by Ronin Ro
Instead, Jay found unused verses from “Rock Box,” “King of Rock,” and “Jam Master Jay” and sampled them onto new songs, but the old vocals clashed and sounded dated.
Run and Jay soon reached out to Rick Rubin, the Beastie Boys, DJ Premier, and the Dust Brothers (who’d produced the Beasties sample-heavy second album, Paul’s Boutique), and reportedly invited Russell to become more involved even though he hadn’t overseen production of a rap group’s album since the Flatlinerz’s 1994 debut USA. By reuniting Rick with Russell, they hoped to recapture the magic of their best-known album, Raising Hell, the 1986 classic executive-produced by the former Def Jam partners.
Run wanted Crown Royal, as the album was titled (after a brand of liquor), to position Run-D.M.C. as relevant in the age of players and “ballers” like best-selling Jay-Z, a performer whose upscale suits, cigars, and habit of imbibing bubbly in videos evoked the late Biggie Smalls (murdered in March 1997). “Jay-Z’s amazing!” Run felt. “Jay-Z’s incredible!”
D, however, felt Run was following trends again. “Maybe,” Run said. “Perhaps. Maybe I was. I don’t know. I was trying to make new rhyme styles.”
D felt that if Jay-Z worked with a certain producer, Run would immediately try to enlist that same producer for the new album. He felt Run and Jam Master Jay were both thinking, “Let me get ten producers, have them dress me a certain way, let them write for us, and we’ll get famous and get $20 million to be on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” They weren’t greedy, D stressed, just overly concerned with getting rich and living well.
When people close to Run-D.M.C. heard the gossip about Jay and Run recording without D, they were shocked. “I felt like it wasn’t a Run-D.M.C. record,” said Hurricane. At the time, Hurricane called Jam Master Jay on the carpet, shouting, “Yo! Why y’all doing a record and call it Run-D.M.C.? Just call it Run!” Jay understood but had mixed feelings; if Run weren’t spearheading the project, Run-D.M.C. would cease to exist; and besides, Run and Jay planned to compensate D, who could use this money, especially now that his voice might be permanently damaged and he had a family to support. But to Run, it was no different from what happened during the Run’s House tour in 1988. People were forgetting, he felt, that “when I went nuts for a while they had to do stuff without me.”
To help in the production of Crown Royal Run enlisted Wu-Tang’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard, whose session in the studio was nothing if not memorable. “Yeah, he laid on the fucking floor,” Jay recalled. Ol’ Dirty Bastard also stood in the booth, facing a wall, while he rapped. Then Prodigy, half of the rap duo Mobb Deep, and acclaimed lyricist Nas also joined Run in the studio on the song “Queen’s Day.”
Other contributors were Fat Joe and Wu-Tang Clan’s charismatic Method Man. After everyone rapped, Jay reached for the group’s master tapes, searching for old lyrics by D.M.C. “A whole lot of money was given to us,” Jay said. “So we were just giving him a part of it.”
While making the album, Run continued to join D for quick shows. At the March 5, 1999, House of Blues show in Los Angeles, Run asked the large crowd, “How many of you here are from the old school?” They did “Rock Box,” with Run and Jay ready to back D up during D’s solo verses, and both rappers trod carefully across the stage, since fervent fans pressed up against its edge, rapping along and trying to touch Run’s and D’s Adidas.
After Run-D.M.C. performed “My Adidas” and “Sucker MCs,” the crowd went crazy. Unbeknownst to Run and D, Steve Tyler and Joe Perry had walked onstage. Run and D were momentarily confused, but Jay didn’t miss a beat; he immediately threw on “Walk This Way,” and for the first time Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith performed their popular duet, still one of the most played videos on MTV, onstage. Afterward, a dazed Run told the crowd, “I don’t know what we’re gonna do after that.”
Circa May 1999, Run and Jay had finished Crown Royal. Each felt they’d created a surefire hit with back-to-back hip-hop cuts and the genre’s hottest talents. But Arista head Clive Davis listened to it, D recalled, and said, “Take this album back. I’m not putting it out. Where is the Run-D.M.C. rock?”
