Run-DMC — Raising Hell

In late 1985, Run-DMC returned home after a long tour and being the only hip-hop act at Live Aid, and spent three months working on a new album in their Manhattan studios, using lyrics they had already rehearsed several times during the tour. Instead of their usual producer Larry Smith, Rick Rubin was called. Although Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin are listed in the production credits, the music was actually created exclusively by Run-DMC, with Simmons and Rubin adding some material and supervising the work.

The first four tracks of the album elevate it to the best hip-hop album of the year and one of the best of the entire decade in the genre, they are phenomenal. The album opens with the powerful "Peter Piper", where the boys pay homage to DJ Jam Master Jay on a sample of Bob James' "Take Me to the Mardi Gras", supported by an excellent production. On Rubin's idea, the boys create a piece that merges rap and metal, "It's Tricky" is born: the group steals the guitar from "My Sharona" by Knack (the band will sue Run-DMC only in 2006) and copies entirely "Hey Mickey" by Toni Basil, inventing a timeless banger that becomes one of their best cuts. "It's Tricky" is appreciated by both the public and critics, gaining a following also in the European market.

"My Adidas" follows, another classic: Run-DMC invent an anthem on a simple and very hard rhythm, minimal and raw, driving, that comes right from the street, going back and forth for five minutes. Fifth on the Hot Black Singles, tenth among the dance chart, the huge success of the tune leads the boys to sign the first historic sponsorship agreement between a musical group and a sports company, and behind the deal is Lyor Cohen. After the first manager of Run-DMC is fired, the duo (Jam Master Jay is not yet part of the group) needs a new road manager and Cohen arrives, who's hired after promoting a rock and rap show in Los Angeles where Run-DMC performs.

Cohen tries to sign the duo with Def Jam and flies to New York to the offices of the label, but Russell Simmons (Run's older brother) doesn't even sign them with his Rush Productions, deciding to help them look for other labels. Everyone says no until the boys find the door open to independent Profile Records. After the release of the song "My Adidas", Cohen invites an Adidas executive to the group's concert in the summer of 1986 in New York: the group gets a million-dollar contract with the German company for the song about sneakers, the first real (involuntary) endorsement of a commercial product in hip-hop, which opens the way for all the other artists that follow, especially those linked to Def Jam.

The fourth track of a stratospheric quartet is "Walk This Way", the cover of Aerosmith with Aerosmith. At the end of the recording of the entire album, the project is ready to be released, although Rick Rubin believes that there should also be a rap rock track to attract the crossover audience, as happened with the previous albums of the group produced by Larry Smith. Jam Master Jay decides to make a beat jam, looks for a sample from the Aerosmith album "Toys in the Attic" and takes a loop of a few seconds from the beginning of "Walk This Way" putting it for almost four minutes to act as a background for the rap of Run and DMC. The boys have already freestyled on these seconds at concerts, but have never listened to the original song in its entirety.

After a first rehearsal, Rick Rubin arrives and has the idea of ​​doing the piece entirely on the original production of Aerosmith, without sampling the song, which should be performed by the boys with a rapping style that imitates Steven Tyler's voice in the original song: Run is against it, DMC isn't convinced by the advice either, nevertheless, Jam Master Jay convinces the two emcees to do the rap rock piece, despite the group already having several in their catalog. While the boys are making the track, Rick Rubin contacts Aerosmith and the group agrees to do their cover with Run-DMC, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry arrive to re-record their parts in the studio, so the group's DJ advises Run and DMC not to imitate Tyler's voice for the rap and to perform the lyrics more naturally. Tyler and Perry record the song, which is not initially intended to be a single in the minds of Run-DMC and Rubin.

Nevertheless, the song begins to get consistent airplay on both urban and rock radio. Not only does the song regain its destiny as a single from the new album of the hip-hop group, now a video is needed: there's practically no budget to shoot it and the basis for the idea of ​​the video is simple, Aerosmith and Run-DMC are involved in a musical duel in adjacent studios, then Steven Tyler breaks down the wall that separates them and the two groups continue performing together on stage. Despite the initial coldness between the two acts and the fact that Aerosmith isn't complete (Tyler and Perry are joined by members of a metal band to complete the band in the video), with a harder rhythm than the original and a powerful and exaggerated performance by Aerosmith combined with the freshness of Run-DMC, the song rewrites history: it makes a breakthrough on the Hot 100, climbing to number four, becomes Run-DMC's biggest hit, the first hip-hop single to reach the top five on the Billboard charts, renews Aerosmith's career that had taken a downward spiral and literally breaks down the musical wall between two seemingly incompatible genres like rock and rap, creating the first major rap-rock crossover hit between a hip-hop group and a rock group.

Side A continues hardcore, but ends fading with a couple of tracks that fail to keep up with the high level of the first quarter of an hour, despite an immense drum in "Perfection". Side B unfortunately doesn't live up to the first part either, arriving with hardcore tracks ("Hit It Run" and the rocking title track), the fun hit "You Be Illin'", the rare weak point "Dumb Girl" and a skit before the final conscious track "Proud to Be Black".

Profile Records releases it and gets a worldwide distribution deal with London Records (a subsidiary of PolyGram), the album flies to #1 among rnb albums, #3 on the Billboard 200 and is certified triple platinum by the RIAA less than a year after its release. More coherent than their previous ones, solid, powerful, abundant, accessible, with strong music fueled by a drum that hits and beats, good bass, an interesting electric guitar, rocking samples and sick scratches by Jam Master Jay, with a lively rapping that counterbalances a lyricism that is a bit subdued, but not yet completely flawless nor cohesive, this album sees Run-DMC at their best and perfects the union of rap and rock experienced in the previous records of the duo. The rough rhythms produced by Rick Rubin are robust and solid without ever being too inventive, veering towards a music more devoted to rock than to rap, but remaining functional to the lively delivery style of Run and D.M.C., which delivering with a flow more smoothly than before, peaked by the international banger "Walk This Way" featuring Aerosmith, which establishes the definitive union between rap and rock.

Rating: 8.7/10.