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Speaker 1: This is a podcast from Minute Media.

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Speaker 2: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Shirley You Can't Be

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Serious podcast this week as we dive into run DMC

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in our two part hip hop episode, d you Okay?

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Speaker 3: I don't know, man.

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Speaker 1: I'm feeling pretty bad, but not bad meaning bad, bad

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meaning good.

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Speaker 4: It's so tricky. Yeah, welcome back, everybody.

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Speaker 1: We are in the second album of our two album

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Comparison from nineteen eighty six, the two albums that brought

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the New School of hip hop to the forefront of mainstream.

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Speaker 5: These are the trend centers. These are the trail blazing albums.

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Speaker 1: For hip hop, and we've got with us today our

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friend mister David Wright, otherwise known as Deaf Dave.

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Speaker 4: How you doing, Dave?

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Speaker 3: Do it great?

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Speaker 4: David?

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Speaker 3: Deaf Dave. My pronouns are the Lord of Lyrics, the

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Duke of discussion, and the son of Byford.

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Speaker 5: That's awesome, Davin. We're so glad to have you back.

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You are a hip hop expert, and that's why we

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invited you here. The lyrics and the rhymes are just

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going to start falling out of your mouth as soon

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as we get going here.

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Speaker 3: I will say I'm an expert on wrap from the

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eighties for sure, and I'm fascinated by the history of

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how it all got started in the seventies, so I'm

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excited to be able to talk about it with you.

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Speaker 5: Okay, So in this episode, we're going to do a

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little bit on the history of rap. We'll do a

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little bit about the beginnings and the origins of Run

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DMC and where they got started and how they got going.

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And then in our next episode we'll go track by

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track through the Raising Hell album.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we're midway through this series of episodes. If you

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have not caught our Beastie Boys episode, go back two

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episodes and hear the story of the Beastie Boys from

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way back in history, and then listen to our epic

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track by track coverage of Licensed to Ill.

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Speaker 5: That's right, And at the end of the track by

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track on Raising Hell, all three of us are going

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to give our final judgment on which album we feel

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is the superior album of nineteen eighty six. It's going

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to be amazing, all right. Well, Dave get us started

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on the history of rap and what we need to

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know before we can make our final judgment.

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Speaker 4: Here.

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Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to pick up the story in the

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twentieth century. This time, I'm not going to take you

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back to the eighteen hundreds, Okay did the birth of

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hip hop? And the story we're telling today is a

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tale of two Jamaicas. On April sixteenth, nineteen fifty five,

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in Kingston, Jamaica, Keith and Neddie Campbell gave birth to

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the first of their six children, a little boy named Clive.

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A little over two years later, in October of nineteen

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fifty seven, in Jamaica, Queens, Daniel and Evalynn Simmons gave

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birth to their second son, Russell. Now Daniel and Evelyn

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each held a pair of degrees from Howard University, and

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they had moved to Queens when Daniel had gotten a

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job as a public school administrator, and just a few

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years later, in nineteen sixty four, they moved to the

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slightly better neighborhood neighboring neighborhood of Hollis, Queens, and just

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a couple of weeks later, in November of nineteen sixty four,

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they gave birth to their third son, Joseph Simmons. So

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that's where the tale of two Jamaica's begins. But the

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Simmons family doesn't really come into play for another ten

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years or so. But in nineteen sixty seven, the Campbell

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family moved from Kingston, Jamaica to the Bronx and they

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moved into a tenement building called Sedgwick Towers.

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Speaker 5: So, just for the record, in nineteen sixty four, that

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was Joseph's first Christmas in hallis is that what you're saying?

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Speaker 3: That is exactly right? Okay? Okay, good, good, okay. But

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if you go back to the Campbell family, in nineteen

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sixty seven, the Campbell's moved from Kingston, Jamaica to the

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Bronx to a tenement building called Sedgwick Towers. And this

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is when young Clive, the first of their children, was

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twelve years old. When Clive was in high school, he'd

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only grown up to be about five foot eight, but

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he had turned into real sturdy guys. He was buff,

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he was strong, and he was physically dominant on the

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basketball court. And because of his physical strength, his basketball

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teammates gave him the nickname of Hercules. A couple of

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years later, one of his sisters, named Cindy, she needed

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some extra money for clothes, so they tried to figure

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out a way to raise a little bit of money,

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and Clive remembered when he was living in Jamaica, they

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have dance halls in Jamaica. I don't know if it's

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traditional to Jamaica or if it's just kind of traditional

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to maybe like the equivalent of their party scene. And

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so he borrowed his dad's sound system, set it up

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in the community room of this tenement building, and they

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decided to throw a party to raise money so Cindy

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can get some clothes and with you. So far, it

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was a huge success, but it was enough fun that

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they kept doing it and kept doing it, and the

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reputation of these parties began to grow, and the crowd

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started to get bigger, and so the nickname that his

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basketball teammates had given him and started calling himself DJ

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Cool Hirk okay. So that is probably right there, why

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we have the tradition of rappers and DJs giving themselves nicknames.

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Speaker 4: Okay.

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Speaker 3: And in nineteen seventy two he discovered this is what

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I love about the history of hip hop is that

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the origins are very specific and they're very known. In

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nineteen seventy two, he came up with the idea of

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setting up two turntables at the same time so that

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he can cut quickly between two records. This had never

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really been done before, and what he had learned from

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studying the crowd was that the favorite part of any

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song they played was when it broke down into like

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a percussion break in the middle of the song. So

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he decided, what if I only played the percussion breaks,

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only played the beats from these breaks. And what he

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did was he what he would queue up the percussion breaks,

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the break beats on each turntable and when it would

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and when the break would come to an end on one,

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he'd play the other turntable. Okay, by doing this he

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could extend the good part. What he discovered was have

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two copies of the same record, and by queuing the

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beginning of the breakup and have it ready to go

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by the time it's ending on the other record, he

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can go back and forth. He could extend that break

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beat as they called it, indefinitely. This is what DJ

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cool Hirk was famous for. He came up with a

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routine that would cut between three different records, and the

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very first Merry Go Round routine he came up with

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included turn it up and set it Loose by James Brown,

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Bongo Rock by the Incredible Bongo Band, and the Mexican

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by Babe Ruth. These all three had these percussion breaks

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in them, and he would just rotate between the three

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of them and keep them going for a long time,

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and the crowd would just go nuts and go nuts

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and go nuts. This was the very beginning of what

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became hip.

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Speaker 4: Hop awesome awesome Okay.

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Speaker 3: So by playing these extended breakbeats, the crowd would jump

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in and start dancing. And the longer that he kept

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this thing going, the more they would dance and the

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crazier their dance moves would get. And so these people

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that were dancing during these breaks, these were the breakdancers.

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This is how you get the term breakdancing.

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Speaker 5: The break okay, Yeah, I get it, I get it.

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Speaker 4: Okay, I love it.

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Speaker 3: He had a regular group of guys who were like

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particularly acrobatic and inventive on the dance floor. He called

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them his break boys, which became bee boys. So that's

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why any hip hopper is now known as a bee boy.

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So now you're coming between twin records, between two turntables,

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you've got breakdancers and you've got bee boys.

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Speaker 5: Wow.

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Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy four, there was a movie that

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came out called Earthquake.

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Speaker 4: Are you familiar with it? No?

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Speaker 3: I don't know this, okay.

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Speaker 1: So the movie came out called Earthquake in nineteen seventy four,

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which is for that movie, they created something called the

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sin surround sound. It was specifically to give the audience

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an enhanced experience that they could actually feel the earthquake,

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and they had to use special speakers. They designed and

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created special speakers for this, and all of the DJs

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who were now playing in not just the gymnasium or whatever,

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but also playing in the park, said, if we can

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recreate these speakers, we can have the loudest speakers around.

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And so they reverse engineered it, figured out how to

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make the earthquake speakers, and that's how they got the

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name earthquake speakers.

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Speaker 4: Wow.

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Speaker 1: And then they would have dancers who were like dancing

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on top of the speakers, and I've seen it. They

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will stop the music and say, hey, get off the speakers.

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Speaker 3: So in Jamaica, there's this tradition called dance hall toasting,

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which is very similar to what we would know is rapping,

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where someone is taking a microphone and speaking over some

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music that's playing back with the purpose of exciting the

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crowd and entertaining them. And so something cool Hirk added

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to his routine with all this break dancing going on

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with the Bee Boys is that he started encouraging the

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crowd and hyping them up by grabbing a mic and

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starting to give real simple rhymes that was on beat

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with the with the braakelop that he was playing. But

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what he soon found out, because you know, keep in mind,

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all he had was two turntables. He didn't have a

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modern system with a with a fade, a crossfader, or

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switch or a mix or anything. He was kind of

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doing all this manually and trying to stay on time

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with it all, and it was a little too much

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to try to add the toasting. So what he did

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is he delegated that to a friend of his and

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that is how Coke Larocke became history's first MC. And

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so in the Jamaican toasting halls, they were no master

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of ceremonies. So Coke LaRock is the name of the

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first MC in hip hop. Now we mentioned Scottlarock in

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the BC Boys episodes, and fans of eighties rap may

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recognize the name Scottlarock from Boogie Down Productions. Both those

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guys know their history because both of those names are

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an homage to Coke LaRock, the very first rapper. This

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is all happening at Sedgwick Towers. This is right there

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at Herk's home, and all this innovation is happening within

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seventy two and seventy three. As a matter of fact,

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according to the PBS documentary series History Detectives, they were

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able to pinpoint the exact birth of Rap. It was

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on August eleventh, nineteen seventy three, in the community room

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of Sedgwick Towers at fifteen twenty Sedgwick Avenue. Right there

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in the community room, two turntables, extending the break, dancing

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with wrapping on the microphone. August eleventh, nineteen seventy three,

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Rap is born, and it's all from DJ Cool Hurt.

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Speaker 5: Go Tosh, Hey, every time every time you say two turntables,

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I'm like and a microphone. He wanted to say two

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turntables and a microphone.

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Speaker 3: As it turns out, Cool Hurt would not keep up

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with all the innovations that would quickly come in the

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following decade. But he is known as the originator. As

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a matter of fact, he never put out any recorded

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material until twenty nineteen he did his first album, Really

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Yes Wow. But he's always been known and recognized and

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respected as the originator of rap. As a matter of fact,

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in the year two thousand and seven, the state of

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New York officially decoplared the Sedgewick Building to be the

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birthplace of hip hop, and it has since been nominated

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for inclusion on the National Registry of Historic Places.

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Speaker 5: That's fantastic.

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Speaker 3: So I'd mentioned that he did not really keep up

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with the innovators that would come. But what happened was

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here we are seventy three going into seventy four, and

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his parties were growing. They were growing in size, and

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they were growing in reputation. He began to gain status

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just through like his name being whispered on the streets.

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And you have to understand that in the seventies, especially

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the first half of the seventies, the Bronx was a

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scary place. In nineteen seventy three, there was a member

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of the Black Spades gang whose name was Lance Taylor,

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and he went to his first cool Hirk party and

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while there he had this vision of what he could

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do to make the Bronx a safer place. Now, it

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would be a couple of years before he was able

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to realize this vision. In the meantime, there was this

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kid named Joseph Sadler who had been born in Barbados

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but had moved to the Bronx and he had become

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a regular attendee at Hirk's parties, and as a matter

240
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of fact, Hrk had kind of taken him under his

241
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wing as sort of an acolyte. And Joseph Sadler had

242
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been to a vocational high school and he was able

243
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to take some of his mechanical electrical engineering skills that

244
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he had learned there, and he built the very first

245
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Q monitor, which you could add to the system of

246
00:13:11,799 --> 00:13:16,799
the two turntables as a way to preview the entrance

247
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point of your next record, so he could be more

248
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precise with that. That was an innovation that allowed for

249
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more precision in the DJ's routine. So this innovation gave

250
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him the edge over cool hert this with this Q

251
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monitor added to the system, so he went out and

252
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began throwing his own parties under the name of Grandmaster Flash.

253
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Speaker 5: Oh wow, that's awesome.

254
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Speaker 3: So this is a period of intense creation and innovation.

255
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This is all brand new, so a lot of people

256
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are jumping the board with this idea and they're trying

257
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new themes. Grandmaster Flash had his own disciple, his own apprentice,

258
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whose name was Theodore Livingston. So Theodore was just trying

259
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to learn how to do all this stuff. He was

260
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learning it from Grandmaster Flash. And one day he was

261
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up in his bedroom working with two turntables, just practicing,

262
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trying to figure it out.

263
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Speaker 4: And.

264
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Speaker 3: His mom busted in and said, what's that noise? And

265
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so it kind of scared him. He kind of jumped in.

266
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He put his hand down on the record to stop

267
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it because he had talked to his mom, and when

268
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he put his hand down on it, it kind of

269
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slipped under the needle and then made this cool little

270
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zipping sound, and he goes, WHOA, what was that? And

271
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then he did it again, and he went back and

272
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forth a few more times, and then he started doing

273
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it in rhythm, and that is how scratching. The technique

274
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of scratching was invented by accident because Theodore Livingstone's mother

275
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scared him.

276
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Speaker 5: You're bringing it strong, tonight, man, you are.

277
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Speaker 3: And so Theodore Livingstone is now better known as Grand

278
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Wizard Theodore.

279
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Speaker 4: Yeah.

280
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Speaker 3: So he's one of the big names from the seventies

281
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and he's credited with inventing scratching.

282
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Speaker 4: Wow.

283
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Speaker 3: So nineteen seventy five, Colhirk is still throwing his parties

284
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and Lance Taylor, if you remember Lance Taylor, he had

285
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had that vision in nineteen seventy three of how to

286
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make the Bronx a safer place. He had been running

287
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with the Black Space, which is one of the more

288
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violent gangs in the Bronx. But by nineteen seventy five

289
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Lance had begun djaying and he quickly earned the reputation

290
00:15:22,840 --> 00:15:26,679
for playing ultra rare break beats. Okay, so that's what

291
00:15:26,720 --> 00:15:29,799
they called these percussion breaks that they were always looking for,

292
00:15:30,039 --> 00:15:32,120
because that's just the part they wanted. They wanted that part,

293
00:15:32,279 --> 00:15:35,440
nothing else. They could just play that. Well. It quickly

294
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got to the point where everybody was familiar with the

295
00:15:37,399 --> 00:15:40,919
common ones, and so he was looking for more obscure

296
00:15:40,960 --> 00:15:44,480
records to reveal beats that no one had heard before.

297
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And so he specialized in finding the most obscure songs,

298
00:15:48,000 --> 00:15:50,960
primarily from funk and soul, but from a wider ray

299
00:15:51,159 --> 00:15:54,799
so with his heightened influence that he had from running

300
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these parties, Lance Taylor was able to successfully realize his

301
00:15:59,039 --> 00:16:01,000
vision of how to make the bron It's a safer place.

302
00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:06,000
And he basically co opted the Black Spades and turned

303
00:16:06,039 --> 00:16:10,000
them into He renamed them the Zulu Nation, and he

304
00:16:10,039 --> 00:16:14,480
began to call himself Africa Bambada. And he used hip

305
00:16:14,519 --> 00:16:18,360
hop and wrap and creative expression as a way to

306
00:16:18,600 --> 00:16:21,240
channel the kids on the street, channel their energy in

307
00:16:21,279 --> 00:16:24,000
a positive way in order to move them away from

308
00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:27,240
crime and away from violence and just steer them into

309
00:16:27,320 --> 00:16:36,600
these creative outlets. Africa Bambada he created basically that DJ

310
00:16:37,559 --> 00:16:40,919
virtue of crate digging, where you just go looking for

311
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the most obscure record that's going to have a cool

312
00:16:43,159 --> 00:16:44,799
beat that no one's heard before.

313
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Speaker 4: Which is how he happened to be able to hear

314
00:16:46,200 --> 00:16:50,200
Cookie Puss. Is that right? It has to be right? Probably?

315
00:16:50,200 --> 00:16:53,559
So I mean talk about an obscure album. Yeah, three

316
00:16:53,639 --> 00:16:56,519
white kids from Brooklyn, Yeah, yo, I.

317
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Speaker 5: Want to talk to Cookie Puss Man Cookie Puss.

