Happy 35th Anniversary to Run-DMC’s third studio album Raising Hell, originally released May 15, 1986.
In 2021, hip-hop music is as ubiquitous to the cultural conversation as the air we breathe. Rappers are amongst the biggest pop stars walking the earth. The genre is now influencing soul, R&B, dance music, and rock, rather than vice versa.
Hip-hop is used in commercials, movies, and TV Shows. There are countless movies and TV shows dedicated to telling stories associated with the art form. Some of its pioneers have had biopics made about them. Rappers own fashion lines, headphone companies, streaming services, liquor distilleries, strains of marijuana. There are even a few rappers and producers who have become billionaires.
It’s important to recognize how important Run-DMC’s Raising Hell was to this global acceptance. Released 35 years ago, it’s arguably the first hip-hop album that earned wide crossover appeal and became a cultural phenomenon. It went triple platinum and was the highest selling hip-hop album of the time. Joseph “Run” Simmons, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, and the late Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell went from rap stars to rock superstars with this long player.
However, despite its more mainstream appeal, Raising Hell remains one of the rawest albums of the era. Though “Walk This Way” brought rap music to a whole new array of fans, Raising Hell doesn’t offer a watered-down version of the music. It goes in a lot of different directions, but still feels raw and rugged, both lyrically and musically.
Even though the hip-hop album format had been around for years at that point, very few albums released during the era are particularly well-regarded decades later. Of the examples that are, a good share of them are by Run-DMC. Part of the issue was that by and large, lots of artists and crews were still conceiving of their long players as collections of singles. Raising Hell is the first of these releases that truly felt like an album, structured well to flow from beginning to end with little to no slow spots or filler. No less than Chuck D himself considers Raising Hell to be the greatest hip-hop album of all time.
I’m certainly no Chuck D, but I rank the album in my top 10 of all time (possibly top 5). I certainly remember that when it was released, late during fifth grade, it was the first hip-hop album that felt like a big event. It was the first album I remembered anticipating before I could purchase it.
Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons, the notorious co-founders of Def Jam and some of the driving forces behind Run-DMC’s career, are listed as Raising Hell’s primary producers. However, like many 1980s hip-hop records, the credits are often disputed. DMC maintains that all three members of the group assumed the primary duties behind the boards (JMJ and Run are both listed as co-producers). In Brian Coleman’s Check The Technique, DMC added that Davy DMX, a producer who worked extensively with Larry Smith and Russell Simmons since the early ’80s, also contributed to the tracks.
Raising Hell saw Run-DMC begin to more extensively use samples, rather than only relying on live instrumentation and drum machines. Usually this is done through Jam Master Jay, who would “play” the samples live through his two turntables. Thirty-five years ago, samplers had only recently stopped becoming cost prohibitive for most producers and the machine-based SP-12 had just hit the market.
On the mic, Run and DMC are even more refined, and their chemistry together had obviously continued to grow. Even while feeding off of each other, they experiment a bit more stylistically, while maintaining their grit.
Raising Hell is best known for “Walk This Way,” their unlikely collaboration with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. The story goes that Rubin pitched the idea for the song after hearing Jay scratching the introductory drum break to Aerosmith’s original version (from their 1975 album Toys in the Attic) in the studio. Run and DMC had been rhyming over the drums for years, never knowing the original title of the song; they had assumed the song was called “Toys in the Attic,” since most DJs would cross out the name of the artist on their record to keep their records secret.
Rubin, who was an Aerosmith fan, told the group that instead of rhyming over the drum break, they were going to do a “proper” cover of “Walk This Way,” with Run and DMC performing all of the lyrics. DMC famously said the two did their best to decipher Tyler’s “hillbilly gibberish,” since lyric sheets and the Internet weren’t available at the time. Tyler and Perry were then brought in to provide additional vocals and lead guitar.
The song is best remembered for its iconic video, depicting dueling performances by both Run-DMC and Aerosmith. First, Tyler physically breaks down the walk between the two, while later Run-DMC crash the stage during an Aerosmith show. Although it’s cringe-worthy how on the nose visual metaphors were in the mid-1980s, it was a pretty accurate portrayal of what the song leads to.