In response, Run and Jay approached members of the pop rock band Sugar Ray at an MTV Campus Invasion promotional concert and invited them onto a song. The band agreed to record with them during a two-day break. On a private jet after the concert, Run wondered what he and Sugar Ray should collaborate on, and then remembered “Here We Go,” on which Jay cut “Big Beat.” An update would do, he decided. Sugar Ray stopped by the Hit Factory studio in Manhattan one day in May. Run had them play a rock track. “It was really cool, and hopefully it turned out really, really well,” one member of Sugar Ray soon told a reporter. “We never got to hear the finished product, but I think it’s gonna be great.” Run finished the song, and called it “Here We Go Again.”
One day in early July 1999, Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay traveled to Beastie Boy Ad Rock’s apartment in New York City to work on a cut for the album. They’d recently performed with the Beasties at the June 13, 1999, Tibetan Freedom Concert. On the day of the concert, Ad Rock saw for himself how Run-D.M.C. had changed. D was with Run and Jay, despite his objections, because he wanted to catch up on old times with his old friend Ad Rock. “They’d been doing it for a long time,” Ad said. “It was different times and they weren’t selling records. They weren’t having the recognition. They were trying to find themselves.” Ad continued: “Jay seemed fine. D seemed like himself. Run was a mess. He was even that way day to day when they were the biggest things in the world.” And the day of the Tibetan Freedom Concert, Run acted like “the world is gonna end today,” Ad said.
In Ad’s apartment, the Beasties worked on music with Run-D.M.C. At the end of the informal session the Beasties handed Run a cassette tape of what they’d done. When Run finally called to invite the Beasties into the studio to record, Ad Rock was the only Beastie Boy in town; his bandmates were in Tibet “or trekking in the mountains or doing some crazy thing.”
Ad Rock arrived at Jay’s studio with his drum machine and sampler, and played a few beats he’d been working on. “I guess they liked one of my instrumentals, so I recorded all the elements down on tape and hung out for a couple of days,” Ad recalled.
D watched Ad play guitar, and wondered what could have been if Run-D.M.C. had done like the Beasties and severed their ties to Russell and their label. He wondered if, like the Beasties, Run-D.M.C. could have gone on to bigger and better things. As the session wore on, Run and Jay described to Ad Rock a few of their plans for future projects: a Krush Groove sequel with Will Smith producing was one of them. “And we’re gonna get in touch with Aerosmith and do ‘Walk This Way Part Two.’”
Ad’s face drooped.
Jay saw Ad’s expression and asked his opinion. “What? I really want to know what you’re thinking. What’s going on with you?”
Ad grinned. “I got to be honest. I think that’s corny.”
“And they were like, ‘You’re right,’” said Ad.
They needed a second day to finish recording, but D.M.C. didn’t show up this time. Ad hooked up the track while Run described his plan to fill the new album with guests and producers. Ad thought, “Run-D.M.C. doesn’t need ‘guests’ on their album. Run-D.M.C. doesn’t need the ‘five hottest producers in the world.’ They’re Run-D.M.C.” Ad wondered if Arista was behind this. “But it didn’t feel like it. It felt like it was a Run thing. That he wanted to be ‘hip with the kids’ or something,” Ad continued.
D felt the same way and traveled to the Arista offices in Manhattan during late summer 1999 with his new attorney to meet with Clive Davis. Until now Davis had dealt mainly with Run, Russell, and Jam Master Jay. At the outset of the meeting, Clive complimented D.M.C., saying, “You’re the king of rock, D. You should be doing rock.” D was flattered but had things he wanted to say. Then they got down to business. D voiced the same complaints about guest stars that he’d told Run at the BMG distributors’ convention in early 1999. “I can
’t be part of this project,” D began.
Clive replied: “I hear what you’re saying. But your timing could have been a little better. I just spent a million dollars related to your record.” D remembered Clive then adding that as a member of the group, D was a shareholder, and now wasn’t the time for this, especially when D could make some money.
D’s lawyer silently listened as Davis explained that he merely wanted Crown Royal to be as successful as Santana’s recent chart-topper Supernatural. “I spent a million on him, brought all these other artists in,” Davis explained. “His album is number one on the charts!”