318
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Speaker 3: Okay, So those are the three giants Cool Herk, Grandmaster

319
00:17:05,400 --> 00:17:09,960
Flash and Africa Bambada. They are the giants of hip

320
00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:11,920
hop if you're gonna have a mount Rushmore. Those are

321
00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:15,079
three of the faces right there. Okay, But what this

322
00:17:15,240 --> 00:17:19,200
created in the seventies was this breakbeat culture, this DJ

323
00:17:19,400 --> 00:17:21,880
party culture. There was something new. It was just kind

324
00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:25,559
of had had risen, kind of grassroots, and people were

325
00:17:25,640 --> 00:17:31,039
sneaking recorders into these parties and making these bootleg mixtapes

326
00:17:31,559 --> 00:17:33,400
and they were selling them on the street, and the

327
00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:36,039
DJs usually they didn't know anything about it, but they

328
00:17:36,039 --> 00:17:39,519
were selling these mixtapes on the street, and these served

329
00:17:39,599 --> 00:17:42,960
to kind of spread the gospel, and so kids outside

330
00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:46,559
of Manhattan, outside the Brons and the other Burroughs, these

331
00:17:46,680 --> 00:17:49,119
mixtapes kind of made their way out to the suburbs,

332
00:17:49,279 --> 00:17:52,079
and so this idea was catching on and it was

333
00:17:52,119 --> 00:17:54,839
all just organic. And I just find all that very

334
00:17:54,880 --> 00:17:57,960
cool that there was this new way of playing records

335
00:17:58,359 --> 00:18:02,279
that basically turned the DJ into the star into the entertainer,

336
00:18:02,359 --> 00:18:05,759
where it was all based on taking pre existing material

337
00:18:06,119 --> 00:18:11,119
and remixing it in a new way. So it's basically

338
00:18:11,799 --> 00:18:16,640
editing for entertainment. It's live looping, live editing for entertainment.

339
00:18:17,759 --> 00:18:22,160
I've always found that extremely fascinating and I have to

340
00:18:22,200 --> 00:18:26,680
say it impacted me professionally impacted my career because I'm

341
00:18:26,720 --> 00:18:29,519
a professional video producer, I'm a video editor, and that

342
00:18:29,720 --> 00:18:33,359
charge I get from taking different material, raw material and

343
00:18:33,400 --> 00:18:35,720
crafting something new out of it is the same thing

344
00:18:35,720 --> 00:18:39,039
that interested me about hip hop and about these early

345
00:18:39,160 --> 00:18:41,960
days in the Bronx in the seventies with so much

346
00:18:41,960 --> 00:18:46,440
innovation and creativity going on all at the same time. Okay,

347
00:18:46,599 --> 00:18:49,759
so these were still largely house parties or block parties,

348
00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:52,759
but the scene was getting too big. This was something

349
00:18:52,799 --> 00:18:55,720
new and something different, and so what was happening is

350
00:18:55,759 --> 00:18:59,960
in the cold months, they were actually starting to book venue.

351
00:19:00,400 --> 00:19:03,039
They would rent out clubs or rent out these venues

352
00:19:03,079 --> 00:19:06,319
to throw their parties, which now these were coming events

353
00:19:06,319 --> 00:19:08,680
that needed to be promoted. In the summertime, they would

354
00:19:08,680 --> 00:19:10,359
just go out to the park and they could they

355
00:19:10,400 --> 00:19:14,799
could plug their turntables up to the telephone pole and

356
00:19:15,079 --> 00:19:16,920
just start doing their thing and the crowd would gather

357
00:19:17,119 --> 00:19:21,599
and so these it created as a snowball effect of

358
00:19:21,640 --> 00:19:23,880
so many people trying to learn the secrets of this

359
00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:26,440
of this new trade, and so you had all these

360
00:19:26,519 --> 00:19:28,880
DJs coming up. One of the more prominent DJs of

361
00:19:28,920 --> 00:19:32,440
the seventies from this new breed of DJ was someone

362
00:19:32,480 --> 00:19:35,799
known as DJ Hollywood. And so you have to understand

363
00:19:35,799 --> 00:19:39,079
that at this time rapping right MC's were they were

364
00:19:39,160 --> 00:19:42,319
strictly in a supporting role that the DJ was the

365
00:19:42,359 --> 00:19:45,680
clear star and the MC was really more like a

366
00:19:45,759 --> 00:19:48,480
hype man. He wasn't really trying to perform a song.

367
00:19:48,720 --> 00:19:50,240
He was just trying to get the crowd going. So

368
00:19:50,240 --> 00:19:53,039
it was very simplistic party rhymes, you know, like throw

369
00:19:53,119 --> 00:19:55,200
your hands in the air, wave them like you just

370
00:19:55,200 --> 00:19:57,640
don't care, and it was nothing more complicated than that,

371
00:19:58,079 --> 00:20:00,319
like on and on until the break of dawn. Well

372
00:20:00,400 --> 00:20:03,039
that was this DJ named DJ Hollywood, in the vein

373
00:20:03,079 --> 00:20:06,119
of rapping like that, he came up with the rhyme

374
00:20:06,160 --> 00:20:07,160
he was in dinner.

375
00:20:07,119 --> 00:20:10,000
Speaker 5: Wait wait wait rapping like this and like this and.

376
00:20:09,960 --> 00:20:13,559
Speaker 4: Like that, like this is like that is like this,

377
00:20:15,799 --> 00:20:17,599
please do that lots and lots.

378
00:20:20,319 --> 00:20:21,400
Speaker 5: Okay, I got you.

379
00:20:21,400 --> 00:20:26,079
Speaker 3: Keep going okay. So so it was DJ Hollywood who,

380
00:20:26,200 --> 00:20:30,119
in the vein of doing these type of simplistic improvised rhymes,

381
00:20:30,400 --> 00:20:33,799
he came up with the rhyme hip hop hip to

382
00:20:33,799 --> 00:20:36,160
the hippity hip hip hopping you don't stop rocking, the

383
00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:38,119
Baine Bain boogie s hit up, jump the bullget to

384
00:20:38,119 --> 00:20:41,480
the rhythm of the boogeity beat, and that caught on,

385
00:20:41,640 --> 00:20:44,839
so that hip hop hippie to the hippity hip hop. Finally,

386
00:20:44,920 --> 00:20:48,039
this movement, this new culture had a name, and it

387
00:20:48,160 --> 00:20:51,559
was called hip hop and it came from DJ Hollywood's

388
00:20:51,559 --> 00:20:53,079
improvised rhyme that night.

389
00:20:53,240 --> 00:20:57,839
Speaker 5: Nice, nice, great dude, you're hitting grand slam after grand slam.

390
00:20:57,599 --> 00:20:58,079
Speaker 4: Keep going.

391
00:20:58,319 --> 00:21:02,039
Speaker 3: So this initial period from nineteen seventy three at Sedgwick

392
00:21:02,119 --> 00:21:05,839
Towers up through about seventy eight, nineteen seventy eight, this

393
00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:08,960
era was hip hop one point zero. This was the

394
00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:15,119
original scene. This was the grassroots, organic creation of something new,

395
00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:17,200
and it all started in the Bronx.

396
00:21:17,359 --> 00:21:21,079
Speaker 1: Well, you talked about DJ Hollywood and it was around

397
00:21:21,119 --> 00:21:24,039
this time he talked about seventy eight. Is around seventy seven.

398
00:21:24,480 --> 00:21:27,599
He had a close friend named Eddie Chiba, and this

399
00:21:27,759 --> 00:21:31,759
is kind of where your two Jamaica's meet because Eddie

400
00:21:31,799 --> 00:21:35,519
Chiba DJ Hollywood. They would influence each other's styles, grow

401
00:21:35,599 --> 00:21:39,000
from each other, and one night, a guy who you

402
00:21:39,039 --> 00:21:43,519
had mentioned earlier, who was born in Jamaica Queen's, happened

403
00:21:43,519 --> 00:21:46,279
to have dropped out of college and be trying to

404
00:21:46,480 --> 00:21:49,960
look for something to do, and he came across Eddie

405
00:21:50,039 --> 00:21:52,480
Chiba and he said, this is what I want to

406
00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:54,000
do for the rest of my life.

407
00:21:54,119 --> 00:21:57,920
Speaker 3: That was Russell Simmons. That's like the Blues Brothers having

408
00:21:57,920 --> 00:21:59,759
that moment in the church where the light hits them

409
00:21:59,759 --> 00:22:04,559
in the doing part will Yeah. So what had happened

410
00:22:04,680 --> 00:22:08,200
was in nineteen seventy five, Russell Simmons was out of

411
00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:11,680
high school and he had got busted for smoking pot

412
00:22:11,759 --> 00:22:14,960
and his dad said, nope, you're going to college, and

413
00:22:15,000 --> 00:22:17,680
he kicked him out and he went over to Harlem

414
00:22:17,720 --> 00:22:21,359
and he enrolled at City College of New York. While there,

415
00:22:21,680 --> 00:22:24,400
he met a friend named He made friends with a

416
00:22:24,400 --> 00:22:28,960
guy named Rudy Toppin, and Rudy was into party promotion.

417
00:22:29,279 --> 00:22:31,960
He was plugged into this new breed, a DJ type

418
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:34,079
of party scene, and he was one of these guys

419
00:22:34,079 --> 00:22:37,039
that was going around promoting these club events that had

420
00:22:37,079 --> 00:22:40,279
started growing out of these house parties, and so he

421
00:22:40,400 --> 00:22:43,000
brought Russell along to help him out. And so this

422
00:22:43,799 --> 00:22:46,759
was Russell's first hustle. He was into party promoting. And

423
00:22:46,839 --> 00:22:50,039
by the way, it was during this time Rudy observed

424
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:54,079
Russell's high energy work ethic and gave him the nickname

425
00:22:54,160 --> 00:22:59,920
of Rush. So Russ has the nickname of rush Okay.

426
00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:03,839
And so there was this one night in nineteen seventy

427
00:23:03,920 --> 00:23:07,039
seven at the Charles where they walk in and Eddie

428
00:23:07,119 --> 00:23:11,359
Chiba is wrapping over a looped break or looped intro

429
00:23:11,960 --> 00:23:15,880
to flashlight by Parliament. Just keep your bonds down the up.

430
00:23:15,960 --> 00:23:17,559
Speaker 5: We're gonna do a little like an eel.

431
00:23:18,039 --> 00:23:20,680
Speaker 4: We continue you all with the news this time.

432
00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:22,960
Speaker 3: For you to be real. This was the I see

433
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:27,480
the light moment. And in that moment Russ had he

434
00:23:27,599 --> 00:23:30,359
got hit up beside the head and he said, this

435
00:23:30,759 --> 00:23:34,440
is the future, this is my future. This is something real.

436
00:23:35,240 --> 00:23:38,160
And his first instinct was how am I going to

437
00:23:38,240 --> 00:23:42,839
make money off of it? Yeah, he recognized before anybody else.

438
00:23:43,279 --> 00:23:47,079
He recognized that this was marketable and that people could

439
00:23:47,079 --> 00:23:47,640
get paid.

440
00:23:48,279 --> 00:23:48,599
Speaker 5: Uh huh.

441
00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:52,039
Speaker 3: The people that were there in the one point oh stage,

442
00:23:52,400 --> 00:23:54,400
they were just there. It was a new way to party,

443
00:23:54,440 --> 00:23:56,240
you know. It was just the DJ playing records at

444
00:23:56,240 --> 00:23:57,920
a club. He was just putting a twist on it.

445
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:02,240
But Russell was the first person to see that this

446
00:24:02,319 --> 00:24:05,319
could be monetized and that this could be marketed. He

447
00:24:05,559 --> 00:24:08,599
was the first businessman, the visionary that could turn this

448
00:24:08,759 --> 00:24:11,839
all into something viable. He decided he was going to

449
00:24:11,920 --> 00:24:14,279
get into his own promoter. He quit working with Rudy

450
00:24:14,799 --> 00:24:17,680
and he started promoting his own He was friends with

451
00:24:17,759 --> 00:24:20,759
the program director at the college radio station the college

452
00:24:20,759 --> 00:24:25,240
where he was attending. The program director's name was Curtis Walker,

453
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:28,720
and so they began promoting their own events. So you

454
00:24:28,799 --> 00:24:32,160
have to understand that Russell was the visionary who took

455
00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:36,279
hip hop from these ad hoc parties to like organized

456
00:24:36,319 --> 00:24:38,559
concerts and ticketed events and that kind of thing. He

457
00:24:38,599 --> 00:24:41,720
was kind of the trailblazer in kind of finding places

458
00:24:41,759 --> 00:24:44,680
that would take these acts, and then a circuit developed

459
00:24:44,680 --> 00:24:46,440
where you could just kind of make you could just

460
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:49,839
make the rounds booking your act. And one of these

461
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:53,480
other promoters during this same time, one of his competing

462
00:24:53,519 --> 00:24:57,440
promoters was a guy by the name of Junior Raimes.

463
00:24:57,680 --> 00:25:00,640
Now you probably haven't heard of Junior Rames, but you've

464
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:03,720
heard of his brother, actor Ving Raims.

465
00:25:03,759 --> 00:25:04,119
Speaker 4: Wow.

466
00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:08,119
Speaker 5: Nice, that is a nice nugget right there.

467
00:25:09,759 --> 00:25:13,240
Speaker 3: So they were booking all these events, and they were

468
00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:17,880
developing this circuit and they were promoting parties. Russell was

469
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:22,000
the businessman. But Curtis Walker was the star. He was

470
00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:25,400
the rapper on stage that people were coming to see.

471
00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:30,279
And he went by the name of Curtis Blows. You

472
00:25:30,319 --> 00:25:33,680
know where he got blow from? Cocaine?

473
00:25:34,519 --> 00:25:39,440
Speaker 1: Right, Wait a minute, what edie eddie Chiba? Chiba is

474
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:42,160
another name for marijuana. And they're like, well, Curtis Walker,

475
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:43,920
that's no good. What do we got a drug that's

476
00:25:43,920 --> 00:25:46,000
better than marijuana? About Curtis Blow?

477
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:50,359
Speaker 3: Wait? Keeping on. The first MC ever was coke LaRock,

478
00:25:54,160 --> 00:25:57,279
so this was working the first party. The first party

479
00:25:57,359 --> 00:26:00,000
that Russell threw on his own was eight hundred people

480
00:26:00,160 --> 00:26:02,559
showed up for it and it only held six hundred people.

481
00:26:03,119 --> 00:26:06,799
He was flushed with cash. He made the money. He

482
00:26:06,880 --> 00:26:09,079
was happy. He was thrilled to death. So he and

483
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:12,279
Curtis were in business and he would go home. Russell

484
00:26:12,279 --> 00:26:14,920
would go home to Queen's. He'd come in with stacks

485
00:26:14,920 --> 00:26:17,839
of cash late at night, which made a huge impression

486
00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:21,400
on his little brother, Joseph. Little Joey was about thirteen

487
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,880
years old and he was amazed that big bro was

488
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:27,519
coming in with stacks of cash and all these stories

489
00:26:27,559 --> 00:26:31,039
about working in the clubs with these rappers and DJs

490
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,160
that Joey was listening to on mixtapes that people were

491
00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:37,799
passing around at school. So by nineteen seventy eight, Curtis

492
00:26:37,880 --> 00:26:41,079
Blow needed a DJ, and Russ knew exactly who to

493
00:26:41,279 --> 00:26:44,000
come to for the job because his little brother Joey,

494
00:26:44,079 --> 00:26:47,039
who was just thirteen, had been chomping into bit for

495
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:49,200
months to be able to join him, and he was

496
00:26:49,279 --> 00:26:51,720
learning and practicing at home, but how to work the turntables,

497
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:56,079
and so finally they tapped him to be the DJ

498
00:26:56,599 --> 00:27:00,680
for Curtis Blow. So with Run DMC. Whenever you hear

499
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:03,880
him referred to as DJ Run, you might wonder what

500
00:27:04,039 --> 00:27:06,039
he's not the DJ? So what is his name? DJ Run?

501
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:09,759
It's because he started out as Curtis Blow's DJ in

502
00:27:09,839 --> 00:27:11,079
nineteen seventy eight.

503
00:27:11,240 --> 00:27:12,359
Speaker 5: As a thirteen year old.

504
00:27:12,519 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 3: As a thirteen year old, his first night on stage

505
00:27:15,519 --> 00:27:18,599
ever in his life. He's thirteen years old and he's

506
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:22,359
on stage with Curtis Blow and brand Master Flash.

507
00:27:22,359 --> 00:27:26,359
Speaker 4: That's incredible man, son of Curtis Blow, son of Curtis Blow.

508
00:27:26,599 --> 00:27:29,559
Speaker 5: I heard that he got the name Run because he

509
00:27:29,599 --> 00:27:30,400
was a fast worker.

510
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:31,480
Speaker 4: Is that is that?

511
00:27:31,519 --> 00:27:35,319
Speaker 3: It was just like his big brother Rush. Run had

512
00:27:35,319 --> 00:27:38,279
a high energy personality, and work rate, and they say

513
00:27:38,279 --> 00:27:39,680
he was always running off at the mouth.

514
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:43,160
Speaker 5: There you go. Yeah, she's about right.

515
00:27:43,240 --> 00:27:46,559
Speaker 3: So he was a DJ. Run He was billed as

516
00:27:46,599 --> 00:27:50,240
the son of Curtis Blow, and they spent several years

517
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:53,839
doing this act and Run would rap, he would take

518
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:56,200
his turn on the microphone. And so he was still

519
00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:58,440
a kid who's in junior high and he was spending

520
00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:01,200
his weekends at the clubs for me. So here we

521
00:28:01,240 --> 00:28:03,839
are in nineteen seventy nine, and there was a writer

522
00:28:04,160 --> 00:28:07,440
by the name of Rocky Ford who had just written

523
00:28:07,480 --> 00:28:08,119
a piece.

524
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:10,880
Speaker 5: For Billboard, Rocky Ford. That's the one where Rocky Gates

525
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:11,759
on the Russian.

526
00:28:13,079 --> 00:28:13,759
Speaker 4: Killed Apollo.

527
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:19,079
Speaker 5: I must break you Rocky Ford.

528
00:28:19,119 --> 00:28:23,799
Speaker 3: Okay, Rocky Ford had just written a story for Billboard

529
00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:26,480
on this new breakbeat culture that had taken over, taken

530
00:28:26,559 --> 00:28:30,000
root in the Bronx. And he was taking the train

531
00:28:30,079 --> 00:28:33,640
through New York when a flyer for a Rush promotions

532
00:28:33,759 --> 00:28:35,880
party caught his eye. It just caught his eye. He

533
00:28:35,960 --> 00:28:38,319
just noticed it when he got off the train. He

534
00:28:38,400 --> 00:28:41,400
saw a little kid hustling around, running around putting up

535
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:44,680
flyers for parties. And it also had the Rush name

536
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,799
on it, and so this inspired him He's always looking

537
00:28:47,799 --> 00:28:49,799
for his next story to write. So he decided he

538
00:28:49,839 --> 00:28:52,319
would write a story about who this promoter was, because

539
00:28:52,319 --> 00:28:54,240
he appeared to be a big deal. First of all,

540
00:28:54,319 --> 00:28:57,319
the little kid he saw tacking up posters in a hurry,

541
00:28:57,759 --> 00:29:00,720
that was Joseph Simmons putting up flyers for his big brother.

542
00:29:00,799 --> 00:29:02,119
But he was able to track him down at his

543
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:04,799
offices and met with him, and he was inspired to

544
00:29:04,799 --> 00:29:08,359
write this story because Russia Entertainment appeared to be the

545
00:29:08,359 --> 00:29:11,559
biggest mover and shaker, you know, on the scene. And

546
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:14,319
so they met and there was an exchange of ideas.

547
00:29:14,359 --> 00:29:18,680
So Rocky got his interview with Russell. But in exchange,

548
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:21,640
he taught Russell about the music business and how the

549
00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:25,000
music industry works and how the record business works, and

550
00:29:25,079 --> 00:29:28,079
so that became That was obviously a very important step

551
00:29:28,079 --> 00:29:30,640
in Russell's life. But Russell had a vision for his

552
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,440
life and for his future. He believed in it, and

553
00:29:33,519 --> 00:29:35,359
he had he was at a point where he had

554
00:29:35,359 --> 00:29:37,880
to prove it to his dad. He had to prove

555
00:29:37,960 --> 00:29:40,559
that I'm not making a mistake and this this is

556
00:29:40,599 --> 00:29:43,519
something legit and viable. And so he went all out

557
00:29:43,680 --> 00:29:46,640
promoting this one big party in Harlem. This was going

558
00:29:46,720 --> 00:29:49,000
to be the show that proved it all to his dad.

559
00:29:50,039 --> 00:29:55,799
And guess how many people showed up? Nobody? Nobody, his

560
00:29:56,000 --> 00:30:00,920
worst failure as a promoter. Literally zero people showed up.

561
00:30:01,200 --> 00:30:02,839
Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, that's terrible.

562
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:06,200
Speaker 3: He had rented the venue, he had paid for the advertising,

563
00:30:06,319 --> 00:30:09,880
and nobody showed up. It broke him. Russell's career was dead.

564
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:11,519
He didn't know what he was going to tell his dad,

565
00:30:12,359 --> 00:30:14,160
right because it was the end of the line. He

566
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:16,119
had a great idea. It lasted a couple of years

567
00:30:16,160 --> 00:30:18,880
with Curtis Blow, but it was over. He didn't know

568
00:30:18,880 --> 00:30:21,000
what to tell his dad, So he called his mom,

569
00:30:21,119 --> 00:30:24,519
and his mom, who had also had a good job

570
00:30:24,960 --> 00:30:27,480
high up in New York City parks and rec gave

571
00:30:27,559 --> 00:30:30,640
him two thousand dollars. And it's only because of that

572
00:30:30,680 --> 00:30:34,279
two thousand dollars that he was able to continue. And

573
00:30:34,319 --> 00:30:36,799
so with that money, he decided he was no longer

574
00:30:36,880 --> 00:30:39,079
going to go into party promotion and that instead he

575
00:30:39,119 --> 00:30:43,039
would move into artist management. And so, with this decision made,

576
00:30:43,079 --> 00:30:46,440
he went back to Rocky Ford, the Billboard writer who

577
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:48,720
had told him about the music business, and told him

578
00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:51,839
what he wanted to do, and Rocky had already been

579
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:55,279
talking with an ad executive Billboard Magazine named JB. Moore,

580
00:30:55,839 --> 00:30:58,240
and they had decided they were going to do something

581
00:30:58,680 --> 00:31:00,799
that had never been done before. They were going to

582
00:31:00,880 --> 00:31:03,599
produce a rap record. And then and they looked at

583
00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:05,839
russ and they're like, well, maybe maybe Russe's our guy.

584
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:09,319
Nobody in hip hop was thinking about making their own record.

585
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:11,599
They were taking other people's records and playing them and

586
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:14,720
dancing to them, and that's all it was. But Russell

587
00:31:15,079 --> 00:31:19,000
and Rocky and JB. Moore decided they were gonna make

588
00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:21,480
a record, and this is kind of cool. The rapper

589
00:31:21,519 --> 00:31:24,480
they had in mind for their record was Eddie Chiba. Well,

590
00:31:24,599 --> 00:31:29,119
Russell has Curtis Blow as his one and only client. Well,

591
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:32,039
Russell wants in on that, but they want Eddie Chiba.

592
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:34,960
So Russell takes them to a show where both Eddie

593
00:31:35,039 --> 00:31:38,200
Chiba and Curtis Blow are performing on the bill and

594
00:31:38,240 --> 00:31:41,480
it's and it's all on Curtis Blow's shoulders. It's like,

595
00:31:41,839 --> 00:31:44,640
this is on you, buddy, this is your chance, Uh,

596
00:31:45,839 --> 00:31:50,079
put on the performance of your life. These guys want

597
00:31:50,119 --> 00:31:53,039
to make a record. You've got to blow Eddie Chiba

598
00:31:53,079 --> 00:31:56,680
off the stage. Step up make it happen, so like

599
00:31:56,680 --> 00:31:59,319
some kind of movie moment with everything on the line.

600
00:31:59,759 --> 00:32:01,880
Kurt Blow takes the stage that night, and you can

601
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:05,119
hear the theme music playing in the background, and he

602
00:32:05,200 --> 00:32:08,000
blows Eddie Chiba out of the sky. And that is

603
00:32:08,039 --> 00:32:10,759
why today most people have probably heard of Curtis Blow,

604
00:32:10,920 --> 00:32:13,160
but most people have probably not heard of Eddie Chiba.

605
00:32:13,400 --> 00:32:15,839
They still haven't made their money, right, Russ is still broke.

606
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:18,960
He's living on this He's squeezing by on this money

607
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:22,359
that his mom gave him. But he's already pioneered organizing

608
00:32:22,440 --> 00:32:26,720
hip hop into organized shows. He's already pioneered a circuit

609
00:32:26,720 --> 00:32:30,880
of venues for performers. And he maybe he didn't realize

610
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:33,440
it yet, but he had already pioneered the idea of

611
00:32:33,559 --> 00:32:37,839
managing a representing rappers, and now he was ready to

612
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:42,759
pioneer the producing of actual rap records. Now, their idea,

613
00:32:43,119 --> 00:32:45,960
Rocky Ford and JB. Moore's idea was to do a

614
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:49,559
novelty song. They decided they would do a song about

615
00:32:49,599 --> 00:32:52,160
Santa Claus and they wanted to make it a rap record.

616
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:55,240
Now that's a million miles away from all this vital, energetic,

617
00:32:55,279 --> 00:32:58,519
creative awesome stuff happening in the clubs, but they're trying

618
00:32:58,559 --> 00:33:00,279
to find a way to present it to the public.

619
00:33:00,400 --> 00:33:03,839
So it's this nice little novelty comedy record about Santa Claus.

620
00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:06,720
But then something went wrong on the way to the studio.

621
00:33:07,519 --> 00:33:10,079
Somebody beat him to the punch hit.

622
00:33:12,799 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 4: You don't stop the record to the band man.

623
00:33:16,279 --> 00:33:17,839
Speaker 5: Rhythm.

624
00:33:18,119 --> 00:33:21,599
Speaker 3: So Rapper's Delight was a massive hit for a group

625
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:25,240
called the sugar Hill Gang. This record blew up and

626
00:33:25,319 --> 00:33:28,680
it's considered the first rap record in history. It was massive.

627
00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:34,480
Everybody had this record. It sold fourteen million units this

628
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:35,160
one song.

629
00:33:36,119 --> 00:33:36,559
Speaker 4: Wow.

630
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's the problem. Guess how many people had heard

631
00:33:39,720 --> 00:33:41,640
of the sugar Hill Gang before that record came out?

632
00:33:41,720 --> 00:33:43,519
Speaker 5: See nobody, right, nobody.

633
00:33:44,000 --> 00:33:47,039
Speaker 3: Guess how many gigs they had performed in the clubs?

634
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 4: Zero?

635
00:33:48,039 --> 00:33:53,119
Speaker 3: Zero? Had they even existed before? No. They were purely

636
00:33:53,599 --> 00:33:56,960
a creation of the record label. They were a studio act.

637
00:33:57,640 --> 00:34:01,359
They were absolutely fake. They were not authentic. They didn't

638
00:34:01,359 --> 00:34:03,839
come from the scene. They didn't come from the clubs.

639
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:07,640
As a matter of fact. They stole well known routines

640
00:34:07,680 --> 00:34:10,320
from other people and put it into their song.

641
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:13,159
Speaker 4: They were a boy band. They were new kids on

642
00:34:13,199 --> 00:34:17,039
the block. Wow. Wow.

643
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 3: So everybody in America right is loving this song. It

644
00:34:22,559 --> 00:34:26,039
blew up. But everybody in the Bronx, everybody around the

645
00:34:26,039 --> 00:34:28,480
New York area that knew what real hip hop was like,

646
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:31,840
they hated these guys. They hated them. They were posers,

647
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:36,159
they were fake. Russell hated them not because they were fake,

648
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:39,440
He hated them because they beat him to the punch.

649
00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:44,119
And they got their record out first, so they pushed forward. Russell,

650
00:34:44,400 --> 00:34:47,360
Ford and more pushed forward with their plan, and in

651
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:50,880
time for Christmas in nineteen seventy nine, they released Curtis

652
00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:59,719
Blow's Christmas Rapping Hey, the second ever wrap record. Now,

653
00:35:00,079 --> 00:35:03,840
that music was performed by a couple of session players

654
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:08,239
named Larry Smith who was playing bass. Trevor Gale was

655
00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:10,599
a was the man on the drums, and the guitarist

656
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:12,760
was a guy named Eddie Martinez.

657
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:16,039
Speaker 1: Larry Smith is the name I recognize. Isn't Larry the

658
00:35:16,039 --> 00:35:19,000
one that produced the first two run DMC albums?

659
00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:23,800
Speaker 3: Yes? Okay, Okay, So now they have their record. Okay,

660
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:26,800
they have Christmas Rapping, but how do they get it out?

661
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:32,239
They need a label. So Russ pulls off this ingenious scam.

662
00:35:32,280 --> 00:35:34,360
First of all, he sends copies out to these key

663
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:36,079
influential DJs around the city.

664
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:36,920
Speaker 4: Uh huh.

665
00:35:37,039 --> 00:35:40,119
Speaker 3: Then he writes up a bunch of fake orders for

666
00:35:40,400 --> 00:35:42,840
Christmas rapping and sends it to PolyGram, Like he has

667
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:45,800
a PolyGram Records order sheet to fill out, and he

668
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:49,039
just fills it out though he's fake names. Everybody requesting

669
00:35:49,119 --> 00:35:52,760
Christmas rapping from PolyGram. They get all these and they don't.

670
00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:55,159
They're like, number one, we don't have it. Number two,

671
00:35:55,199 --> 00:35:58,039
what is it? We don't know what this record is.

672
00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:02,679
But they they fell exactly into Russell's plans. It made

673
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:05,440
them curious and they're like, well, clearly there's a demand

674
00:36:05,440 --> 00:36:07,920
for this record. Look how many people want it. Brilliant

675
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:11,239
And so they tracked down the producer and said, hey,

676
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:14,199
we need to sign you want to we want to

677
00:36:14,199 --> 00:36:17,239
distribute this record, And that's how they got the record

678
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:18,400
deal for Christmas Wrapping.

679
00:36:19,079 --> 00:36:22,119
Speaker 4: That is the Fadeaway Swish if ever there was.

680
00:36:23,559 --> 00:36:27,000
Speaker 5: That's genius, man. This guy is a marketing genius.

681
00:36:27,599 --> 00:36:31,760
Speaker 3: He combined street hustle with college education and a visionary

682
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:40,079
business sense and trick. He's tricky, and he tricked PolyGram

683
00:36:40,119 --> 00:36:44,119
Records into signing Curtis blow Now Curtis Blow becomes the

684
00:36:44,159 --> 00:36:47,519
first rapper in history signed to a major record label.

685
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:51,440
It quickly follow that up in January of nineteen eighty

686
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,719
with his second song, The Breaks. Now The Breaks is

687
00:36:54,760 --> 00:36:57,679
a record that anticipated what Grandmaster Flash would do a

688
00:36:57,719 --> 00:37:00,599
few years later with the Message, which is basically rapping

689
00:37:00,639 --> 00:37:02,639
about how hard life can be in the city. But

690
00:37:02,719 --> 00:37:05,519
with these two records, there were both hit records, and

691
00:37:05,599 --> 00:37:09,320
so Curtis Blow at this point seventy nine eighty, he

692
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:13,519
becomes rap's first official star. Hey it's everybody if you've

693
00:37:13,599 --> 00:37:16,400
got and with these hit songs, he has to hit

694
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:19,519
the road, and so he hits the road with DJ Run.

695
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:22,400
What they learned here was that rapp was very economical, right.

696
00:37:22,440 --> 00:37:24,599
All you needed was a record player and a microphone.

697
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:27,559
There's a very little overhead. These shows cost basically nothing

698
00:37:27,599 --> 00:37:29,239
to put on, so they were making a lot of money.

699
00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:33,440
It was very profitable. But with every show, Joseph Simmons

700
00:37:33,679 --> 00:37:35,679
he would take his turn on the microphone. So he

701
00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:38,840
was fourteen, fifteen years old and he was rapping every

702
00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:41,400
night in front of Curtis Blow's crowds. So it was

703
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:44,119
during this time of Curtis Blow's success early on his

704
00:37:44,239 --> 00:37:48,039
PolyGram's career, and he's on the road a lot with

705
00:37:49,199 --> 00:37:52,840
Joseph Simmons as his DJ. Russ is growing his client list.

706
00:37:52,880 --> 00:37:54,760
He's got more than just Curtis Blow. Now he's signing

707
00:37:54,840 --> 00:37:57,400
up several acts, one of which is Doctor Jekyl and

708
00:37:57,480 --> 00:38:01,079
Mister Hyde. And in nineteen eighty one they had a

709
00:38:01,119 --> 00:38:04,280
song called Genius Rap. This proved to be their biggest hit,

710
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:06,559
and Doctor Dericklin Mister Hyde. Even though they appear in

711
00:38:06,639 --> 00:38:09,400
Crush Groove the movie, they never really had a big

712
00:38:09,519 --> 00:38:14,280
rapping career, although Doctor Jekyl also known as Andre Harrel,

713
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:16,800
would go on to be a huge record executive and

714
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:21,360
eventually end up being the CEO of Motown in the nineties. Okay,

715
00:38:21,559 --> 00:38:25,679
Nice started off nineteen eighty one with Genius Rap that

716
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:30,440
they had landed with a small indie label that had

717
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:32,840
just opened in eighty one but had lost all their

718
00:38:32,880 --> 00:38:36,079
money and nothing had hit. It was called Profile Records,

719
00:38:36,239 --> 00:38:38,159
and they took Genius Rap and they got a hit

720
00:38:38,159 --> 00:38:41,360
out of it, and Genius Rap saved Profile Records. And

721
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:43,719
that'll prove important in a few minutes.

722
00:38:43,840 --> 00:38:46,880
Speaker 1: So while all this stuff is going on, while you know,

723
00:38:47,559 --> 00:38:51,760
run is being introduced, as the son of Curtis Blow.

724
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:56,119
Kids around the Bronx are just I mean, each of

725
00:38:56,159 --> 00:38:59,559
those Burroughs is kind of a world in and of itself, right,

726
00:38:59,639 --> 00:39:03,559
And so they're they're getting they're getting these mixtapes in,

727
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:07,320
but everybody's falling in love with this new style of music.

728
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:10,920
And there's this kid named Darryl who is a big

729
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:16,079
comic book fan, Like he obsesses over comic book huge, yes,

730
00:39:16,519 --> 00:39:19,239
like that's all he does. He's he's an introvert. He's

731
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:21,800
got big, thick glasses. He kind of gets picked on

732
00:39:21,880 --> 00:39:24,320
at school, and so all he wants to do is

733
00:39:24,360 --> 00:39:26,760
go home and read his comic books until he starts

734
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,400
hearing this music. And he and his older brother really

735
00:39:29,440 --> 00:39:31,679
fall in love with this music. And they say, man,

736
00:39:31,719 --> 00:39:33,960
where can we Where can we get some money so

737
00:39:34,000 --> 00:39:35,760
that we can get our own turntables.

738
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,960
Speaker 4: And his brother's like, well, why don't we sell your

739
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:42,480
comic books. He's like, but I like my comic books.

740
00:39:42,519 --> 00:39:44,320
And he's like, well, yeah, we'll sell the old ones

741
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:45,280
that you've read already.

742
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:48,119
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, I'll keep the good ones. Well, we'll

743
00:39:48,159 --> 00:39:51,039
sell my old comic books. And they sell it. They

744
00:39:51,039 --> 00:39:54,679
buy the turntable and then big brother says, now, don't

745
00:39:54,679 --> 00:39:55,599
you touch this when I'm not.

746
00:40:00,079 --> 00:40:01,519
Speaker 5: So he tries to.

747
00:40:01,440 --> 00:40:03,119
Speaker 4: Emulate the guys.

748
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:06,760
Speaker 1: And you know, before he was trying to emulate the superheroes,

749
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:09,320
he would have his you know, he'd have his playtime

750
00:40:09,360 --> 00:40:13,039
emulating the superheroes. Now he is trying to write poetry,

751
00:40:13,119 --> 00:40:16,559
trying to write raps so he can emulate those guys

752
00:40:16,639 --> 00:40:20,360
from the other boroughs who are now doing this music

753
00:40:20,400 --> 00:40:22,320
that is brand new and on the scene.

754
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:25,800
Speaker 3: So Daryl and Joseph had been going to the same

755
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:30,320
elementary school since kindergarten, but because Daryl's birthday was in May,

756
00:40:30,440 --> 00:40:32,960
he was actually one grade ahead of Joseph, so they

757
00:40:32,960 --> 00:40:35,119
were never in the same grade or same class in

758
00:40:35,199 --> 00:40:37,800
elementary school. So although they had gone to school there together,

759
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:40,400
they weren't really friends. But at this point at high

760
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:43,119
school age, as it happens with Ron on the road

761
00:40:43,119 --> 00:40:45,960
with Curtis blow a lot, they both end up joining

762
00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:48,440
a local basketball league. They ended up on the same

763
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:51,639
team and they renew their acquaintance. They recognize each other

764
00:40:51,679 --> 00:40:54,960
from elementary school, and so that this is where they

765
00:40:55,000 --> 00:40:59,440
really became friends, was playing basketball together. So yes, Daryl

766
00:40:59,559 --> 00:41:01,440
was an inter he liked to stay at home, but

767
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:04,360
he had discovered this music, and he discovered that his

768
00:41:04,519 --> 00:41:08,000
friend Joe was a part of the scene, was actually

769
00:41:08,320 --> 00:41:11,159
in Manhattan in the Bronx, playing to these clubs, and

770
00:41:11,199 --> 00:41:13,199
he's on some of these mixtapes that he's listening to me,

771
00:41:13,199 --> 00:41:14,079
and it blew them away.

772
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:17,400
Speaker 1: Both Darryl and Joe liked to play basketball, right, and

773
00:41:17,599 --> 00:41:21,639
in these burrows there's really just especially in the Bronx,

774
00:41:21,639 --> 00:41:24,199
there's one basketball goal that you can go and play on,

775
00:41:24,760 --> 00:41:27,119
and a friend of theirs decides, Hey, I'm going to

776
00:41:27,199 --> 00:41:30,320
slam dunk on this goal and he breaks the goal,

777
00:41:30,599 --> 00:41:32,760
and so now they're without a goal to play on,

778
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:35,079
and Darryl and Joe are like, well, what are we

779
00:41:35,119 --> 00:41:38,199
going to do? And Darryl says, hey, why don't you

780
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:40,800
come over to my house. I've got a basketball goal

781
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:43,480
at my house. We'll play over there, right, And so

782
00:41:43,519 --> 00:41:47,840
they go over to Daryl's house and they play basketball,

783
00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:50,840
they work up a sweat. Joe's thirsty, He's like, hey, man,

784
00:41:50,880 --> 00:41:52,760
can we get a drink water? And Daryl's like, man,

785
00:41:52,800 --> 00:41:55,119
I'm not really supposed to have people in the house.

786
00:41:55,280 --> 00:41:59,360
No company, no company. When the parents aren't here. He's like, man,

787
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:02,280
I'm dying thirst here, Like all right, come on, he

788
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:05,360
come in. And when he comes in, Joe sees the

789
00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:09,880
turntables that the comic book Money had bought and he's like, whoa,

790
00:42:09,920 --> 00:42:12,079
what have you got going here? And he's like, oh,

791
00:42:12,159 --> 00:42:14,400
you know, yeah, I'm my brother and I got these

792
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:16,440
and I do this a little bit, So you just

793
00:42:16,519 --> 00:42:19,400
do the turntables, you just do the DJ and Darrel's like, oh, yeah, yeah,

794
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:19,800
I do it.

795
00:42:20,119 --> 00:42:20,840
Speaker 4: That's all I do.

796
00:42:21,280 --> 00:42:24,880
Speaker 1: But sure enough, Joe finds his notebook and he starts

797
00:42:25,320 --> 00:42:27,199
reading through. He's like, did you write this? Did you

798
00:42:27,199 --> 00:42:32,119
write these rhymes? And Daryl's like yeah, and he's like, listen, listen,

799
00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:36,119
my brother. When I graduate, is gonna let me record

800
00:42:36,159 --> 00:42:38,920
a record. When that happens, I want you to record

801
00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:40,679
with me. I want you to be the guy who

802
00:42:40,719 --> 00:42:44,599
records with me on that record. And Daryl's like, yeah, okay, whatever,

803
00:42:44,679 --> 00:42:48,639
your brother, Yeah whatever. It's only later that he finds

804
00:42:48,639 --> 00:42:51,679
out who Darryl's It's only later that he finds out

805
00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:53,880
who Joe's brother really is.

806
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:58,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Darryl was a homebody, he was an introvert.

807
00:42:58,000 --> 00:43:01,039
He's probably a nerd. And he he was his parents

808
00:43:01,039 --> 00:43:04,159
were in particularly his mother were overly protective of them.

809
00:43:04,280 --> 00:43:07,599
So here he is living in Hollis Queen's and he's

810
00:43:07,639 --> 00:43:09,920
going to a private school for high school. So he's

811
00:43:09,920 --> 00:43:13,280
wearing a uniform and he's wearing these big, thick glasses,

812
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:16,800
so he's prime target for bullies. And he's got to

813
00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:19,840
walk the city blocks to get to his house, and

814
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:22,760
so he's used to hiding his glasses, Like when he's

815
00:43:22,920 --> 00:43:24,519
coming up on people on the street, he takes his

816
00:43:24,519 --> 00:43:26,320
glasses off, puts him in his pocket, and tries to

817
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:28,079
get by them without any trouble. And when he's in

818
00:43:28,119 --> 00:43:30,880
the house, he's he's he's content to just stay there

819
00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:33,840
and read and look out the window. So after this happens,

820
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:36,599
and Joe's like, you've got some good rhymes. You need

821
00:43:36,679 --> 00:43:38,360
to come with us, you know, I'm going to these shows.

822
00:43:39,079 --> 00:43:41,559
Joseph was always trying to get Daryl to come with them,

823
00:43:41,960 --> 00:43:46,960
and Daryl would wanted to go, but his his his

824
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:49,360
his mom would let him leave Queens. So it's like

825
00:43:49,559 --> 00:43:51,639
he asked his mom please, but she still said no.

826
00:43:55,079 --> 00:43:57,320
So he was all upset in Paludy looking out the

827
00:43:57,320 --> 00:43:59,960
window while his friend Joe's off in the Bronx somewhere

828
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:02,480
rapping on stage, and He's sitting there just reading his

829
00:44:02,559 --> 00:44:05,239
comic books. So here's the thing about Darryl. He was

830
00:44:05,320 --> 00:44:08,719
really shy and he would never imagine himself rapping in public.

831
00:44:08,920 --> 00:44:10,679
And what would happen is they had set up their

832
00:44:10,679 --> 00:44:15,039
turntables in the attic, and so they called their attic

833
00:44:15,119 --> 00:44:18,599
space the lab, and Darryl and Joe would spend all

834
00:44:18,639 --> 00:44:21,159
their time every day in the lab just messing around,

835
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:25,440
scratching on records, writing rhymes, rapping back and forth. And

836
00:44:25,519 --> 00:44:27,119
they just did this every day for a long time.

837
00:44:27,119 --> 00:44:29,760
And this is where they developed their rapid fire exchange,

838
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:33,599
switching between lines, switching words within a line, that kind

839
00:44:33,639 --> 00:44:35,480
of thing. This is where they developed that real tight

840
00:44:36,320 --> 00:44:39,480
ability to perform together. And it was during this time

841
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:42,800
that Darryl came up with his first name for himself,

842
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:48,079
which was Grandmaster get High, and then later he would

843
00:44:48,079 --> 00:44:51,639
soon change his name to Easy Deep. But what was amazing,

844
00:44:51,920 --> 00:44:54,280
what blew Joe out of the water and made him

845
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:57,199
a big believer in Darryl, was that this meek, mild

846
00:44:57,280 --> 00:45:00,159
mannered Clark Kent, who didn't want to get picked on,

847
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:02,239
would go up in the lab and come up with

848
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:05,400
the most vicious, tough guy rhymes that could just blow

849
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:08,440
anybody off the street. When he was rapping, he transformed

850
00:45:08,440 --> 00:45:12,800
into the Superman version of himself. But Joe couldn't get

851
00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:17,039
him to perform anywhere. So across the street or nearby

852
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:20,280
you had two what they called it two fifths part

853
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:22,119
It was on two hundred and fifth Street, and this

854
00:45:22,360 --> 00:45:25,719
was the park that was the scene for all the

855
00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:28,400
parties in the Hollists that were going on. So these

856
00:45:28,480 --> 00:45:30,559
dj these kids that were figuring out how to be

857
00:45:30,599 --> 00:45:33,159
a DJ by listening to these mixtapes or maybe going

858
00:45:33,199 --> 00:45:35,840
to a club show in the Bronx, they'd come back

859
00:45:35,880 --> 00:45:37,920
and they'd try these things. They were hooking up their

860
00:45:37,920 --> 00:45:41,079
turntables in two Fists Park and throwing their own parties,

861
00:45:41,239 --> 00:45:43,400
And so there was a competition among DJs to see

862
00:45:43,400 --> 00:45:45,800
who could draw the biggest crowd and who can keep

863
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:49,559
the party going the best. And at this time, the

864
00:45:49,599 --> 00:45:53,159
best DJ in Hollis playing at two Fist Park was

865
00:45:53,199 --> 00:45:56,320
a guy named Jazzy Jace who was a member of

866
00:45:56,360 --> 00:45:59,480
the two Fists Down crew. And so every once in

867
00:45:59,519 --> 00:46:01,800
a while Joe could get Darryl out of his house.

868
00:46:02,000 --> 00:46:04,639
He wasn't allowed to leave Queen's. But they'd go down

869
00:46:04,719 --> 00:46:06,760
to the park when the parties were going on, especially

870
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:10,159
when Jazzy Jase was on the turntables, and all these

871
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:12,280
kids were just eager to get on the mic and wrap.

872
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:14,199
They wanted to wrap, they wanted to wrap. Joe was

873
00:46:14,199 --> 00:46:16,559
bringing his own microphone. He's like, just just plug it in,

874
00:46:16,679 --> 00:46:19,239
just let me wrap. He would, he'd blow everybody away.

875
00:46:19,280 --> 00:46:21,159
But this is the scene that kind of created that

876
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:25,280
competition among rappers. You were no longer just praising the DJ,

877
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:27,800
but you were also trying to convince people how good

878
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:29,559
you were and that you were and you were the

879
00:46:29,559 --> 00:46:31,840
best person on the microphone. And there was this scene

880
00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:35,159
where DJ Run really honed his skills. But there's his

881
00:46:35,199 --> 00:46:37,800
friend Darryl hanging in the back of the crowd, not

882
00:46:37,920 --> 00:46:41,679
saying a word. Now, Joe knows what Daryl's got inside him,

883
00:46:41,719 --> 00:46:45,320
but nobody else knows. So Jazzy Jace, whose real name

884
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:47,519
is Jason Mizel, he was like the tough guy. He

885
00:46:47,599 --> 00:46:51,239
was a street guy, Okay. Darryl and Joe were both stable,

886
00:46:51,280 --> 00:46:56,679
loving homes, comfortable middle class existence, good normal, safe lives,

887
00:46:57,159 --> 00:46:59,480
and they were considered by the guys in the park

888
00:46:59,639 --> 00:47:04,199
to be right, and Jason was somebody who was hard.

889
00:47:04,239 --> 00:47:06,280
He was a tough guy. He was from the streets.

890
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:08,599
He was the kind of guy that was friends with everybody.

891
00:47:08,679 --> 00:47:11,079
He was friends with the straight A students and the nerds,

892
00:47:11,119 --> 00:47:13,280
but he's also friends with the guys on the corner

893
00:47:13,559 --> 00:47:15,440
dealing drugs, the tough guys that you wanted to stay

894
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:17,159
away from. He got to be friends with them too.

895
00:47:17,199 --> 00:47:21,599
So Jason had cred and so, and he knew Joe

896
00:47:21,639 --> 00:47:23,760
from school. They were in the same grade together at school.

897
00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:25,760
So when Daryl and Joe would come over to the park,

898
00:47:26,199 --> 00:47:28,639
Jason was the guy looking out for him. Nobody messed

899
00:47:28,639 --> 00:47:31,199
with Daryl and Joe because Jason said so. And if

900
00:47:31,239 --> 00:47:33,679
jed he Jason doesn't want you messing with those guys,

901
00:47:33,719 --> 00:47:36,360
then you know they must be cool. During this time

902
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:39,079
in the early eighties that Joseph is continuing to bug

903
00:47:39,159 --> 00:47:41,280
Russell to make a record. He wants to make a record,

904
00:47:41,280 --> 00:47:43,480
He wants to make a record, and Russell keeps putting

905
00:47:43,519 --> 00:47:46,480
him off. But in nineteen eighty two, Larry Smith and

906
00:47:46,559 --> 00:47:50,159
Trevor Gale and Eddie Martinez, the three guys who had

907
00:47:50,199 --> 00:47:53,079
helped perform the music, the session players who had performed

908
00:47:53,119 --> 00:47:56,199
on Christmas Rapping. They formed their own band called Orange

909
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:58,800
Crush and that's crush spelled with a K, and they

910
00:47:58,840 --> 00:48:01,719
were signed by Rushman and the biggest song they put

911
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:05,159
out was called Action. It was sung by Alison Williams,

912
00:48:05,159 --> 00:48:10,639
who was also a rush client. But what's significant about

913
00:48:10,639 --> 00:48:13,840
it is that it had a beat that Russ particularly

914
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:17,880
really liked. So in eighty two, sugar Hill Records run

915
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,199
at the top of the business was collapsing because they

916
00:48:21,199 --> 00:48:23,320
had signed a bunch of acts after the success of

917
00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:26,800
Rappers Delight, such as Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five

918
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:28,760
and Melle Mail and all these kind of guys, and

919
00:48:29,039 --> 00:48:33,480
so during this time CBS Right Columbia Records approached sugar

920
00:48:33,519 --> 00:48:37,480
Hill for a for a like to be their partner

921
00:48:37,519 --> 00:48:40,320
for distribution. There was a major label coming around wanting

922
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:43,440
to sign them up, but then Columbia ended up backing

923
00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:45,239
out of that. They were kind of scared off by

924
00:48:45,280 --> 00:48:48,239
some shady business practices they were seeing, and this would

925
00:48:48,320 --> 00:48:50,519
later be a factor in them wanting to sign Deaf

926
00:48:50,599 --> 00:48:53,480
Jam because they were still looking for a rap label,

927
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:55,840
but they didn't want to be in business with sugar Hill,

928
00:48:55,960 --> 00:48:59,280
but they did. Sugar Hill did sign a major distribution

929
00:48:59,360 --> 00:49:02,960
deal with m Records. The problem was that deal was

930
00:49:03,000 --> 00:49:07,119
broken by a guy from the mob, and very quickly

931
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:11,639
that relationship with MCA Records started to fall apart and

932
00:49:11,639 --> 00:49:14,119
they were in legal trouble and they would find themselves

933
00:49:14,119 --> 00:49:16,679
in litigation in court. And this is why sugar Hill

934
00:49:17,239 --> 00:49:20,679
kind of fell off the map. It created a space

935
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:23,800
in the market for somebody else to step up, and

936
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:28,079
so this is the landscape or inn. When Trevor Gale,

937
00:49:28,119 --> 00:49:31,360
the drummer for Orange Crush, comes to Russ and says,

938
00:49:31,679 --> 00:49:33,599
I've written a rap song. I want to make a

939
00:49:33,639 --> 00:49:37,559
record out of it. Well, Russ didn't care about. He

940
00:49:37,880 --> 00:49:40,000
didn't care about this guy's a little okay, great, you

941
00:49:40,000 --> 00:49:43,360
wrote some rhymes whatever. He's like, okay, sure, you know what.

