Raising Hell

by Ronin Ro

  “And that’s all Jay said,” D added.

  March 14, 2002, Jay went down to the Puck Building on Houston Street in Manhattan, a few blocks away from the old Def Jam office at 298 Elizabeth Street, to attend an induction ceremony for the new Hip-Hop Hall of Fame. Jay saw many old friends. There was Doug E. Fresh, whose beat-boxing Jay imitated during the Raising Hell tour, and Slick Rick, whose “The Ruler’s Back” single he’d produced in 1988. And Crazy Legs, the talented performer who helped bring break-dancing to the masses by performing in the 1982 film Flashdance. And Grandmaster Caz, whom Run and D had started out imitating. And Kangol Kid, who danced during the first Fresh Fest, rapped with the group UTFO, and later inspired “Peter Piper.” And Grandmaster Flash: first an idol, now a friend.

  There had been ups and downs, moments when all looked lost, but Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay had made it. They’d survived in an industry where rappers released only three albums before losing their audience, and achieved every historic first, opening the doors for everyone that followed. They created 90 percent of the styles used by current rappers and helped move the genre, and Russell Simmons, into corporate boardrooms, clothing stores, movie theaters, rock magazines, and MTV studios. “We had some talent, but God walked through the studio,” Run told a reporter. “We’re the kings of rap, but he’s the king of kings. I know that it’s been a lot of luck, a lot of love, and a lot of help from the big man. If magazines keep saying we inspired and created everything, then maybe Run-D.M.C. has five members: Run, D.M.C., Jam Master Jay, Russell, and God.”

  At the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame ceremony, older, wiser, but reportedly cash-strapped Jay heard Run-D.M.C.’s name called, and peers applaud and cheer wildly. Jay stepped onto the stage to accept the award on behalf of Run and D and looked out over a crowd that included people they’d battled during their earliest days, people whose regime they’d toppled.

  After thanking Russell for fine-tuning their look, Flash for inspiring him to DJ, and the Cold Crush for showing Run-D.M.C. the way, Jay said, “Everybody says ‘if it wasn’t for you cats,’ but we know that’s bullshit, because we know there was cats before us. We just was the people that were able to take the real beats from the street, which y’all brothers was doing, and put it on TV, let people hear it on wax. It had to be Sugar Hill Gang to bite off my man Grandmaster Caz. It had to be a Puff Daddy to bite off the Sugar Hill Gang. It goes around in circles.” He made peace with the empire his group had toppled when they were all so young.

  “Run-D.M.C. was the greatest group to do it,” said Hurricane. “Their shows were always the best, they put out the hot records, and opened the doors for rap music. Without Run-D.M.C. I don’t know how far hip-hop would have gone. So much stuff bounced off of Run-D.M.C.: Russell bounced off of Run-D.M.C., Beastie Boys bounced off Run-D.M.C., Lyor Cohen bounced off of Run-D.M.C., Def Jam bounced off of Run-D.M.C., even though they weren’t on Def Jam. So without Run-D.M.C. I don’t really know how far hip-hop would have gone.”

  Chapter 29

  The Party’s Over

  When Aerosmith called to invite Run-D.M.C. onto their thirty-eight-date tour in summer of 2002, Run, who had decided not to perform as many shows, returned to the group. Aerosmith was promoting a new two-disc greatest hits package, Ultimate Aerosmith Hits, and two new songs, “Lay It Down” and “Girls of Summer,” but reporters couldn’t stop writing about that night in 1999 when Aerosmith, Run-D.M.C., and Kid Rock performed Run-D.M.C. songs together for MTV. “The MTV medley was well received. …People just wanted them,” said Tracy Miller. “It was a good show.”

  The tour started on August 13 in Holmdel, New Jersey, at the PNC Bank Arts Center, and ended on November 14 in Mountain View, California. After years of struggle, Run-D.M.C. was again performing for their mainstream audience. “Back to superstar status,” Run said, and he wanted it to stay that way, filling their set with their abiding rock-heavy numbers “It’s Tricky,” “Rock Box,” “Mary Mary,” “Walk This Way,” and “King of Rock.” Because of Crown Royal ’s lackluster sales, D felt that the tour “was like a blessing. Out of nowhere Aerosmith said they’re going on the road and wanted Run-D.M.C. on the tour.”