After the meeting, D told his lawyer that Davis didn’t understand him either. At home, D’s phone rang. It was Run, having heard about the meeting, calling to confirm that he and Jay could use D’s name and likeness on the new album. In response, D again told Run that this album wasn’t going to work. D claimed Run then said, “You are messing my money up.”
Both got a little heated until D suggested, “Let’s just talk about people in general and life and what’s the right thing to do.” He told Run that when he was going through the voice problems, he felt Run, Jay, and Russell didn’t show enough concern; that they seemed to talk only about what his voice troubles meant for the new album; they didn’t seem to acknowledge that even when this album—this career of theirs—was forgotten, he’d still be suffering from this condition. “How would you feel if this was happening to you?” D continued. “And every time you go to somebody looking for the right answer they’re telling you, ‘Think about the money, think about the money’?”
Days after the conversation, Russell wanted to meet with Run and D.M.C. D agreed. While Run sat quietly, D recalled Russell saying, “D, I know you don’t want to be on this album, but here’s a chance. If you just walk away now it’s gonna be hard for you. Think about the money. They’ll give you a nice advance. You can go on the road.”
“Russell, it’s not about the money. I don’t want the fucking money.”
“Think about your kid.”
“I am thinking about my kid because my kid is able to look at me and say, ‘Daddy made a fucking decision that everybody thought was insane but it was the right way to go. He wasn’t selling his soul and he wasn’t fucking buying in. He didn’t do it just for the money and materialistic or earthly gain.’ If everybody loves the fucking record and Run is so fucking good, why don’t y’all just put the damn fucking Run album out and stop dragging me through the fucking mud!”
Russell responded calmly, “Okay.” Then, according to D, Russell pulled out a Rolex watch. “You see this watch here, D? You see that name on that watch? The reason why this watch sells is because it’s Rolex and it says ‘Rolex.’ You take that name away, it ain’t gonna sell. That’s why we need you…we need this…. We got to promote this record as Run-D.M.C.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“What do you want?”
Run then surprised D by saying, “D, do whatever you want to do. If you want to walk away tomorrow, I’ll support you.”
But they really wouldn’t take no for an answer, D claimed. They kept calling, he said, to pressure him into letting them use his name and likeness to promote Crown Royal as a Run-D.M.C. work, and not Run, Jam Master Jay, and some old samples of D.M.C. along with numerous guest stars. “I went through that negotiation back and forth with Russell and Run, and it came down to them saying, ‘Yo, let us just do this last album,’” D said. “Sort of like, ‘D, let’s just do the last album; let us use your name. Do the last album; come out on the road; let’s just go on tour to have fun.’”
Soon D.M.C. had Jay telling him, “D, just do the shit!”
“Okay, I’m gonna do this,” D said finally, “but not because I’m being nice.” He hoped that vowing not to announce his departure would end the confrontation and advance his solo career. “And I got tired of these motherfuckers calling me,” he joked. “I got to the point where I said, ‘All right! Put the damn album out and leave me the fuck alone!’”
“Then Run called me out of nowhere,” D continued. “I guess he probably thought, ‘Damn, D’s doing this shit. He’ll probably never rap again and I got Russell, I got solo album possibilities, I got Profile giving me advances for my solo shit, we on Arista, I’m getting ready to make moves, so whatever I do I’m gonna be all right.’”
D listened to Run say, “D, I’m gonna give you publishing on the songs that you weren’t even involved in,” but D felt Run was only offering the rights out of self-interest. “It was Run trying to keep himself paid and get what he wanted, what they wanted. He wanted to last, so he called and said, ‘All right, I’ll give you publishing on all the records because at least that shows you support us by allowing us to use your name on a cover.’
“Run basically had to,” D went on. “He couldn’t just be a sucker. Because if the story came out later, ‘Y’all used D’s name, ain’t give him nothing and sampled the lyrics?’ it would make him look very bad. I guess him and Russell had to cover their asses.”
But D.M.C. didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, so he told Run, “Okay, thank you. That’s very thoughtful of you. Cool.”