942
00:49:44,119 --> 00:49:47,679
Joey has been bugging me to record a record, So

943
00:49:48,079 --> 00:49:50,480
I'm gonna go talk to Joey. He can wrap this

944
00:49:50,559 --> 00:49:52,880
for you. But Joey's like, cool, I want to do it.

945
00:49:52,960 --> 00:49:56,679
Let me bring my friend Daryl. Russell says, no, I

946
00:49:56,679 --> 00:50:00,280
don't like Daryl. So what are you talking about, Russ? Oh?

947
00:50:00,320 --> 00:50:03,199
Nothing in Daryl. They gave him any confidence that he

948
00:50:03,239 --> 00:50:06,199
could be a recording star. He was like, he didn't

949
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:08,320
like his style, he didn't like his voice, he didn't

950
00:50:08,360 --> 00:50:11,239
like his mannerism, his personality. It was too withdrawn. We're

951
00:50:11,280 --> 00:50:14,079
not using Darryl. You can get over it. So Joseph

952
00:50:14,119 --> 00:50:17,000
doesn't like that, but they record anyway. They do a

953
00:50:17,039 --> 00:50:20,239
demo of a song called street Kid, and it is

954
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:24,599
a solo DJ run song that they record, and they

955
00:50:24,639 --> 00:50:27,320
proceed to then shop around to record labels to find

956
00:50:27,320 --> 00:50:31,239
somebody who will take care of for him, and nobody

957
00:50:31,360 --> 00:50:34,039
buys it, nobody wants it. So they're dead in the water,

958
00:50:34,760 --> 00:50:38,280
and Joseph is dejected and he feels like, that's it.

959
00:50:38,320 --> 00:50:42,079
I had my shot. Now I'm not gonna be a rapper.

960
00:50:42,119 --> 00:50:43,760
I'm not gonna be I'm not gonna be making a record,

961
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:45,079
so I gotta find something else to do.

962
00:50:45,239 --> 00:50:49,000
Speaker 4: Meanwhile, Daryl has enrolled at Saint John's University.

963
00:50:49,679 --> 00:50:52,079
Speaker 3: So by this time it's the fall of nineteen eighty two.

964
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:54,159
They seemed like they had a good run. It was fun,

965
00:50:54,199 --> 00:50:56,760
but you gotta get on with life. And so Daryl

966
00:50:56,840 --> 00:50:59,639
and Joe and Jason all end up enrolling at different

967
00:50:59,639 --> 00:51:02,599
college in the fall of eighty two, Darryl is at

968
00:51:02,599 --> 00:51:06,800
Saint John's University studying to be a business major, and

969
00:51:07,000 --> 00:51:12,360
Joe he is enrolled at LaGuardia Community College to study

970
00:51:13,199 --> 00:51:14,480
mortuary science.

971
00:51:15,360 --> 00:51:16,079
Speaker 4: Wow.

972
00:51:17,719 --> 00:51:20,440
Speaker 3: Wow, I guess he decided that if he was going

973
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:27,920
to slay all suckers who perpetrate, so he's going to

974
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:32,599
class to be a mortician. Okay, bummed out about his

975
00:51:32,679 --> 00:51:35,679
record falling flat. At this time, there's a hit song

976
00:51:35,719 --> 00:51:39,159
by Grandmaster of Flash and the Furious Five called The Message.

977
00:51:40,000 --> 00:51:42,000
It's like a jungle Sometimes it makes me mind to

978
00:51:42,039 --> 00:51:45,159
how I keep them going on. So this song was

979
00:51:45,199 --> 00:51:48,599
a huge hit, and it painted a bleak story of

980
00:51:48,679 --> 00:51:51,480
life in New York City, and Run was inspired to

981
00:51:51,519 --> 00:51:54,400
do something similar. So he came up with the idea

982
00:51:54,840 --> 00:52:02,199
of a song called It's Like That, which just tells

983
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:05,639
the story of how times can be tough. And so

984
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:08,400
he calls up his friend Daryl and says, I want

985
00:52:08,440 --> 00:52:10,360
to I have this idea for a song like kind

986
00:52:10,360 --> 00:52:12,400
of like the Message. It's gonna be called It's Like That.

987
00:52:12,559 --> 00:52:14,519
Let's see what we can do with this. Okay, And

988
00:52:14,599 --> 00:52:18,760
so Darryl daydreaming in English class at Saint John's University

989
00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:22,119
writes the lyrics to It's like that. It shows it

990
00:52:22,119 --> 00:52:25,159
to Joe. Joe loves it. They take it to Russ.

991
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:28,119
Russ looks at it and says, this is great. I

992
00:52:28,159 --> 00:52:30,960
want to record this right away. Considering that they had

993
00:52:31,000 --> 00:52:33,840
tried this solo song street Kid with Joe and it

994
00:52:33,920 --> 00:52:38,480
had gone nowhere, he finally relents and says, okay, fine,

995
00:52:39,000 --> 00:52:41,199
Darryl can be on the record with you. And so

996
00:52:41,360 --> 00:52:44,800
they recruit Larry Smith from Orange Crush to be the

997
00:52:44,840 --> 00:52:47,320
producer on the session, and they go into the studio

998
00:52:48,039 --> 00:52:51,679
and Darryl and Joe record It's like that. They record

999
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:54,199
the song, and now they need to find a record

1000
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:56,760
label that'll carry it, and they shop it around again,

1001
00:52:57,320 --> 00:53:00,760
no biers. They shop it around to majors, nobody's interested.

1002
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:04,360
They can't find anybody that will buy it, and Russell's

1003
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:06,679
could desperate at this point, you know, he's trying to

1004
00:53:06,719 --> 00:53:09,960
place this record for his brother. He remembers that Genius

1005
00:53:09,960 --> 00:53:15,159
Wrap by Doctor Jekyl and mister Hyde had saved Profile Records. Yeah,

1006
00:53:15,199 --> 00:53:19,199
so he calls them up and this is a struggling, small, tiny,

1007
00:53:19,239 --> 00:53:21,760
little independent record label and stead that he had this

1008
00:53:21,840 --> 00:53:23,639
record for him and he said, I want this much

1009
00:53:23,639 --> 00:53:27,039
money for it, and Profile Records said, no, we'll take

1010
00:53:27,079 --> 00:53:30,800
it for half that much money, and Russell, with no

1011
00:53:30,840 --> 00:53:33,920
other choices, said fine, we'll take the deal. And so

1012
00:53:34,079 --> 00:53:37,440
that cut rate deal, Profile Records released It's like that,

1013
00:53:37,639 --> 00:53:40,960
and so that original twelve inch immediately took off boom.

1014
00:53:41,039 --> 00:53:43,599
It ended up selling like twenty thousand copies of just

1015
00:53:43,639 --> 00:53:46,840
this twelve inch. Now they needed it very quickly. They

1016
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:49,639
needed a B side for this single, so they had

1017
00:53:49,679 --> 00:53:52,119
to come up with something fast. So what they did

1018
00:53:52,400 --> 00:53:54,599
is they turned to the rhymes that they had had

1019
00:53:54,679 --> 00:53:56,920
for a long time. These were rhymes they had come

1020
00:53:57,000 --> 00:53:59,239
up with in the park and in the attic in

1021
00:53:59,280 --> 00:54:01,320
their lab that they had had for a while. They

1022
00:54:01,360 --> 00:54:03,760
just dug through the notebook find some old words, and

1023
00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:06,599
then for the track, they went back to Larry Smith

1024
00:54:06,960 --> 00:54:09,599
and Russell said, hey, you know that beat from Action

1025
00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:12,760
that I like so much, I want to reuse that.

1026
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:17,679
Let's use the groove that Orange Crush had on Action.

1027
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:23,519
And so Sucker MC's used the Orange Crush groove, and

1028
00:54:23,639 --> 00:54:26,960
so they subtitled the song Crush Groove Won because it's

1029
00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:30,079
the same beat that Orange Crush had used on Action.

1030
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:32,679
Speaker 4: Which is where you get the name for the movie later.

1031
00:54:32,480 --> 00:54:40,440
Speaker 3: On, exactly. And so this song was called Sucker MC's

1032
00:54:41,519 --> 00:54:44,199
and this song where It's Like That was the A

1033
00:54:44,440 --> 00:54:46,440
side and blew up and was a hit on the radio.

1034
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:49,000
It was the B side that blew up on the

1035
00:54:49,039 --> 00:54:54,159
clubs of the club scene because this was something brand new.

1036
00:54:54,360 --> 00:54:57,360
This was something that nobody else was doing. It was

1037
00:54:57,480 --> 00:55:02,239
nothing but beat, scratch and rhymes. These were those battle

1038
00:55:02,280 --> 00:55:04,000
rhymes that Ron had to come up with in the

1039
00:55:04,039 --> 00:55:06,119
park in order to stay on the mic and not

1040
00:55:06,159 --> 00:55:08,320
let anybody else have it. And he put it all

1041
00:55:08,360 --> 00:55:11,400
in this record at a time when other people are

1042
00:55:11,400 --> 00:55:13,960
putting in softer sounds and trying to be more musical.

1043
00:55:14,159 --> 00:55:16,760
They're just coming straight from the street, just the beat,

1044
00:55:17,079 --> 00:55:21,960
just the rhymes. And this record single handedly took rap

1045
00:55:22,159 --> 00:55:27,039
from this original breakbeat culture and introduced the drum machine

1046
00:55:27,400 --> 00:55:30,320
as the sound of choice and define the sound of

1047
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:33,320
rap for the rest of the decade. So they put

1048
00:55:33,320 --> 00:55:35,440
out It's Like That with the B side of Sucker

1049
00:55:35,519 --> 00:55:39,079
MC's and it's huge. They now have a reason to

1050
00:55:39,119 --> 00:55:41,519
go on the road and perform. This song would end

1051
00:55:41,599 --> 00:55:45,039
up cracking the top twenty of the Black Singles Chart.

1052
00:55:45,079 --> 00:55:47,880
And peak at number fifteen. So it was in April

1053
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:50,719
of nineteen eighty three that Joseph Simmons had his moment

1054
00:55:50,840 --> 00:55:53,760
where he's walking down the hallways at LaGuardia Community College,

1055
00:55:54,079 --> 00:55:56,079
I guess getting ready to go work on a cadaver

1056
00:55:56,239 --> 00:56:00,360
or something, and he hears it's like that out of

1057
00:56:00,400 --> 00:56:03,280
the radio that somebody else has in the hallway there,

1058
00:56:03,280 --> 00:56:04,960
and he has that moment where he just goes nuts.

1059
00:56:05,000 --> 00:56:06,920
He's like, that's my song. That's my song, that's my song.

1060
00:56:07,280 --> 00:56:07,920
Speaker 5: That's awesome.

1061
00:56:08,199 --> 00:56:11,320
Speaker 3: Over at Saint John's University, Darryl turned in his official

1062
00:56:11,480 --> 00:56:14,400
notice for leave of absence, and he proudly says that

1063
00:56:14,639 --> 00:56:17,719
he's been absent ever since. So here we are in

1064
00:56:17,760 --> 00:56:19,639
the spring of eighty three and it's time for run

1065
00:56:19,679 --> 00:56:24,079
DMC to perform for the first time. Now, imagine Daryl McDaniels.

1066
00:56:24,320 --> 00:56:28,360
He's only performed in the attic when he's drunk, and

1067
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,039
he's supposed to get out on stage in front of everybody.

1068
00:56:31,239 --> 00:56:34,880
But here's the thing Joe had been telling Jazzy Jase,

1069
00:56:35,239 --> 00:56:37,559
Hey man, when my brother's gonna make a record for me,

1070
00:56:37,719 --> 00:56:39,639
When I do, you're gonna be my DJ. You're gonna

1071
00:56:39,639 --> 00:56:42,400
be my DJ, and Jason's like, yeah, whatever whatever. Finally

1072
00:56:42,400 --> 00:56:45,119
they have a record and they've got a gig and

1073
00:56:45,159 --> 00:56:47,559
he's like, hey, be ready, we're gonna come get you.

1074
00:56:47,599 --> 00:56:49,960
And so so Jason's had nothing to do with creation

1075
00:56:50,039 --> 00:56:52,519
of these songs, but he's gonna be the guy that's

1076
00:56:52,559 --> 00:56:54,679
on stage with them as the DJ. Just like the

1077
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:58,079
BC Boys had to bring in DJ Double R, they

1078
00:56:58,079 --> 00:57:00,320
needed to bring in somebody to be their DJ. Jaysey,

1079
00:57:00,400 --> 00:57:01,519
Jason was going to be their guy.

1080
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:05,119
Speaker 1: He's not like super complex in what he does with

1081
00:57:05,159 --> 00:57:09,519
the tune turntables. He's not, you know, flamboyant or anything,

1082
00:57:09,960 --> 00:57:14,079
but he is like clockwork precision on what he does.

1083
00:57:14,519 --> 00:57:18,400
He is simple, but he does not make mistakes. He

1084
00:57:18,519 --> 00:57:22,280
is a metronome of timing and he's reliable.

1085
00:57:22,480 --> 00:57:25,199
Speaker 3: That's exactly right. I've seen them in concert three different times,

1086
00:57:25,519 --> 00:57:29,159
and what strikes me about Jason Mizel is that he

1087
00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:31,639
is controlling the show. It might not be obvious from

1088
00:57:31,639 --> 00:57:34,960
the crowd what he's doing, but he's running the stage shows.

1089
00:57:35,239 --> 00:57:37,440
He's controlling the flow of everything that's going on in

1090
00:57:37,440 --> 00:57:40,360
their act. And so this is the guy they wanted

1091
00:57:40,400 --> 00:57:43,360
for their very first gig, as it turns out they

1092
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:46,800
forgot to pick him up. They left from Manhattan without him.

1093
00:57:49,719 --> 00:57:52,320
Russ had found a second gig from earlier in the

1094
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:54,400
same day, and they had to hurry up and get

1095
00:57:54,440 --> 00:57:58,639
over there, and they left Jason behind, and so Run

1096
00:57:58,679 --> 00:58:01,119
and Deep go for their first day ever of gigs,

1097
00:58:01,119 --> 00:58:04,119
and they've got two in one day. And Jason's back

1098
00:58:04,159 --> 00:58:07,599
at the park and Queen's like, that was my shot.

1099
00:58:08,000 --> 00:58:10,079
You know, He's in tears. He's like, I can't believe

1100
00:58:10,119 --> 00:58:13,400
I messed up. He's probably glad that he did not go,

1101
00:58:13,519 --> 00:58:17,679
because those gigs were a complete disaster. The first gig

1102
00:58:17,800 --> 00:58:20,280
proved to be an office party with a bunch of

1103
00:58:20,320 --> 00:58:24,639
stiff suits. I have absolutely no idea what rap was.

1104
00:58:24,719 --> 00:58:26,800
It was like under fluorescent lights, you know, in the

1105
00:58:26,800 --> 00:58:30,800
middle of the afternoon, right And to make matters worse,

1106
00:58:31,239 --> 00:58:36,519
Daryl and Joe had to share a single microphone. When

1107
00:58:36,519 --> 00:58:38,519
you think about what they do, where they're switching lines

1108
00:58:38,559 --> 00:58:40,559
back and forth real quickly, they had to like huddle

1109
00:58:40,599 --> 00:58:43,239
like cheek the cheek, real close to each other awkwardly

1110
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:44,920
around this one mic to a bunch of people that

1111
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:47,119
had no idea what they were doing. And it was

1112
00:58:47,199 --> 00:58:50,519
it fell completely flat. It was. It was dumb and

1113
00:58:50,559 --> 00:58:54,599
it was terrible. That night, they went to the legendary

1114
00:58:54,719 --> 00:58:58,519
disco Fever, one of the top clubs for this whole

1115
00:58:58,599 --> 00:59:02,840
scene to perform. It's like that and Sucker MC's the

1116
00:59:02,840 --> 00:59:04,920
only two songs they have, and they've been on the radio.

1117
00:59:05,239 --> 00:59:07,239
And they get out there and they don't have their

1118
00:59:07,360 --> 00:59:12,559
look figured out yet. They're wearing their daddy's suits, suit.

1119
00:59:12,440 --> 00:59:17,920
Speaker 1: Jackets, plaid Like imagine Bob Ucker and his plaid sports jacket.

1120
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:19,960
That's what these guys were wearing at their first show.

1121
00:59:20,000 --> 00:59:23,199
They were not cool men in black. They were out

1122
00:59:23,199 --> 00:59:24,519
of this world crazy.