Years later, the song’s impact far outweighs its overall quality. “Walk This Way” revitalized Aerosmith’s then sagging career, which led to them becoming one of the key MTV-friendly rock bands of the late 1980s and 1990s. It brought a considerable number of crossover fans to hip-hop. It helped spawn what would eventually become the Rock/Rap hybrid of the late 1990s/early 2000s, spawning the careers of Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit and others. And it indirectly helped launch the movie careers of Alicia Silverstone and Liv Tyler, Steven’s daughter. Sometimes the world’s biggest hip-hop group flubbing their way through a decade old rock song is enough to change the world. For better or worse.
While “Walk This Way” brought in the casual fans, “My Adidas” was Run-DMC’s first offering to promote the album to the hip-hop heads. Run-DMC had been rocking (often lace-less) Adidas sneakers for years. During a Madison Square Garden concert in 1985, the group encouraged the crowd of more than 10,000 to hold their Adidas sneakers in the air. The company heard about the incident and signed Run-DMC to an endorsement deal shortly thereafter, making them the first hip-hop group to do so.
According to DMC, Russell Simmons came up with the idea to record the song while high on PCP. The track itself is pure rawness, with Run and DMC rhyming over complex drum tracks, as Jay scratches a horns-and-string blast from John Davis and the Monster Orchestra’s “I Can’t Stop” (which he uses frequently throughout Raising Hell). Run and DMC use the track to explain all of the activities they engage in while rocking the sneakers, from “step[ping] on stage at ‘Live Aid’” to stomping out pimps. “We slay all suckers who perpetrate,” DMC boasts, “And lay down law from state to state.”
Personally, the first thing I heard from Raising Hell was “You Be Illin’,” which I started hearing on local pop radio stations right before the album dropped. It’s the type of song that 10-year-olds would find hilarious. The first time I heard it, I knew it was something I wanted to memorize and recite whenever I could. It’s the type of recording that “serious” groups don’t make anymore, with Run and DMC clowning various anonymous suckers (including “you”) for doing dumb shit like mistaking KFC for McDonalds or accidentally eating a can of dog food. Thirty-five years later, it seems a bit inconsequential, but it sure was fun to rap along to.
“It’s Tricky,” the album’s fourth single, is the most overtly “old school” track on Raising Hell, with the duo kicking Cold Crush Bros.-esque routines on the song’s chorus to the tune of Toni Basil’s “Mickey,” while rapping across guitar stabs from The Knack’s “My Sharona.” The duo’s sing-songy flow works well enough, as their interplay throughout the endeavor is solid. The video, where the crew out-smarts a pair of flim-flam artists played by magicians Penn & Teller, also helped make the song a success.
Raising Hell featured the best collection of album cuts to that point. Most hip-hop projects in the early to mid-1980s put the focus on the singles, showing little regard for what came in between. With Raising Hell, the connective tissue was at least as strong, and often stronger, than what was designed to sell the album.
“Peter Piper” is one of the best “salute to the DJ” tracks ever recorded. Run and DMC had been honoring Jam Master Jay on record since their recoding careers began, but this track felt special at the time, and still holds its power today. Hearing Jay cut up Bob James’ version of “Take Me to the Mardi Gras” is worth the price of admission alone, as the beat sounded almost alien when I first heard it 35 years ago. Run and DMC sound loose and content as they give Jay their Mother Goose-inspired props, acting effortlessly in tandem.
Though clearly mixing rap with rock influences was always intrinsic to Run-DMC’s music, on Raising Hell they experimented with other musical styles and regional flavors. “Dumb Girl,” with its massively thumping bass, appealed to the still nascent southern hip-hop scene. The lyrical content of the song may not be enlightened, but man, those drums hit hard.
The Go-Go influenced “Is It Live” features uncredited production from the aforementioned Davy DMX, as well as drum programming by Sam Sever, who had worked with master drum manipulator Mantronix during this period. The stuttering, shuffling drum and percussion tracks are extremely impressive, as is Jay with his precise scratches. Run is in a zone, giving a sneering, chest-pounding performance with his verses. “Well, I’m dropping emcees with just one punch,” he brags. ”’Cause it’s the baddest of the bunch, call me Captain Crunch / Slaying emcees, make ’em walk the plank / And what’s next, start the decks while I count my bank.”
