(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Hiphop was born in The Bronx, New York, but three Queens teenagers cured music for their childhood illnesses. Now the first four groundbreaking albums for Run-DMC are coming out in deluxe versions with bonus tracks and informative essays.
Clean
The revolution often comes from unexpected quarters. Hip hop grew up at parties and clubs in the ghetto of The Bronx in the 1970s, but it was the three unknown rappers in the Sugarhill Gang who got their first global hip-hop hit in 1979 with "Rappers' Delight". It was 14 minutes long, and Chuck D in Public Enemy has said he was surprised by where card it was. For him and most others in the environment in the 1970s, rapping was not something you could attach to the plate grooves and sell in the store. A rapper was a master of ceremonies who kept alive a party, and it lasted for hours. Recording and selling a hip-hop song was a new thought.
The success of the Sugarhill Gang led to a staggering stream of hip-hop singles, but most viewed the music as a short-lived trend, a fun avatar of disco. Although artists such as Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five recorded solid albums, many believed that hip hop had as long a life as the dances that were constantly born at the clubs. Hiphop was just a new "hustle", a new "funky chicken".
Then came Run-DMC with the single "It's Like That / Sucker MC's" in 1983. They were heavily inspired by pioneers such as Africa Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash, but producers Russell Simmons and Larry Smith did not have the same sophisticated recording equipment that Bambaataa had used on " Planet Rock ». And rappers Joseph "Run" Simmons and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels did not have the same ghetto background as the guys from the Bronx, but came from a black middle-class background in Hollis, Queens. Precisely for this reason, the lyrics became somewhat more down-to-earth and less street-tough, while the music became more minimalist. At the same time, Run-DMC distanced itself from the fluttering disco gloves and the hedonistic party style that hip hop moved towards after the embrace of the trend people in Manhattan.
Run-DMC took both music and image back to the simple and tough. Their posing and clean-cut clothing and color set the standard for hip-hop fashion for years, as did the music.
Rap meets rock
In 1983, 40 percent of r & b radio stations and 100 percent of pop stations refused to play rap. Still, the debut single sold 250 copies, and the rappers now got DJ Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell, and followed up with two new singles successes. Here the song "Rock Box" must be mentioned, where producer Larry Smith trumped through the use of rock guitar against the rest of the group's will. This is the first rap / rock song, and it led to MTV putting the video on rotation as the first rap song in the channel's history. Run-DMC continued the trend of songs such as "King of Rock" and the Aeorosmith collaboration "Walk This Way", which gave the group their global breakthrough in 000.
Hiphop in the early 1980s was first and foremost a single genre, with after three single successes, Profile Records decided to release the company's first album. Run DMC (Profile / SonyBMG 1984) was far from it Firstly, the hip hop album, but it crippled the trio's leadership status and parked the pioneers for good. It made the same impression on hip-hop generation as Meet The Beatles! did on the rock generation in 1964, as it says in the new essay that comes with it.
In 1984, the air was about to exit the oldest hip-hop artists, but Run-DMC took over the baton, parked all the fly-talk and showed that hip-hop had come to stay. They were the only rappers to land on Live Aid in 1985, and the trio further showed that hip-hop groups belonged just as naturally to MTV, the concert arena, the radio and the album shelf. In quick succession, they dropped the classics King of Rock (Profile / SonyBMG 1985), Raising Hell (Profile / SonyBMG 1986) and Tougher Than Leather (Profile / SonyBMG 1988). It started to miss a bit on the latter, especially when we take into account that the next generation of artists – Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim and Boogie Down Productions – had begun to take over. Then Back From Hell (Profile / SonyBMG 1990) came out, the Run-DMC adventure was practically over, and in 2002 Jam Master Jay was murdered in his studio – only 37 years old.
All the hip-hop artists who followed Run-DMC are in deep debt to these four amazing records. Which just got even better in this fall's new packaging. The trio's predecessors had made sure the door to the music industry was glowing for the hip-hop crowd, but it was Run-DMC that opened it wide open.