1123
00:59:24,719 --> 00:59:27,639
Speaker 3: So the club and this is a hardcore you know,

1124
00:59:27,639 --> 00:59:30,719
this is a club in the Bronx, and they're laughing

1125
00:59:30,760 --> 00:59:33,920
at them and they find out they're from Queens. Oh

1126
00:59:34,039 --> 00:59:36,800
forget it, get these queens people out of here. And

1127
00:59:36,800 --> 00:59:38,679
they're laughing at these guys. Well, what is this like,

1128
00:59:38,960 --> 00:59:41,159
wear your daddy's clothes day? It was his career day.

1129
00:59:41,199 --> 00:59:43,840
What are you doing? So it was humiliating. It was

1130
00:59:43,840 --> 00:59:48,119
a complete disaster, and Darryl in particular just wanted to

1131
00:59:48,159 --> 00:59:50,960
crawl under a rock. He was like, I quit, I'm done,

1132
00:59:51,119 --> 00:59:54,280
I can't do this, you know, there's no way. Well,

1133
00:59:54,400 --> 00:59:56,800
luckily for all of us, they were able to talk

1134
00:59:56,880 --> 01:00:00,480
him into persisting. But that first day of gigs was

1135
01:00:00,519 --> 01:00:01,599
a complete disaster.

1136
01:00:02,000 --> 01:00:02,480
Speaker 4: Wow.

1137
01:00:02,960 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 3: But they did go on the road and they began

1138
01:00:05,920 --> 01:00:09,039
hustling every day planned. They began driving outside of New

1139
01:00:09,119 --> 01:00:11,159
York City and they were they were lining up more

1140
01:00:11,159 --> 01:00:13,880
and more gigs, and they had Jason with them. And

1141
01:00:13,920 --> 01:00:17,079
it was at these shows, in a moment of an

1142
01:00:17,119 --> 01:00:21,400
improvised rhyme, that de renamed him. Instead of Jazzy Jase,

1143
01:00:21,840 --> 01:00:25,360
he was known as jam Master J jam Master J.

1144
01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:29,159
And by this time Darryl McDaniels, who had been going

1145
01:00:29,199 --> 01:00:31,480
by easy D, had come up with the name DMC.

1146
01:00:31,920 --> 01:00:36,320
By playing with his last name of Daryl mac Daryl McDaniels,

1147
01:00:36,400 --> 01:00:39,039
he came up with DMC. He decided that it would

1148
01:00:39,039 --> 01:00:44,960
stand for Devastating Mike Controller YEP, and Russell agreed to

1149
01:00:45,000 --> 01:00:50,360
it because his favorite car was from the DeLorean Motor Company. Yes,

1150
01:00:51,400 --> 01:00:52,159
are you telling.

1151
01:00:51,960 --> 01:00:56,320
Speaker 5: Me that you built a time machine of a Delaureate.

1152
01:00:57,480 --> 01:01:00,920
Speaker 3: It was during the It's Like That recording session that

1153
01:01:01,079 --> 01:01:04,480
Russell informed them that their name was going to be

1154
01:01:04,679 --> 01:01:07,920
run DMC. Okay told them, that's your name.

1155
01:01:07,760 --> 01:01:10,079
Speaker 5: Okay, so I've got a story about how they got

1156
01:01:10,119 --> 01:01:12,360
their name. So you talked about how he was playing

1157
01:01:12,360 --> 01:01:15,639
with the letters from their last name, and of course

1158
01:01:15,719 --> 01:01:18,559
Run gets his name from way back from DJ Run

1159
01:01:18,880 --> 01:01:21,559
and so Russell says, you guys are going to be

1160
01:01:21,599 --> 01:01:25,480
called Run DMC and they're like, no, that's terrible, No,

1161
01:01:25,920 --> 01:01:29,239
we're ruined. This is horrible. They wanted to be called

1162
01:01:29,280 --> 01:01:34,199
like the the Treacherous Tussome or the Dynamic Duo or

1163
01:01:34,239 --> 01:01:37,800
the Gruesome Tussom. They had all this uh you know

1164
01:01:37,840 --> 01:01:40,679
the people that they looked at for Yeah, numbers in

1165
01:01:40,719 --> 01:01:42,400
the names. Yeah, well you had.

1166
01:01:42,599 --> 01:01:43,039
Speaker 3: Yeah.

1167
01:01:43,519 --> 01:01:46,320
Speaker 5: All the guys before them had these long, elaborate, cool.

1168
01:01:46,199 --> 01:01:51,400
Speaker 3: Names, The Furious by four, the Treacher's three Cold Crush Brothers.

1169
01:01:51,840 --> 01:01:54,920
Speaker 5: Yes, and Russell's like, nope, you guys are run DMC.

1170
01:01:55,320 --> 01:01:58,400
Speaker 3: Yeah. They hated it because it broke from the naming

1171
01:01:58,440 --> 01:02:00,599
conventions of the time. They thought it sounded stupid, like

1172
01:02:00,719 --> 01:02:03,239
what is that. It served them well, though, because they

1173
01:02:03,280 --> 01:02:05,480
had such a new sound and a new look that

1174
01:02:05,480 --> 01:02:09,360
that new type of name just only further served to

1175
01:02:09,559 --> 01:02:12,199
really establish them as something.

1176
01:02:11,960 --> 01:02:14,400
Speaker 5: New, that's a really cool name. And in fact, just

1177
01:02:14,440 --> 01:02:18,719
to go along with that, their logo is phenomenal. You

1178
01:02:18,800 --> 01:02:20,960
showed me a shirt this week where you were out

1179
01:02:21,000 --> 01:02:24,519
shopping and found that shirt and like hipsters wear it.

1180
01:02:24,559 --> 01:02:27,320
Now they have it as onesies and stuff like that,

1181
01:02:28,280 --> 01:02:30,960
and it's really cool. And he actually said I heard

1182
01:02:31,079 --> 01:02:35,159
Daryl McDaniel say that somebody told him that the three

1183
01:02:35,239 --> 01:02:40,320
most effective logos out there were Coca Cola, McDonald's, and

1184
01:02:40,400 --> 01:02:40,920
Run DMC.

1185
01:02:41,760 --> 01:02:45,800
Speaker 3: I believe it. By the fall of the eighty three,

1186
01:02:46,480 --> 01:02:50,360
Run DMC had found themselves as the opening act for

1187
01:02:50,440 --> 01:02:55,239
a variety of headliners, including Cameo, Midnight Star, and The Gap.

1188
01:02:55,119 --> 01:03:00,360
Speaker 5: Band Okay wait wait wait, wait wait wait. Cameo, famous

1189
01:03:01,159 --> 01:03:02,519
for the song word up.

1190
01:03:03,400 --> 01:03:03,800
Speaker 3: Yes.

1191
01:03:05,079 --> 01:03:09,000
Speaker 5: The Gap Band I know is from Oklahoma City and

1192
01:03:09,079 --> 01:03:13,199
their song is you Dropped a Bomb on Me? Yes, okay?

1193
01:03:13,440 --> 01:03:14,360
Speaker 4: And what was the other one?

1194
01:03:14,840 --> 01:03:18,400
Speaker 5: Midnight Star Midnight Star, I got nothing.

1195
01:03:18,679 --> 01:03:22,239
Speaker 3: No parking on the dance floor, oh okay okay? And

1196
01:03:22,400 --> 01:03:24,559
uh freakazoid there it.

1197
01:03:24,519 --> 01:03:28,920
Speaker 5: Is there it is okay, yeah, okay cool okay.

1198
01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:32,159
Speaker 3: Also, and this is weird enough, Run DMC only had

1199
01:03:32,159 --> 01:03:34,239
one single out of this time. As far as anybody

1200
01:03:34,320 --> 01:03:36,000
knew they were, they could have just been a one

1201
01:03:36,039 --> 01:03:39,039
hit wonder, right, here. In the fall of eighty three,

1202
01:03:39,280 --> 01:03:43,360
there was actually an episode of The Jeffersons that featured

1203
01:03:43,840 --> 01:03:47,000
run DMC's one and only song It's like that, and

1204
01:03:47,079 --> 01:03:51,039
it was performed on that episode by all people, by

1205
01:03:51,440 --> 01:03:52,360
Sister Sledge.

1206
01:03:53,000 --> 01:03:57,199
Speaker 4: Wow, so wonderful. I am confident. I think I probably

1207
01:03:57,239 --> 01:04:00,679
watched every episode of The Jeffersons. I think I probably that.

1208
01:04:00,679 --> 01:04:01,320
Speaker 5: That's interesting.

1209
01:04:01,519 --> 01:04:04,400
Speaker 1: I was break dancing at the time, so I probably

1210
01:04:04,480 --> 01:04:07,559
I bet I was wise enough to go, why is

1211
01:04:07,599 --> 01:04:10,280
this girl group singing my rap song right now?

1212
01:04:10,840 --> 01:04:12,760
Speaker 4: Yeah? But they didn't do half that job.

1213
01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:15,280
Speaker 3: So as eighty three is rolling into eighty four, Run

1214
01:04:15,360 --> 01:04:18,039
DMC is staying on the road playing shows, and Russell

1215
01:04:18,119 --> 01:04:21,800
and Larry Smith go back into the studio to work

1216
01:04:21,800 --> 01:04:23,840
on more material. The first thing they do is come

1217
01:04:23,880 --> 01:04:26,840
out with another two sided single that follows the same

1218
01:04:26,880 --> 01:04:29,639
pattern as It's like that in suckerham Ce's which is

1219
01:04:29,679 --> 01:04:33,360
a song called hard Times, which again follows that the

1220
01:04:33,440 --> 01:04:36,719
message template of talking about how tough things can be right.

1221
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:38,880
And on the b side was a song called jam

1222
01:04:38,920 --> 01:04:39,960
Master Jay Dam.

1223
01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:42,599
Speaker 5: That's the jay Ron d I heard about this. So

1224
01:04:42,719 --> 01:04:45,559
Darryl McDaniels talks about this too. He said, they had

1225
01:04:45,599 --> 01:04:48,639
to write a song called jam Master Jay. They had

1226
01:04:48,639 --> 01:04:51,400
to have some way of introducing him as part of

1227
01:04:51,440 --> 01:04:55,400
the band. Okay, it's a three part band. You have Ron,

1228
01:04:55,599 --> 01:04:59,000
you have DMC, and everybody in the crowd is going, Okay,

1229
01:04:59,000 --> 01:05:01,840
I get it. He's run, he's the MC. Who in

1230
01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:04,840
the hell is that? And so they had to use

1231
01:05:04,880 --> 01:05:06,760
that song as a way to introduce him and sort

1232
01:05:06,760 --> 01:05:09,039
of unite him as that third member of the band.

1233
01:05:09,159 --> 01:05:11,960
Speaker 3: Not only did they do that with the song, but

1234
01:05:12,280 --> 01:05:15,519
they would go on to sample this song throughout the

1235
01:05:15,599 --> 01:05:18,199
rest of their careers because this is the part where

1236
01:05:18,199 --> 01:05:20,960
he goes run DMC and jam Master J and he's

1237
01:05:21,000 --> 01:05:25,000
cutting on RUNT and all his future records, and in

1238
01:05:25,079 --> 01:05:27,599
their live shows, jam Master J is the first one

1239
01:05:27,639 --> 01:05:30,159
on stage and he's he's cutting on these names that

1240
01:05:30,199 --> 01:05:33,159
are mentioned on this song. It's jam Master J record

1241
01:05:33,159 --> 01:05:36,199
on the turntable that he's using to bring the act

1242
01:05:36,239 --> 01:05:39,239
out on stage and to hype the crowd. So that

1243
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:42,559
song is significant for that reason. As a matter of fact,

1244
01:05:42,599 --> 01:05:46,159
there's a lyric in that song that goes, we're five,

1245
01:05:46,280 --> 01:05:49,239
not four, not three, just two two MC's with the

1246
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:52,599
claim to fame. Okay, when Daryl says, we're not five,

1247
01:05:52,679 --> 01:05:55,280
We're not four, or not three, just two. He's calling

1248
01:05:55,360 --> 01:05:59,159
out his competition. He is specifically referencing the Furious five,

1249
01:05:59,519 --> 01:06:02,719
the Funky for the treacherous three. And so this was

1250
01:06:02,760 --> 01:06:06,519
another example of just these battle rhymes, its confrontational, aggressive

1251
01:06:06,599 --> 01:06:09,679
nature that Run DMC was bringing to the records. The

1252
01:06:09,719 --> 01:06:13,159
A side record, Hard Times was actually a Curtis Blow song.

1253
01:06:13,199 --> 01:06:16,639
He had recorded a version earlier. So this came out

1254
01:06:16,679 --> 01:06:21,039
and it also did well, but it began to create

1255
01:06:21,079 --> 01:06:24,840
a split between Russell and Larry. So Russell was all

1256
01:06:24,880 --> 01:06:27,039
about beat only, just give me the beat, nothing but

1257
01:06:27,079 --> 01:06:30,000
the beat, and Larry Smith, who had a long career

1258
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:32,079
as a session player, he was trying to bring more

1259
01:06:32,239 --> 01:06:36,639
musicality to these records, and whenever he would introduce musical

1260
01:06:36,719 --> 01:06:39,800
or melodic elements, Russell would get mad and say, you're

1261
01:06:39,800 --> 01:06:42,000
just trying to soften the sound. I don't want to soften.

1262
01:06:42,239 --> 01:06:44,119
So then one day they're in the studio. Now you

1263
01:06:44,119 --> 01:06:46,480
have to understand, Larry is somebody that been playing bands

1264
01:06:46,519 --> 01:06:51,119
for years, including rock music, and they take Run In

1265
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:54,320
Darryl to the studio to record a song that they've

1266
01:06:54,360 --> 01:06:56,639
got ready. But they have to wait for the recording

1267
01:06:56,639 --> 01:06:59,800
booths to come open, because inside is the hard rock

1268
01:07:00,239 --> 01:07:04,000
called Riot. And Riot is busy recording a song and

1269
01:07:04,039 --> 01:07:07,400
they're banging away and wailing away on their guitars, and

1270
01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:09,480
the guys sitting out in the lobby can't help, but

1271
01:07:09,559 --> 01:07:12,480
hear it, and Larry's grooven to it, and Russ is like,

1272
01:07:12,519 --> 01:07:15,519
you know what, we can be loud too, And so

1273
01:07:16,280 --> 01:07:19,400
after Daryl and Joe recorded their parts that day, Russ said,

1274
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:21,400
why don't we try to add some guitar. The way

1275
01:07:21,480 --> 01:07:24,440
Riot was doing this was after the Run Indeed recorded

1276
01:07:24,440 --> 01:07:28,199
their raps, and so Larry calls up his friend Eddie Martinez,

1277
01:07:28,559 --> 01:07:31,079
who had played guitar on Christmas rapping and had been

1278
01:07:31,119 --> 01:07:32,840
an orange crush with him. They said, can you come

1279
01:07:32,880 --> 01:07:34,719
over here and lay down some guitar tracks for us?

1280
01:07:34,800 --> 01:07:39,000
So Eddie Martinez did that, and this became the first

1281
01:07:39,400 --> 01:07:47,800
rock rap fusion known as rock box Boy Something Ron Wow,

1282
01:07:48,199 --> 01:07:51,960
lawns drum kind of God back droling, I'm drum got

1283
01:07:52,000 --> 01:07:54,039
it you flit to the fawn my name We talked

1284
01:07:54,039 --> 01:07:55,760
the Simmons one of my middle days one and when

1285
01:07:55,800 --> 01:07:56,480
I'm rocking all.

1286
01:07:59,360 --> 01:07:59,920
Speaker 4: We got it one.

1287
01:08:03,000 --> 01:08:05,440
Speaker 5: I mean everybody credits Walk This Way as being the

1288
01:08:05,440 --> 01:08:08,760
first rock rap combination. It's not. It's right here, this

1289
01:08:08,840 --> 01:08:09,480
is rock Box.

1290
01:08:09,719 --> 01:08:12,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's this is the first one that's on MTV.

1291
01:08:13,039 --> 01:08:16,520
This is the first rap song on MTV.

1292
01:08:16,840 --> 01:08:20,439
Speaker 3: That's right. So it run DMC were the group that

1293
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:25,039
pioneered introducing rock and roll sounds to rap, but it

1294
01:08:25,119 --> 01:08:27,560
was not Well this Way, it was rock Box.

1295
01:08:27,880 --> 01:08:28,159
Speaker 4: Now.

1296
01:08:28,479 --> 01:08:31,079
Speaker 3: Eddie Martinez is a name that you've mentioned before on

1297
01:08:31,159 --> 01:08:35,239
your show because he would. He was a career session player.

1298
01:08:35,279 --> 01:08:37,560
He played for a lot of big guys like David

1299
01:08:37,600 --> 01:08:40,239
Lee Roth and Mick Jagger and all these people. But

1300
01:08:40,279 --> 01:08:43,640
he's perhaps most famously known for playing the guitar part

1301
01:08:43,920 --> 01:08:46,239
in Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love.

1302
01:08:47,359 --> 01:08:54,520
Speaker 4: Wow Wow. Mentioned that I love Addicted to Love.