“Perfection” was Run-DMC’s take on Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh’s “La Di Da Di.” According to DMC, they wanted to feature a song with a similarly stripped-down aesthetic, but didn’t want to sound like they were explicitly biting. Hence, rather than having Run beat-box, they enlisted the 13-year-old Styx, the extremely talented son of one of Run’s neighbors, to play live drums. Run and DMC each contribute a short verse, while backing each other up, with each occasionally finishing the other’s lines.
“Hit It Run” provides the audience with their beat-box fix, giving Run a chance to make the proverbial music with his mouth, backing a fierce rap solo performance by DMC. DMC kicks six short verses, sounding like he’s energized by adrenaline and anti-matter. “B-Boy badness to the highest degree,” he rhymes. “And you can’t be a boy unless you be D / You can’t bust a cherry or crush a grape / And if you ain't got this tape you’re in bad shape.”
With its thunderous electric guitar groove, Raising Hell’s title track harkens back to tracks like “Rock Box” and “King of Rock.” It’s a rock infused anthem laden with menace and intensity, and probably the hardest song they ever recorded. Instead of Run-DMC regular Eddie Martinez, Rick Rubin wields the proverbial ax on his own, giving a charged performance. Run and DMC exhibit an intense ferocity, maintaining their ice-cold demeanor while again coming across as the two biggest badasses to ever wield a microphone.
Run and DMC flex the full range of their emcee skills throughout the song. Run is in a zone, warning doubters to “just listen while I’m dissing, ’cause you’re pissing me off.” DMC further demonstrates why he was considered one of the best emcees of the time, moving with a ruthless animosity almost unheard of by his contemporaries. DMC boasting that he’ll “cut the head off the Devil and I’ll throw it at you” is one of the most insane images of the era, along with his proclamation that he’s “on the face of the earth spreading like disease / Contaminating, infiltrating like a horde of bees.” In my favorite moment, he proclaims, “A black hat is my crown, symbolizing the sound / Signifying, we won't play around. BUST IT!”
Run-DMC had recorded socially aware songs before, breaking into the game with tracks like “Hard Times” and “It’s Like That.” Still, those focused on the misery that defined the inner cities during the early to mid-1980s. Run and DMC strike a much more uplifting tone with the album-ending “Proud To Be Black.” It’s one of the first tracks centered on Black empowerment to ever be featured on a prominent rap album. DMC has said that the song was inspired by the group’s interaction with Chuck D, who inspired them to record something designed to uplift the nation’s Black population.
The sentiments expressed here were commonly expressed on rap records, as the group speaks about prominent Black leaders and their contributions to society, name-checking luminaries like Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, and George Washington Carver. Artists like Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions would later practically transform “conscious hip-hop” into its own genre, but this song provided the template.
Raising Hell put Run-DMC on top of the music world. They’d soon start the Raising Hell Tour with LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys, and followed it up a year later with the Together Forever tour, this time with just the Beasties. Truthfully, Raising Hell would be Run-DMC’s high-water mark, as their career was stalled by what turned into a protracted dispute with Profile Records, their label.
The struggles led to a delayed release of what would be their fourth album, the misunderstood Tougher Than Leather (1988). These days, a group taking two years between albums is standard operating procedure. Heck, for a lot of groups, that’s practically nothing. But three-and-a-half decades ago, it practically derailed Run-DMC’s career, as the music kept evolving past what the crew was ready to offer at the time.
Still, it’s hard to think of hip-hop becoming what it is today if Raising Hell had never dropped. Its impact is absolutely undeniable, as it proved to the music industry that hip-hop was capable of producing mega-hits. And, hey, the legacy of “Walk This Way” remains today. Even though Jay has passed on, Run-DMC and Aerosmith reunited on stage at the 2020 GRAMMY Awards to perform the song.
By any measure, Raising Hell is an impressive and undisputable classic for a group to build its legacy upon. Every rapper coming out today is Run-DMC’s great and great-great grandchildren, and their albums are the product of what Raising Hell wrought.
LISTEN: