Run-D.M.C.

Earth-shattering 1984 debut from hip-hop's first megastars. Produced by the group with Rick Rubin, this record helped establish Def Jam as a label, Run-D.M.C. as arena-filling heroes, and hip-hop as a serious force in the music market. With raw, minimal beats and in-your-face rhymes, Run-D.M.C. includes the classics "Sucker MCs," "Hard Times," and "It's Like That."

Most Rap's just a beat and a boast, but Run and D.M.C., a pair of New York rappers, let the
beat run wild and turn the boasts into messages that self-improvement is the only ticket
out. Trading off lines or even the words within a line, they get into a vocal tug of war that's
completely different from the straightforward delivery of the Furious Five's Melle Mel or the
every-body-takes-a-verse approach of groups like Sequence. And the music, by... More >

Though a bit upwardly mobile for the highbrow-lowbrows who regard money lust and the death throes of capitalism as two sides of rap's only fit subject--D.J. Run boasted about attending St. John's, of all things--the competitive fatalism of the spare, brutal "It's Like That"/"Sucker M.C.'s" was unforced and dead on, and Eddie Martinez's Hendrix-Funkadelic metal on the expansive "Rock Box" proves that even street minimalists can love guitars. But this does more than fill in around two of the finest singles of the past couple of years. It's easily the canniest and most formally sustained rap album ever, a tour de force I trust will be studied by all manner of creative downtowners and racially enlightened Englishmen. While their heavy staccato and proud disdain for melody may prove too avant-garde for some, the style has been in the New York air long enough that you may understand it better than you think. Do you have zero tolerance for namby-pamby bullsh*t? Do you believe in yourself above all? Then chances are you share Run-D.M.C.'s values. (Grade - A-)