1303
01:08:54,640 --> 01:08:57,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So the guitar player on Addicted to Love

1304
01:08:58,000 --> 01:09:01,359
is the same guy wailing away on rock Box.

1305
01:09:01,680 --> 01:09:02,560
Speaker 4: That is awesome.

1306
01:09:02,640 --> 01:09:04,159
Speaker 5: That is a great nugget, right there, man.

1307
01:09:04,239 --> 01:09:04,560
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1308
01:09:04,640 --> 01:09:07,079
Speaker 1: Another great nugget is one of the three of us

1309
01:09:07,159 --> 01:09:10,800
is actually dressed up as Robert Palmer on Halloween with

1310
01:09:10,880 --> 01:09:15,000
his wife, one of the dancing guitarists.

1311
01:09:15,000 --> 01:09:18,159
Speaker 5: My wife and I dressed up as the Addicted to

1312
01:09:18,199 --> 01:09:20,960
Love video. So I had a black tie and a

1313
01:09:20,960 --> 01:09:23,920
white suit or a white shirt, and she had her

1314
01:09:23,920 --> 01:09:25,960
hair slipped back and all the makeup on.

1315
01:09:26,039 --> 01:09:26,960
Speaker 4: It was awesome. Yep.

1316
01:09:27,680 --> 01:09:29,960
Speaker 3: And this was coming at a time when like the

1317
01:09:30,000 --> 01:09:32,720
Furious Five and Mellie mel and Zulu Nation, they were

1318
01:09:32,720 --> 01:09:35,760
all wearing these elaborate costumes, almost like the Village people, right,

1319
01:09:35,920 --> 01:09:38,720
a lot of studded leather and headdresses and just kind

1320
01:09:38,720 --> 01:09:43,960
of just crazy like disco flamboyant costumes. And run DMC

1321
01:09:44,199 --> 01:09:46,960
are just wearing their street clothes, right, They're in leather suits.

1322
01:09:46,960 --> 01:09:50,279
So they're in Adidas track suits, and they've got they've

1323
01:09:50,319 --> 01:09:53,680
got their their stetson hats whatever you call those fedoras.

1324
01:09:54,239 --> 01:09:58,279
This came straight from from Jason Mizell's personal fashion sense.

1325
01:09:58,560 --> 01:10:00,720
This is how he dressed, and they just kind of

1326
01:10:00,760 --> 01:10:02,680
adopted that look and they said, look, we're just going

1327
01:10:02,760 --> 01:10:04,880
to be real. This was coming from Russell, just be real.

1328
01:10:05,039 --> 01:10:08,039
And so this new look and this new sound, this

1329
01:10:08,079 --> 01:10:12,640
new aggressive sound, this firmly established the new school of

1330
01:10:13,159 --> 01:10:15,800
hip hop. This was hip hop three point zero with

1331
01:10:15,960 --> 01:10:18,880
run DMC. And with this album, we now moved into

1332
01:10:18,920 --> 01:10:21,520
a different era. We kind of leave the seventies and

1333
01:10:21,520 --> 01:10:24,119
the early eighties behind. We're moving into the mid eighties

1334
01:10:24,119 --> 01:10:27,159
where run DMC is going to reign supreme suddenly with

1335
01:10:27,279 --> 01:10:30,680
this album. Everybody that came before them looks old and

1336
01:10:30,720 --> 01:10:35,279
corny and obsolete, and that includes sugar Hill Records. So

1337
01:10:35,319 --> 01:10:38,199
there's a space in the marketplace for a new label

1338
01:10:38,239 --> 01:10:40,159
to step up. Well, this is the summer of nineteen

1339
01:10:40,199 --> 01:10:42,520
eighty four, and we've already talked about it. At this point,

1340
01:10:42,600 --> 01:10:45,520
Russell has already met Rick Rubin and that summer they

1341
01:10:45,640 --> 01:10:50,000
established deaf Jam Records as their label. And immediately Russ

1342
01:10:50,039 --> 01:10:52,399
wants to get run DMC signed to deaf Jam and

1343
01:10:52,439 --> 01:10:54,960
he can't do it. Profile Records realize they just had

1344
01:10:54,960 --> 01:10:57,399
a winning lottery ticket land in their lap and they

1345
01:10:57,439 --> 01:11:02,800
are not letting go of run DMC. So and so ironically, Russell,

1346
01:11:02,880 --> 01:11:07,279
who ended up leading the biggest rap label in history,

1347
01:11:07,920 --> 01:11:11,560
whose brother was in the biggest rap act in history,

1348
01:11:11,960 --> 01:11:16,520
he never had his brother on his own on his label. Wow, Wow,

1349
01:11:16,680 --> 01:11:18,640
Run DMC never recorded for deaf Jam.

1350
01:11:18,960 --> 01:11:21,520
Speaker 5: That's insane. I did not know that. I just figured

1351
01:11:21,560 --> 01:11:22,479
that was a lock.

1352
01:11:23,960 --> 01:11:26,399
Speaker 3: What happened though, In the fall of eighty four, there

1353
01:11:26,439 --> 01:11:28,479
was a concert promoter down in Florida. His name was

1354
01:11:28,560 --> 01:11:31,520
Ricky Walker. He was somebody that had managed tours before

1355
01:11:31,680 --> 01:11:34,439
for the Commodores and for the Jacksons. He just had

1356
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:35,640
this idea that he can get a bunch of rap

1357
01:11:35,680 --> 01:11:38,119
acts together and some of these breakdancers that were in

1358
01:11:38,119 --> 01:11:40,520
the movies that were coming out and put together a

1359
01:11:40,680 --> 01:11:43,520
packaged tour. So he went to sugar Hill Records, but

1360
01:11:43,800 --> 01:11:46,880
they were having tough times and they couldn't come to terms.

1361
01:11:47,159 --> 01:11:50,039
So because sugar Hill he couldn't come to agreement with them,

1362
01:11:50,119 --> 01:11:53,880
he approached Rush Entertainment, Rush Management, who then agreed to

1363
01:11:53,920 --> 01:11:56,840
provide all of the talent, and so they put together

1364
01:11:57,079 --> 01:12:00,279
a tour that was called the Fresh Fest. It had

1365
01:12:00,319 --> 01:12:04,600
Curtis blow Houdini run DMC, and the Fat Boys were

1366
01:12:04,600 --> 01:12:07,119
a group not managed by Rush, but were being produced

1367
01:12:07,119 --> 01:12:07,760
by Curtis.

1368
01:12:07,800 --> 01:12:10,720
Speaker 5: Okay, so just a minute ago you were mentioning jam

1369
01:12:10,760 --> 01:12:13,399
Master j being sort of in charge of their fashion,

1370
01:12:13,479 --> 01:12:15,560
and they dressed in their street clothes and it was

1371
01:12:15,600 --> 01:12:18,399
the jogging suits and this and that I believe, correct

1372
01:12:18,439 --> 01:12:22,680
me if I'm wrong, But the non shoelace bearing Adidas

1373
01:12:22,800 --> 01:12:24,159
was part of that fashion.

1374
01:12:24,199 --> 01:12:24,840
Speaker 4: Is that correct?

1375
01:12:25,279 --> 01:12:25,600
Speaker 3: Yes?

1376
01:12:26,279 --> 01:12:28,840
Speaker 5: And the reason why those shoes didn't have shoelaces is

1377
01:12:28,880 --> 01:12:32,039
because when you went to jail, they took your shoelaces away.

1378
01:12:32,199 --> 01:12:32,399
Speaker 4: Huh.

1379
01:12:32,560 --> 01:12:35,600
Speaker 5: It's kind of similar to the modern day guys who

1380
01:12:35,640 --> 01:12:37,640
don't wear belts and they wear their pants down low

1381
01:12:37,760 --> 01:12:40,000
because they take your belt away when you go to jail.

1382
01:12:40,079 --> 01:12:42,199
Speaker 4: We run DMC was non fellon shoes.

1383
01:12:42,399 --> 01:12:45,359
Speaker 5: Well, and that's the thing is they said, my Adidas

1384
01:12:45,479 --> 01:12:48,159
only brings good news.

1385
01:12:48,600 --> 01:12:50,359
Speaker 3: Right, excellent, that's good stuff.

1386
01:12:50,680 --> 01:12:51,039
Speaker 5: Okay.

1387
01:12:51,560 --> 01:12:54,199
Speaker 3: So the Fresh Past was hugely successful. It toured in

1388
01:12:54,439 --> 01:12:56,840
at the end of eighty four. It made three point

1389
01:12:56,920 --> 01:13:00,560
five million dollars in just twenty seven dates, and it

1390
01:13:00,720 --> 01:13:04,279
succeeded in taking rap out of the Bronx and taking

1391
01:13:04,319 --> 01:13:08,720
it across the country. Okay, But and this was during

1392
01:13:08,720 --> 01:13:11,439
a time when Russ was trying to get run DMC

1393
01:13:11,960 --> 01:13:13,880
to deaf Jam. They had Deft Jam had just signed

1394
01:13:13,920 --> 01:13:15,680
their big deal with Columbia Records and got their six

1395
01:13:15,800 --> 01:13:18,479
hundred thousand dollars that we talked about, and he wanted

1396
01:13:18,479 --> 01:13:20,279
to bring run DMC over and he couldn't do it,

1397
01:13:20,279 --> 01:13:24,600
and Profile wouldn't let him go and run DMC needed cash,

1398
01:13:24,960 --> 01:13:28,560
so they ended up rushing their next studio album. They

1399
01:13:28,560 --> 01:13:30,479
got back together with Larry Smith and they went back

1400
01:13:30,520 --> 01:13:33,279
in the studio without really having a clear vision of

1401
01:13:33,279 --> 01:13:34,920
what they wanted to do, and they didn't have all

1402
01:13:34,960 --> 01:13:37,520
their material ready, but they had to get an album

1403
01:13:37,520 --> 01:13:39,840
out because they needed money. What we ended up with

1404
01:13:40,039 --> 01:13:43,039
was the album King of Rock, which they will say

1405
01:13:43,119 --> 01:13:46,520
that is their weakest of their early albums, and the

1406
01:13:46,560 --> 01:13:48,720
reason why is that they just didn't have a clear

1407
01:13:48,800 --> 01:13:51,119
centered vision and so you see a little bit of

1408
01:13:51,199 --> 01:13:54,079
Ruben's influence on the King of Rock album. There's a

1409
01:13:54,119 --> 01:13:56,079
song called can You Rocket Like This that was actually

1410
01:13:56,079 --> 01:13:59,079
written by ll COOLJ that was due to Ruben's influence.

1411
01:13:59,199 --> 01:14:01,960
There's a single the album called jam Master Jammin that

1412
01:14:02,079 --> 01:14:05,880
Rubin actually played guitar on for the single version, and

1413
01:14:06,279 --> 01:14:09,359
their title track was called King of Rock, and that

1414
01:14:09,560 --> 01:14:12,960
was definitely under the influence of Rick Rubin and it

1415
01:14:13,039 --> 01:14:17,399
was their second attempt to maild rock and roll with rap.

1416
01:14:17,640 --> 01:14:20,079
It was kind of the thematic sequel to rock Box.

1417
01:14:20,239 --> 01:14:22,399
It's called King of Rock. It is awesome. It's one

1418
01:14:22,399 --> 01:14:25,039
of their best songs. I absolutely love King of Rock.

1419
01:14:25,119 --> 01:14:30,000
I'm the King oh Rock, Ohio to call me Sia

1420
01:14:30,159 --> 01:14:32,479
to pock King you must sue Sia.

1421
01:14:32,600 --> 01:14:34,840
Speaker 5: I'll don't stop rock and tell I retile.

1422
01:14:35,079 --> 01:14:36,600
Speaker 4: Have you seen the King of Rock video?

1423
01:14:36,840 --> 01:14:39,439
Speaker 5: Yes, if you watched if you watched MTV in nineteen

1424
01:14:39,479 --> 01:14:41,319
eighty five, you saw the King of Rock video.

1425
01:14:41,479 --> 01:14:43,720
Speaker 3: So run DMC was the first rap group to have

1426
01:14:43,720 --> 01:14:46,399
a video played on MTV. It was rock Box. They

1427
01:14:46,399 --> 01:14:48,920
were back the very next year with King of Rock.

1428
01:14:49,039 --> 01:14:51,119
And I remember seeing this video very clearly. It's got

1429
01:14:51,239 --> 01:14:53,479
the uh, it's got Bud Melman in it. That the

1430
01:14:53,479 --> 01:14:56,359
old guy, yes guy, he.

1431
01:14:56,399 --> 01:14:58,119
Speaker 5: Was hilarious from the David Letterman Show.

1432
01:14:58,239 --> 01:15:00,800
Speaker 3: So nineteen eighty five, you know, that's also the year

1433
01:15:00,840 --> 01:15:04,000
of We Are the World by USA for Africa, and

1434
01:15:04,039 --> 01:15:09,039
it became this massive, massive project to fight starvation in

1435
01:15:09,239 --> 01:15:13,279
Africa and in Ethiopia. Yes, this led Bob Geldoff to

1436
01:15:13,359 --> 01:15:17,079
the idea of organizing Live AID. Live AI took place

1437
01:15:17,159 --> 01:15:21,359
in July of nineteen eighty five. That probably deserves its

1438
01:15:21,359 --> 01:15:25,640
own episode from you, as this enormous project, two simultaneous

1439
01:15:25,680 --> 01:15:30,159
concerts in London and Philadelphia on the same day. It

1440
01:15:30,199 --> 01:15:33,600
was like the Woodstock of the eighties. Yes, place on

1441
01:15:33,720 --> 01:15:36,640
July thirteenth, and they were booking all these guys at

1442
01:15:36,680 --> 01:15:38,479
the press conference in the week's leading up to this

1443
01:15:38,760 --> 01:15:42,199
massive event that people could hardly get their brains around

1444
01:15:42,199 --> 01:15:44,000
how big this was going to be. It began to

1445
01:15:44,079 --> 01:15:46,399
dawn on people that they hardly had any black artists

1446
01:15:46,399 --> 01:15:48,359
at all anywhere in the lineup, and they didn't have

1447
01:15:48,359 --> 01:15:50,560
any rappers. And they started catching a little bit of

1448
01:15:50,560 --> 01:15:52,600
pr heat, and they were trying to say that they

1449
01:15:52,640 --> 01:15:54,960
were reaching out to black artists and that nobody was

1450
01:15:55,279 --> 01:15:57,840
accepting them. That turned out that wasn't true. They were

1451
01:15:57,880 --> 01:16:00,720
just kind of trying to cover for themselves. Muscle Rush

1452
01:16:00,760 --> 01:16:03,640
management reached out to Live Aid and said, Hey, what

1453
01:16:03,760 --> 01:16:06,039
about my guys. I've got two albums and on the

1454
01:16:06,039 --> 01:16:08,880
Top two hundred list, I've got five singles and the

1455
01:16:08,960 --> 01:16:12,359
and the Top twenty the black singles, I've got videos

1456
01:16:12,399 --> 01:16:15,520
and heavy rotation on MTV. How about you booked my

1457
01:16:15,560 --> 01:16:18,880
guys on your show. They said, sorry, we don't have

1458
01:16:18,920 --> 01:16:20,960
any room. We're booked up solid. Well, that was a

1459
01:16:21,000 --> 01:16:23,800
problem because they found out later that after run DMC

1460
01:16:23,920 --> 01:16:27,640
had been told that, only then did the Beach Boys,

1461
01:16:28,319 --> 01:16:31,880
Madonna and Tina Turner get offered spots on the bill.

1462
01:16:32,079 --> 01:16:37,279
Speaker 4: The Beach Boys, okay, okay, don't, don't don't.

1463
01:16:37,680 --> 01:16:39,520
Speaker 5: I know that's your thing, right, don't.

1464
01:16:39,239 --> 01:16:41,359
Speaker 3: Distract me on the Beach Boys, We'll be here tomorrow.

1465
01:16:42,119 --> 01:16:45,720
Speaker 5: I'm sorry. But in nineteen eighty five, Madonna makes sense,

1466
01:16:45,760 --> 01:16:48,479
Tina Turner makes sense, FADMC makes sense.

1467
01:16:49,119 --> 01:16:54,239
Speaker 3: And the Beach Boys Okay, all right, okay boys always

1468
01:16:54,239 --> 01:16:54,640
makes sense.

1469
01:16:54,680 --> 01:16:55,760
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, okay.

1470
01:16:57,079 --> 01:17:02,920
Speaker 3: So with increasing negative publicity they really started backtracking, and

1471
01:17:03,000 --> 01:17:05,880
finally they went to run DMC and offered them a

1472
01:17:05,920 --> 01:17:07,640
spot on the bill. So we want you to play

1473
01:17:07,680 --> 01:17:11,319
at Live A. So did run DMC play Live aid, Yes,

1474
01:17:11,399 --> 01:17:14,800
they did. Did anybody see them? Essentially?

1475
01:17:14,920 --> 01:17:14,960
Speaker 5: No.

