all the worrying for the group; I just like to do the music.”
As summer 1998 continued, Profile wanted the group—hotter than ever because of the Nevins hit—back in the studio. “Profile had to get involved ’cause they were trying to sell the label and needed D.M.C.,” D.M.C. said. “They sent me to a psychiatrist because they thought I was going through depression and it was affecting my vocal cords and thought pattern. And I went to the psychiatrist and it was real good for me too.” During their session, the psychiatrist learned all about the projects Run, Jay, and Russell were doing, and said to D, “Run is doing his solo album, Jay has JMJ Records, Russell has Def Jam and Phat Farm; what do you want to do?”
D sulked. “I want to make my album.”
“Then why aren’t you doing it?” she asked.
He kept recording new songs, but didn’t release them because he wanted to be a team player.
“So it’s selfish to do what’s good for you?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
The psychiatrist led D to understand that his bandmates seemed to be out for themselves, and that his waiting around for others to consider his feelings explained why he was now in her office. When the psychiatrist rebuked D, it sank in. He’d spent years trying to be a team player when, the psychiatrist noted, there didn’t seem to be much of a team. D had been torn between self-preservation and loyalty, and was relieved to hear he not only could, but should, consider what was best for him. “I just walked out,” he laughed. “I was like taken; I’ve never had to go back to the psychiatrist again. She made me think, ‘Why are you going through all the bullshit? Do what’s in your heart.’”
He visited Profile to say, “Thank you for sending me! I feel better now!”
D forgot about Run’s solo deal. So did Run. With young fans clamoring for a new Run-D.M.C. album, D told a reporter they would start working on it in October 1998. “And it’s gonna be older than old school,” he vowed. “It’s gonna be super classic Run-D.M.C. Another Raising Hell.”
Chapter 27
Run Ruins Everything
BMG-backed Arista Records bought Profile (“for many millions of dollars, based on the expectation of a Run-D.M.C. record,” D said) in November 1998. “Everybody was real excited,” said Tracy Miller. “They thought, ‘Okay, here’s the major-label opportunity we kept thinking we needed all these years.’”
Run and D.M.C. weren’t as friendly anymore, but professionally things were looking up. They signed a contract (with a clause, Run claimed, that barred them from disparaging Profile), received an advance, and began a new phase of their career. “Me and Clive were off to a great start,” Run said of industry legend and Arista head Clive Davis. Davis, who had worked with everyone from Santana to Whitney Houston, had many exciting ideas about how to reintroduce Run-D.M.C., after a five-year absence, to the modern hip-hop audience (younger listeners buying their very first rap records, and older fans devoted to newer artists and styles). Davis wanted to release an album called Greatest Hits 1983–1998 and then rerelease their catalog. Davis, age sixty-six, was open to Run’s ideas, including a cover of “My Funny Valentine” he wanted to do with his second wife, Justine, for Europe. Run was so pleased with the deal and the promise it held that he soon told Will Smith—by now a big movie star—that he wanted to create a follow-up to Krush Groove that showed Run-D.M.C. leaving a small “go-nowhere” imprint and signing with a supportive Davis-like executive. “I feel like I went from the pit to the palace,” Run told Billboard. “From the very bottom to the very top.”
With a budget in place, Run-D.M.C. stopped recording demos and focused on getting a new song on a sound track or single by early 1999. And, Tracy Miller said, D was excited about recording again. “I definitely wanted it to just be raw and not caring about what we’re doing,” D explained. Run, however, didn’t know about D’s claims of creating another Raising Hell. “If something was coming out his mouth about it, he was just talking promotional,” Run said of the new album.
While D felt the best course of action for this new album would be to record for three months away from distraction, in Jamaica or Hawaii, and then “pick the best records” created during this time, Run didn’t agree.
“Darryl really thought people were gonna listen to his ideas and it would be a group effort,” Tracy Miller said. Once D saw Run and Jay wouldn’t, the old familiar frost settled over Run and D’s relationship. They toured but didn’t speak unless they were onstage, and drifted further apart. D also stopped coming by the studio, and Run figured, “He’s unhappy ’cause his voice is gone.” He claimed, “D didn’t care about Crown Royal, man.”
In early 1999, Run-D.M.C. traveled to San Diego for a BMG distributors’ convention, to get everyone feeling enthusiastic about their upcoming album. After glad-handing distributors, posing for photographs, and performing on a stage, D and Run found themselves alone in a room for the first time in months. Run said to D, “Yo, this is wild, everything that’s happening.”
In response, D finally told him his voice problem was untreatable.
Run didn’t believe him.
D said it was true.
“It was gone,” thought Run. “What could I do? Wow.” Looking at his bandmate, Run said, “D, I hear that. But just go along for the ride. Let’s get our money.”
D then complained to Run about the direction of their new album: another with numerous guest stars and producers and the R & B sound rampant on radio and most other rappers’ hit songs. “I’m not doing this shit,” D added. “It’s bullshit. If y’all want me there, why can’t I put some of my music in?”
“After I told Run that, Run took it as ‘Oh shit, D’s buggin’,’” D remembered. “He went and told on me. It was like the little kid. He’s not getting his way so he’s gonna go tell [Russell].”
At home in New Jersey, D moved to separate himself from Run-D.M.C. He had Tracy Miller—by then promoting the group from her own company—getting his paperwork and accounting straight. “He wanted to set himself up,” she said. “I don’t want to say separate himself from Run-D.M.C, but he felt it was time for him to be his own person. I don’t know if he thought he was being taken advantage of all those years, but a lot of times he would let other people handle stuff, then find out later it wasn’t handled in the best way. He took the initiative and said, ‘Okay, I got to do this myself.’”
In Jay’s recording studio on Merrick Boulevard in Queens, Run and Jay worked with Jay’s business partner Randy Allen, also a music producer, on new tracks. After the BMG convention, Run had told D, “Let me handle this. I’ll get this album made. We’ll be all right.” Now, every waking hour was spent in Jay and Randy’s studio, an intimate, relatively private place with a b-boy feel. People sometimes distracted Run by walking in and out, but for the most part Run could work in peace. Still, without D around, the mood was strange. “Even if Jay didn’t like that I wasn’t involving D—maybe Jay did have a problem with it—there wasn’t anything we could do,” said Run. “His voice was gone. We had this big opportunity here. Clive Davis was involved. I was good at what I did. I had Jay. I had money backing me. We’re making an album. I figured I could pull it off with or without D but with a little bit of D if he wanted to come around.”
There were moments when Jay’s face showed he missed D’s presence. “It felt like a missing link,” Jay’s cousin Doc said, but Jay would get over the sadness and find a way to keep working; he would tell himself they were merely preparing tracks, getting them ready for when D finally arrived in the studio. “That was an awkward situation for them,” said Hurricane. “I still think D.M.C. was capable of making a record. He just had a little voice change. He couldn’t do a lot of yelling, but if he was calm, they could work with it.”