  On August 14, 2002, the temperature neared one hundred degrees and the PNC Bank Arts Center was packed. Run-D.M.C. stepped onstage and performed snippets of “Mary, Mary” and “Jam Master Jay.” The crowd got even louder when Kid Rock joined them for “King of Rock” and his own hit “Bawitdaba.” Then Run-D.M.C. headed backstage, passing four women in flag-patterned bikinis that would join now-shirtless Rock during his own set. “I was so happy to do it,” Run said of the tour. “We did good.”

  They waited backstage until Aerosmith finished their ballad-heavy set with “Dude (Looks Like a Lady),” and everyone grew silent. “Then all of the sudden there’s turntables out there on the stage,” Jay said. When Jay strolled out on the empty stage, thirty thousand people screamed their heads off. “Jay was definitely the best DJ ever to do it,” said Hurricane. He wasn’t like modern DJs—who relied on visual gimmicks, spinning around, mixing with their feet in the air—but didn’t have to be, Hurricane continued. “It wasn’t about that during our era. It was about being able to rock the crowd. If you could DJ and rock the crowd, you did your job. And nobody could do it better than Jay.”

  From backstage, Aerosmith’s lead singer, Steven Tyler, announced, “Yo, Jam Master Jay!” On the turntables, Jay started cutting the opening to “Walk This Way” as Steve Tyler and Run, and Kid Rock (in a T-shirt and holding a can of Pabst beer) and D.M.C. in his “Free Slick Rick” T-shirt emerged from backstage. Onstage, Run, D, and Steven Tyler re-created the little dance they had done in the “Walk This Way” video so long ago. Then Run took his hat off and shoved it onto Tyler’s head. They spent a minute or so hugging each other before Run-D.M.C., Jay, and Kid Rock hurried offstage to allow Aerosmith to perform “Love in an Elevator.” “We would open the show, went in the middle of the show, and ended the show,” Run recalled.

  Jay was amazed that so many rock fans still loved them after their last few unsuccessful albums and smaller shows. “There were a few years where the business end of things started to get to me,” Jay admitted. “It was frustrating to see the money being made off of the art form during a period of us finding [what sound best suited us].”

  Run-D.M.C. was back: Gap commercials, Ted Turner’s TNT, the NBA halftime shows, royalties and performance fees for the Nevins remix, Dr Pepper asking the group to film a commercial between tour dates, and a luxury tour bus complete with big-screen TVs and their name on the side, courtesy of Aerosmith.

  During the tour, Run-D.M.C. played Burgettstown and Hershey, Pennsylvania; Bristow, Virginia; and Mansfield, Massachusetts, before hitting Wantagh, New York, playing gigantic arenas again, getting flattering write-ups, and performing for the sort of large white crowds some Raising Hell concerts had drawn. When a reporter asked D about the tour, he said, “It’s going incredible.”

  In Boston, Run told the media, “We are doing three nights in Boston. Three nights! Twenty thousand people a night! Wow! I don’t know what Aerosmith or Kid Rock are used to, what they do in one night,” he continued, “but it’s amazing to me that this triple headline is doing so much. I told my group, even if Crown Royal would have blown up really big I don’t know if we’d be at this place anyway,” he noted. “We went so far into the R & B area, like really making black records, it’s amazing to still have this juice sitting on the other side!”

  Jay would follow some concerts with paid gigs as DJ in a local nightclub. After rocking for thirty thousand people, he would catch his second wind and give clubgoers a show as energetic as the one Aerosmith fans had just paid to see. “I’m feeling totally successful, totally blessed, to be thirty-seven years old and still doing it,” Jay told the media. “I’m running up and down the court still! The DJ thing really keeps you young.”

  Run and D meanwhile were becoming tight again. While Run recorded the Crown Royal albu
m, they hadn’t done as many shows, talked much, socialized, or spoken on the phone about their personal lives. On the road, forced to spend time with each other, they were bonding again. “Me and D are gonna sit down and incorporate his style with mine and make an album with no collaboration,” Run said at the time, and D looked forward to recording with him again.

  “Joe was more open to D’s ideas because Crown Royal didn’t do what Joe thought it would,” said Tracy Miller. “D generally thought they could make a new album, the three of them. That was the goal.”