Run and Jay continued recording new songs in the autumn of 1999, and invited Fred Durst to Jay’s studio. Durst’s rock-rap band Limp Bizkit had scored a major hit on MTV with “Nookie,” so Run and Jay knew that fans would welcome Durst as a guest on Crown Royal. The song “T’em Girls” featured Durst rapping over Ad Rock’s track. “He showed up in the studio and put it down,” said Jay. “He came in there with this gang of model-type girls and he was singing about them.” D.M.C. was in the studio during Durst’s session, and Run tried to include him, but “it was hard,” Run claimed. “He didn’t have any voice.” At the end everyone, including an A & R representative from Arista, received a tape of the session. Clive Davis felt the song would be a big hit, but Durst wanted to change the track. Jay and Run created another one, but Arista preferred Ad Rock’s original version.
As a concession to the acoustic sound he wanted, D felt, Run and Jay then invited rapper-turned-singer Everlast onto a cover of Steve Miller’s “Take the Money and Run.” Arista figured Everlast’s presence, along with Santana’s, could make this song a hit on rock radio. But when Arista submitted Run-D.M.C.’s completed remake to Steve Miller, his people objected to Run’s new lyrics and were reluctant to clear the sample. Miller would take weeks to make up his mind. In the interim, Run-D.M.C. performed a few more shows to earn more money.
Saturday, June 5, 1999, at Top 40 station KISS Boston’s Concert 20, Aerosmith joined them for “Walk This Way.” After the concert, Run and Aerosmith members discussed collaborating on a song for Crown Royal, and media outlets throughout America reported that the rock band and Rick Rubin would join Run-D.M.C. on a remake of “It’s Tricky.”
D.M.C. continued to feel frustration with Run and Jay for excluding him while deciding what Crown Royal would sound like. His wife, Zuri, was worried. “If you stop rapping, how we gonna pay the bills?” she once asked. D attended recording sessions with Run and Jay but also continued to record his own songs away from Run-D.M.C. “If we was ever to take a break, I’d probably have to put together a band and just play bars as the D.M.C. Revue or something,” he told a reporter. He had self-financed the recording of 150 songs. “So even if I was to stop tomorrow, I would be able to put out a box set of previously unreleased D.M.C. music and ideas.”
By mid-August, Run and Jay were recording with Kid Rock in Detroit. “I’m not a big follower of Kid Rock,” Jay admitted. “I had his CD in my car; my kids like him because they watch MTV more than me.” Rock had started his career as a flat-topped white rapper in the early 1990s, but when rap fans rejected his song “Yodeling in the Valley,” he reinvented himself as a guitar-playing, hat-wearing rock-rapper and saw MTV embrace his video for “Bawitdaba.” While Run-D.M.C. toured, Rock, a longtime fan, had called them to say, “Please, let’s do a record. Let’s play together
.” And when Jay heard a copy of Rock’s album, sent by his label, he thought, “Okay, he’s on some ‘King of Rock’–type shit.”
September 9, 1999, a month after the Detroit recording session, which yielded a song called “The School of Old,” Run-D.M.C. stepped out of a limo at the MTV Video Music Awards in New York City. “Dag, we couldn’t even get tickets last year,” Run said at the time. But now, with Kid Rock set to perform a medley of their hits (“Walk This Way,” “Rock Box,” and “King of Rock”) Run-D.M.C. was on the guest list. They wanted to go right in but producers asked them to stand on the red carpet with other guests, models, and VJs for photographers. As they walked toward the entrance, crowds cheered, but D wished he wasn’t there. “I got to tell you something,” he began, turning to Run. “You don’t know what I am thinking.” He wanted to say that over the years, the industry had become fake, and that most of these famous celebrities were churning out soulless product; instead, he said, “Nah, this is something I got to keep to myself.”
Inside, MTV employees smiled and asked the group if they needed anything. They said not really, and one employee responded, “You guys are so easy to work with. Y’all don’t want nothing.”
In October, Run invited Stephan Jenkins of the rock group Third Eye Blind onto one of Run-D.M.C.’s new songs. Jenkins arrived at the studio with an idea for a song already in hand, and a drummer named “Brain,” part of the “new” Guns N’ Roses. Jay thought Jenkins’s track was too fast but figured Arista would like it.