1476
01:17:16,039 --> 01:17:19,359
Speaker 3: They came on at ten fifteen in the morning on

1477
01:17:19,399 --> 01:17:23,000
the Philadelphia stage and they played about a twelve minute set.

1478
01:17:23,039 --> 01:17:26,279
They played two songs, they played King of Rock and

1479
01:17:26,319 --> 01:17:29,079
they played jam Master Jamming. So the way this ef

1480
01:17:29,119 --> 01:17:31,960
it worked they would alternate between London and Philadelphia.

1481
01:17:32,039 --> 01:17:32,479
Speaker 4: Okay.

1482
01:17:32,880 --> 01:17:37,600
Speaker 3: So it started with a on the Philadelphia stage. Just

1483
01:17:37,640 --> 01:17:40,800
before run DMC went on was a reunion performance by

1484
01:17:40,800 --> 01:17:47,239
Black Sabbath at ten o'clock in the morning. Okay, only

1485
01:17:47,760 --> 01:17:48,000
might be.

1486
01:17:49,760 --> 01:17:50,359
Speaker 5: Got them early.

1487
01:17:51,960 --> 01:17:55,560
Speaker 3: So when that was over, they cut to shar Day

1488
01:17:55,880 --> 01:17:58,880
playing on the London stage and so while she's playing

1489
01:17:59,239 --> 01:18:00,840
the stage getting set back up for.

1490
01:18:00,840 --> 01:18:03,560
Speaker 4: Philadelphia, h okay, keep going Okay.

1491
01:18:03,680 --> 01:18:06,000
Speaker 3: So it goes from Black Sabbath and Philly straight to

1492
01:18:06,079 --> 01:18:08,720
Charde in London. They come back to Philly and it's

1493
01:18:08,800 --> 01:18:13,079
run Dmcay, Okay, Run DMC gets part of one song

1494
01:18:13,359 --> 01:18:15,720
out and then they cut away from them and the

1495
01:18:16,199 --> 01:18:19,239
rest of their performance is not televised. And the reason

1496
01:18:19,319 --> 01:18:22,640
why is they're doing this big introduction in London for

1497
01:18:22,720 --> 01:18:25,560
Steam and so Sting gets all the airtime and run

1498
01:18:25,600 --> 01:18:30,119
DMC basically gets cut out of the broadcast. But they

1499
01:18:30,119 --> 01:18:33,000
did step on stage at Live Aid and the poor

1500
01:18:33,039 --> 01:18:33,600
got paid.

1501
01:18:34,000 --> 01:18:36,439
Speaker 5: There you go, hey, that's that's better than a kick

1502
01:18:36,479 --> 01:18:37,000
in the vans.

1503
01:18:38,239 --> 01:18:40,920
Speaker 3: Just a couple of weeks after Live Aid they appeared

1504
01:18:40,960 --> 01:18:44,079
on Dick Clark's American Bandstand and that was followed shortly

1505
01:18:44,119 --> 01:18:48,000
thereafter by Freshfest eighty five, where they restaged the concert

1506
01:18:48,039 --> 01:18:51,319
tour from the year before with the same talent lineup,

1507
01:18:51,600 --> 01:18:54,680
this time twice as many cities and they made twice

1508
01:18:54,680 --> 01:18:58,079
as much money. It was hugely successful in getting hip

1509
01:18:58,119 --> 01:19:00,439
hop out to the messes, but this time among the

1510
01:19:00,439 --> 01:19:03,920
breakdancers it included the twelve year old son of the

1511
01:19:03,960 --> 01:19:07,800
tour manager little boy by the name of Jermaine Duprie

1512
01:19:08,119 --> 01:19:10,920
that you may have heard of. Okay, So speeding through

1513
01:19:11,000 --> 01:19:14,800
nineteen eighty five, The Crush Groove movie comes out in October,

1514
01:19:14,840 --> 01:19:18,000
and during this time Russ is trying to capitalize on

1515
01:19:18,039 --> 01:19:22,880
run DMC's popularity and he actually approaches The Cosby Show

1516
01:19:23,199 --> 01:19:25,640
to try to get run DMC booked on an episode

1517
01:19:25,640 --> 01:19:28,279
of The Cosby Show, and Bill Cosby said, you can

1518
01:19:28,359 --> 01:19:30,000
have a coke in the smile and get out of here.

1519
01:19:33,640 --> 01:19:37,000
We don't want that kind of music on my show,

1520
01:19:37,560 --> 01:19:38,880
and so they were turned down.

1521
01:19:39,199 --> 01:19:42,880
Speaker 5: For those who don't remember, The Cosby Show was a

1522
01:19:43,159 --> 01:19:46,760
humongous thing. If they could have landed The Cosby Show,

1523
01:19:47,319 --> 01:19:49,600
that would have been they would have been handed the

1524
01:19:49,680 --> 01:19:51,920
keys to the kingdom. I mean, that was a hugely

1525
01:19:51,960 --> 01:19:52,720
popular show.

1526
01:19:52,800 --> 01:19:55,399
Speaker 3: Well, as it turns out, Malcolm Jamal Warner was a

1527
01:19:55,479 --> 01:19:56,760
huge run DMC fan.

1528
01:19:57,079 --> 01:19:58,079
Speaker 4: Is that right? Okay?

1529
01:19:58,680 --> 01:20:02,279
Speaker 3: Pil the guy playing Theo Huxable on The Cosby Show.

1530
01:20:02,600 --> 01:20:06,199
And at the same time, NBC was running a program

1531
01:20:06,319 --> 01:20:09,880
called Friday Night Videos. Yes, and so even though Bill

1532
01:20:09,920 --> 01:20:12,399
Cosby didn't want that kind of music on his show,

1533
01:20:12,640 --> 01:20:15,359
they at the time that the Crush Groove movie came out,

1534
01:20:15,800 --> 01:20:20,439
Malcolm Jamal Warner and Lisa Bonnet reprised their Cosby Show

1535
01:20:20,520 --> 01:20:23,560
characters from the set of The Cosby Show recorded a

1536
01:20:23,560 --> 01:20:27,640
segment in character for Friday Night Videos where they introduced

1537
01:20:28,000 --> 01:20:32,520
run DMC's next music video and they played the King

1538
01:20:32,560 --> 01:20:35,279
of Rock clip. Not there, not their video that had

1539
01:20:35,319 --> 01:20:37,760
been all over MTV, but the clip from the Crush

1540
01:20:37,800 --> 01:20:41,000
Groove movie which was coming out at the same time. Okay,

1541
01:20:41,039 --> 01:20:44,039
so they got they ran in the round around uh

1542
01:20:44,119 --> 01:20:48,199
around Bill Cosby there. So basically as soon as the

1543
01:20:48,239 --> 01:20:51,119
Fresh Fest was over, there was another opportunity to work

1544
01:20:51,319 --> 01:20:54,600
on a couple of other charity songs. This was at

1545
01:20:54,640 --> 01:20:58,720
a time when apartheid in South Africa was kind of

1546
01:20:58,760 --> 01:21:02,600
at its worst and there was a growing sentiment among

1547
01:21:02,760 --> 01:21:07,279
entertainers for a boycott for playing there at Sun City

1548
01:21:07,359 --> 01:21:10,960
was this huge resort for the white people in South

1549
01:21:11,000 --> 01:21:13,880
Africa where they would pay enormous amounts of money for

1550
01:21:14,000 --> 01:21:16,319
entertainers to come play. But it was getting to the

1551
01:21:16,319 --> 01:21:18,600
point where like you could not in good conscience do

1552
01:21:18,760 --> 01:21:22,920
that because of the apartheid that was going on, the

1553
01:21:23,000 --> 01:21:26,560
racial discrimination that was in South Africa and so a

1554
01:21:26,640 --> 01:21:28,239
musician you may have heard of by the name of

1555
01:21:28,359 --> 01:21:33,000
Stephen van Zandt decided to record a record to bring

1556
01:21:33,039 --> 01:21:34,760
attention to this situation.

1557
01:21:35,720 --> 01:21:37,319
Speaker 4: He had a pretty big part of an album in

1558
01:21:37,399 --> 01:21:38,159
nineteen eighty four.

1559
01:21:40,720 --> 01:21:44,319
Speaker 3: He's from Bruce Bringsteen's East Street band, Yep, Yep. He

1560
01:21:44,399 --> 01:21:47,319
was very political and he was able to rally all

1561
01:21:47,319 --> 01:21:50,079
these artists together to make this record. You got like

1562
01:21:50,159 --> 01:21:52,720
fifty of them, more than fifty of them, but first

1563
01:21:52,720 --> 01:21:57,560
among them was run DMC and so they put this

1564
01:21:57,640 --> 01:22:00,159
song out and it was a huge success, and it

1565
01:22:00,199 --> 01:22:02,159
was a huge success that did a lot to bring

1566
01:22:02,239 --> 01:22:04,880
attention to what was going on in South Africa. At

1567
01:22:04,880 --> 01:22:07,399
the time that they were approached, Darryl and Joe knew

1568
01:22:07,439 --> 01:22:09,840
nothing about any of it, and so they learned all

1569
01:22:09,880 --> 01:22:11,680
about it and they so of course they supported this

1570
01:22:11,760 --> 01:22:14,720
project and the song was called sun City, and New

1571
01:22:14,800 --> 01:22:17,199
York Times ended up naming it the single of the

1572
01:22:17,279 --> 01:22:27,119
Year for nineteen eighty five. Wow. At the same time,

1573
01:22:27,600 --> 01:22:29,800
January of eighty six is just around the corner and

1574
01:22:29,840 --> 01:22:34,000
it's going to be the first ever MLK holiday, and

1575
01:22:34,479 --> 01:22:38,479
Martin Luther King's son Dexter King, decided he wanted to

1576
01:22:38,520 --> 01:22:42,039
produce a rap record to teach kids about his father

1577
01:22:42,159 --> 01:22:45,319
and the work he had done. And so he approached

1578
01:22:45,359 --> 01:22:50,840
run DMC and Curtis Blow and new addition, Lebarge Lisa Lisa.

1579
01:22:51,199 --> 01:22:56,159
All these artists collaborated on a song called King Holiday.

1580
01:22:57,960 --> 01:23:01,920
Fellow creation wasn't and they wanted to get it out

1581
01:23:01,920 --> 01:23:04,279
in tom for the middle of January for the first

1582
01:23:04,399 --> 01:23:07,000
first iteration of this Holiday That's coming around. But the

1583
01:23:07,079 --> 01:23:09,600
record label would not give them the money for a

1584
01:23:09,680 --> 01:23:13,039
music video. So guess who came to the rescue and

1585
01:23:13,079 --> 01:23:16,119
provided his own money to make sure the music video happened.

1586
01:23:16,119 --> 01:23:21,439
Prints WHOA. He'd been unable to participate in the record

1587
01:23:21,479 --> 01:23:24,439
because he was busy filming Under the Cherry Moon, but

1588
01:23:24,520 --> 01:23:26,720
he came back and provided the money and allowed this

1589
01:23:26,800 --> 01:23:28,000
music video to be made.

1590
01:23:28,159 --> 01:23:30,000
Speaker 4: That's awesome. Let me just make a comment.

1591
01:23:30,159 --> 01:23:33,159
Speaker 5: I can't let that go without saying Under the Cherry

1592
01:23:33,199 --> 01:23:36,279
Moon is one of the worst movies of the nineteen eighties.

1593
01:23:37,680 --> 01:23:41,560
Purple Rain, awesome, Under the Cherry Moon not awesome.

1594
01:23:42,000 --> 01:23:47,760
Speaker 3: Keep going, okay. So that gets us to nineteen eighty six,

1595
01:23:49,239 --> 01:23:53,239
and it is these early months of nineteen eighty six

1596
01:23:53,680 --> 01:23:56,399
where they begin working on their next album that will

1597
01:23:56,399 --> 01:24:00,319
be raising Hell. At this point, Larry Smith is out

1598
01:24:00,319 --> 01:24:03,239
of the picture, and Rick Rubin, who had worked on

1599
01:24:03,319 --> 01:24:05,319
King of Rock and Kenny Rocky Like This and jam

1600
01:24:05,359 --> 01:24:08,119
Master Jammin, he took over as the producer for this

1601
01:24:08,199 --> 01:24:11,000
new project. The table was set for run DMC. This

1602
01:24:11,239 --> 01:24:14,439
was their career making moment. They knew that everything had

1603
01:24:14,479 --> 01:24:17,000
lined up for this to be the album to put

1604
01:24:17,000 --> 01:24:21,920
them over the top. Okay, because they had unprecedented visibility.

1605
01:24:22,159 --> 01:24:24,960
They had live a they had an American bandstand, they had

1606
01:24:25,000 --> 01:24:27,279
been on these charity songs that had gotten a lot

1607
01:24:27,319 --> 01:24:29,680
of play. They had appeared on TV shows, they were

1608
01:24:29,680 --> 01:24:33,199
in a movie. Okay, everybody knew who they were. At

1609
01:24:33,239 --> 01:24:37,199
the same time, Ll cool Jay's first album had come out,

1610
01:24:37,319 --> 01:24:40,279
so that's that. Ello Cooljay's first album is called Radio.

1611
01:24:40,920 --> 01:24:44,039
It was also produced by Rick Rubin, so there's actually

1612
01:24:44,199 --> 01:24:47,720
a hip hop trilogy by Ruben and Radio was the

1613
01:24:47,720 --> 01:24:50,039
first one to be released. Wow, and it came out.

1614
01:24:50,039 --> 01:24:52,760
It was huge. There were several hits from it, and

1615
01:24:52,920 --> 01:24:58,840
this created an immense competition between Ron and ll cool J.

1616
01:24:59,319 --> 01:25:03,119
They really had this contentious relationship that was very combative

1617
01:25:03,359 --> 01:25:05,279
and they are trying to out wrap each other. They

1618
01:25:05,319 --> 01:25:09,800
would have these freestyle rhyming battles backstage and Run would

1619
01:25:09,840 --> 01:25:11,960
get mad at ll thinking he was trying to cop

1620
01:25:12,039 --> 01:25:14,439
his style and all this kind of stuff. The album

1621
01:25:14,479 --> 01:25:16,520
had come out, it was huge, and so Run was like,

1622
01:25:16,560 --> 01:25:18,880
I gotta be better than LLL. This was the moment

1623
01:25:19,159 --> 01:25:21,159
all eyes were on Run DMC. They were never going

1624
01:25:21,239 --> 01:25:24,439
to have the table set for them, and the competition

1625
01:25:24,560 --> 01:25:27,920
was fierce, so they had to come with a grand slam.

1626
01:25:28,479 --> 01:25:30,760
They didn't like the way King of Rock had turned out,

1627
01:25:31,039 --> 01:25:33,239
and so they were determined to make sure that the

1628
01:25:33,279 --> 01:25:36,640
next album would be the best it could possibly be.

1629
01:25:37,199 --> 01:25:40,439
And with that attitude, they went into the studios with

1630
01:25:40,520 --> 01:25:44,680
Rick Rubin and started laying down tracks for what would

1631
01:25:44,720 --> 01:25:48,560
prove to be their greatest album in their career and

1632
01:25:48,600 --> 01:25:51,600
one of the greatest ever in the history of rap.

1633
01:25:53,680 --> 01:25:57,039
Speaker 4: So are we ready to jump in track by track?

1634
01:25:58,159 --> 01:25:58,840
Speaker 5: Next week?

1635
01:25:59,079 --> 01:25:59,319
Speaker 3: Oh?

1636
01:26:00,319 --> 01:26:01,039
Speaker 4: Next week?

1637
01:26:01,439 --> 01:26:04,119
Speaker 5: What we're gonna go? Track by track? We'll go through

1638
01:26:04,359 --> 01:26:07,520
each of these songs from Raising Hell and we will

1639
01:26:07,600 --> 01:26:09,600
talk again with Deaf Dave.

1640
01:26:09,760 --> 01:26:12,399
Speaker 1: Dear listeners, if you have been with us this long,

1641
01:26:12,520 --> 01:26:15,239
please don't forget to hit that follow button in the face.

1642
01:26:15,560 --> 01:26:18,680
Make sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter,

1643
01:26:18,720 --> 01:26:20,359
and if you want to send us an email, you

1644
01:26:20,399 --> 01:26:24,840
can hit us at Shirleypodcast at gmail dot com. Thank

1645
01:26:24,840 --> 01:26:28,439
you so much for listening, Dave. It has been awesome

1646
01:26:28,479 --> 01:26:29,199
to hear these stories.

1647
01:26:29,239 --> 01:26:29,960
Speaker 4: Thank you so much.

1648
01:26:30,880 --> 01:26:32,800
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on. I love talking about this stuff.

1649
01:26:33,159 --> 01:26:36,680
Speaker 1: We will be back with Deaf Dave next week and

1650
01:26:36,760 --> 01:26:39,560
go through Raisin Hell track by track.

1651
01:26:40,079 --> 01:26:40,600
Speaker 4: See you then.

1652
01:26:42,920 --> 01:26:49,039
Speaker 3: Peter Pi pick Papa rock Me nimble what nimble any

1653
01:26:49,119 --> 01:26:50,000
what quick dam