  But then Run wondered if it wouldn’t be best simply to retire now, while they were riding high. “Sometimes certain bands don’t need to make a new record,” he thought. With the Phat Farm sneaker doing phenomenally well, he wondered if it wasn’t time to enter another phase of his life and career. But then, with Run-D.M.C.’s twentieth anniversary approaching, Def Jam Records offered a recording contract. Russell, who had sold his interest in Def Jam in the late 1990s, was no longer with Def Jam, but the group’s former road manager Lyor Cohen was, and while running the label he had sold millions of albums by some of the genre’s most intriguing acts.

  “It was like, ‘Okay, Run-D.M.C. should go out with a bang,’” D remembered thinking. “‘We should come home.’ We should have been at Def Jam. They should have paid Profile $25 million to get us there on general principle, but it was a battle of business.”

  Still, Arista had dropped Run-D.M.C. after Crown Royal’s poor sales and a new regime arriving to help Clive Davis’s successor, L.A. Reid, run the label; meanwhile Def Jam head Lyor Cohen wanted Run-D.M.C. to record a final album that would reflect their original, most heartfelt sound. “You need to use producers,” D remembered him saying, “but you ain’t gonna go in there with a ‘destination.’ You’re gonna go in there and have fun like you used to. Don’t be worried about what you’re gonna write. Just go do it.” The group couldn’t believe it. They were on a huge tour—getting major write-ups every night—and getting along with each other and being offered a new record deal that could potentially earn them millions. And if this was their last album, D felt, so be it. “We would have went to Def Jam and would have probably been home. If you want to end it, let’s end it here, though.”

  Jay happily told reporters about the Def Jam discussions. “It’s gonna be a huge event!” he said. “Run-D.M.C.’s gonna sign with Def Jam for the first time. It’s our twenty-year anniversary. When they started Def Jam, we were already artists on another label. Everybody came around Russell because of us, and then he got the deal with Def Jam. He needed a way to promote his artists through Run-D.M.C., through our tours.”

  Jay was also producing an album by a new group called Rusty Waters (an act featuring his business partner, Randy Allen, and Jay’s nephew Boe Skaggz) for Virgin Records. Then he would help D.M.C. produce his solo album for Arista (though Run-D.M.C. was dropped, executives still planned to release D’s music). “And then Run-D.M.C., the album next year on Def Jam!”

  The Def Jam deal could bring them about $25 million, they felt, more than enough for Jay to finally pay the six-figure amount he owed the IRS for back taxes and penalties. They’d be able to take their time creating quality albums, D said. They wouldn’t spend three hundred days a year on the road. They might tour once every three years. Said D.M.C.: “That’s what we were supposed to be doing as opposed to ‘Damn, we got to keep up with Jay-Z, we have to keep up with Billboard; we got to worry about SoundScan.’”

  A day after Def Jam called with an informal offer, Jay happily told another reporter they were signing to the label. “So it’s like ‘welcome home.’ It’s true it’s the first time we’ve ever been signed to Def Jam, but as you may know, we helped to create the label. We were hot, and it helped Russell to start Def Jam. Now, twenty years later, it comes back together.”

  They wouldn’t work with Russell, D said, since Russell openly admitted he was no longer knowledgeable about trends in modern rap music. “Russell will tell you in a minute, ‘I don’t know no more.’” In addition, Russell was busy running various companies and signing deals. “We would definitely have fucked with Rick Rubin,” D continued, “but it would have been us doing what we used to do. Even if we did use a producer’s beat, we would have ‘just used a beat,’ and arranged and produced it ourselves.”

  Everyone around them was happy for Run-D.M.C. Said Hurricane: “They never wanted to be on Profile once Russell started Def Jam.” But Run privately believed a Def Jam album would, unfortunately, have evoked Crown Royal. “Without D you were never gonna get a Run-D.M.C. album,” he said. “Once D lost his voice a Run-D.M.C. album was dead. It would have been a Run album with Run trying to get something out of D, mainly Run rapping.” Either way, the deal hadn’t gone through, since Def Jam couldn’t get their numbers together. “Run-D.M.C. signing to Def Jam was always the pinnacle of the Def Jam–Columbia deal,” Doctor Dre explained. “It just never happened. And as Cory said, ‘They will never, ever, ever be on Def Jam’ and Cory was right.”

  Between Aerosmith tour dates in the summer of 2002, Jay stayed busy with side projects. Since JMJ Records’ collapse, he’d run his studio and become known as a good talent scout. He discovered rappers, recorded a few tracks, and got them signed to various labels. Sometimes their albums wouldn’t come out—like the Ill Hillbillies on smaller label Suave House—but Jay still had friends at majors who remembered the immense success of Onyx’s 1993 debut.

  Jay hoped to get Millennium Max signed (he included them on Crown Royal) and worked with Somebody Ink, a group that included Run’s nephew and Run on a few of their songs. Jay was also trying to make inroads in film by producing a movie called Frank Forever, which Russell Simmons promised to help shop to studios.

  During a break from the Aerosmith tour, in his studio in Queens, Jay received a phone call from his cousin Doc claiming that an associate in Randy Allen’s camp pulled a gun on Doc’s younger cousin Fonz and told him, “Yo, get the fuck out the studio. This ain’t your studio. This ain’t Jay’s studio. This is Randy’s studio.”

  Jay was concerned and assured Doc that he’d look into the matter. Satisfied, Doc changed the subject. “I heard you’re gonna sign to Def Jam, man,” Doc said.

  “Yeah, we’re gonna sign,” Jay answered, then added that life was good: he liked being on the Aerosmith tour, was earning good money, would be doing a few more dates with Aerosmith, and would do a few final DJ gigs before signing to Def Jam.

  Doc said that while Jay was on the road, “Randy Allen was running the studio by himself. Lydia High was Jason’s personal manager, handling anything pertaining to Run-D.M.C. She was also managing the studio.”

  But, Doc added, Jay planned to focus on the Run-D.M.C. album and film projects. “I heard he was asked to be director of A & R for Def Jam for $100,000 a year. I think Lyor offered him that but he turned it down ’cause he couldn’t see himself in the office every day.” He planned finally to close the studio. “He was gonna move on. He was about to drop everything.”

  Things continued to look up for Run-D.M.C. in early September 2002. Arista released Run-D.M.C.—Greatest Hits. An updated version of Bill Adler’s 1987 biography Tougher Than Leather: The Rise of Run-D.M.C. arrived in stores. And they kept writing songs for a Def Jam album while on the bus. “It’s gonna be rock-rap and it’s gonna be b-boy,” D.M.C. promised a reporter. “We’re gonna take it back to the essence of the beat and rhyme like ‘Sucker MCs’ and ‘Beats to the Rhyme.’”

  Then, as they were riding toward another concert days before end of the Aerosmith tour, Run decided that he did not want to return to the days of playing smaller, lower-paying club dates, and riding in vans, when he already had a promising, stable job. He went to the back of the bus and told D and Jay, “Yo, tomorrow we’re gonna tell them we ain’t gonna do the tour. We’re going home. Y’all have to figure out what y’all want to do. Because I don’t want to perform no more.”

  Aerosmith was already talking about exte
nding the tour and giving them more dates, so Jay and D both said, “What?”

  “Let’s finish this tour, man!”

  “What you talking about!”

  “Yo, I don’t want to do it anymore,” Run said. “I don’t want to finish the tour.”

  “Joe, that’s all cool, but let’s at least do a couple of shows a month to make sure our soundman, our light man, and our managers can eat,” Jay said.

  “They’re gonna have to figure it out too,” witnesses remembered Run saying.

  Jay pleaded with Run, then finally said, “Forget you then!”

  “Jay probably was hurt over that,” said Run. “I was done.”

  D was just as angry, especially when Run hinted he wouldn’t do the new album. “I tried to end it many times,” Run explained. “I finally did end it. They wanted me back after a break. I was depressed,” Run revealed. “I was starting to feel like I didn’t want to do this anymore. And I had a lot of success. And it wasn’t as fun.”

  He was by now president of the entire athletic division at Phat Farm; he had a family; he had church services. “Time to move on,” Run said.

  But a close friend echoed sentiments shared by many. “Let’s just put it this way,” this person said. “Run was looking out for Run. Russell’s his brother, so he’d be taken care of without a Run-D.M.C. show. In the end Run chose to not tour anymore. But if they’re your friends and came up with you, look out for them, too. Offer them a job.”