Run DMC - Classic or Dud?

because they are so undisputably classic like the Ramones and Levis jeans and pizza that there's nothing to discuss

i thought that might be why.

favourite tracks? I'm very partial to the comedy brass of "Ragtime" from the aforementioned "Tougher Than Leather" (highly underrated album).

It's Tricky

Uhhh . . . Classic. (Obv.)

falls squarely into the "awesome act whose albums I never got around to buying" bucket for me

"tougher than leather" is really underrated. it was just unlucky to come out in 1988 with a 1986 style, in the wake of Public Enemy and NWA and all that game-changing stuff. I think it would be remembered as legendary if it came out in 87.

"Raising Hell" is in my top 5 albums. Go buy it, HI DERE

YES.

how could anyone (besides Geir) vote dud

lots of great stuff on Tougher Than Leather (honestly I almost like it more than Raising Hell - Monkees samples! lolz)

loved ttl. i spent the entirety of '88 antagonzing my little sister (Mary) with "Mary, Mary"

ask if she's crazy and I'll say very
livin in a house that's out on the prairie
I worry 'bout Mary cause Mary is scary!

nah, may mary, RUN DMC says keep a healthy body! we's aerobicizin'!!

i was gonna start a raising hell poll a couple of weeks ago, didn't because i was paranoid it was already done and i couldn't find it

i assume this is an entrapment set up where clicking "dud" permabans your account?

"tougher than leather" is really underrated. it was just unlucky to come out in 1988 with a 1986 style

Totally agree, it's a great album but does get overlooked.

i assume this is an entrapment set up where clicking "dud" permabans your account?

I would lol for real if this were the case. Probably wouldn't see much of Bimble anymore.

Dud!

(Hahaha, it's safe! No, classic, obviously.)

unbelievable!

inconceivable!

I think they're neither, but I'm voting dud just to balance out all the jock-riding.

a bold stance for pointless challopers everywhere

right

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

DMC STANDS FOR DEVASTATING MIC CONTROL.

I was listening to "Peter Piper" in the car the other day v loudly when a dude on a motorcycle rode by blasting it at the exact same moment in the song. It was sorta magical.

hey you three guys who have no musical taste and voted "dud," ID yourselves so we can point & laugh

how do you blast something from a motorcycle

I don't know how but this guy certainly did.

Tougher Than Leather is probably the most underrated rap album in the history of time.

I mean, pound for pound I think it's even better than Great Adventures Of Slick Rick, which is obv classic royalty material in the highest order

as i think i mentioned upthread, it was among the first proper albums I ever owned, found in the used bin at Our Price. I had to make a case for the cassette using rudimentary graphic design skills I'd learnt at school.

Tougher Than Leather is my favourite Run DMC album (got it at the same time as Raising Hell and taped them back-to-back on one C90)

Tougher Than Leather is probably the most underrated rap album in the history of time.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, July 29, 2009 2:17 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark

played the 2003 reissue (no bonus tracks) today for first time in many years, and found myself enjoying it waaaay more than i thought possible.

So happy to see people stanning for Tougher Than Leather, when all my life people would bang on about Raising Hell.

DMC acting a fool with goth tail from a jag spinoff

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=r5DtnTqdhZw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obe6Le63wcM

pure joy

Have we talked about this yet? What do you all think?

https://www.facebook.com/DoubleDownNews/videos/297133681095529/

what is it, for those who don't use a site dedicated to undermining democracy?

ilxor.com?

51 votes is more than double what it takes to get into Parliament and call for a Final Solution in your maiden speech.

i'm... confused

Well I had quite a few thoughts about DMC's words in that video which I put in the comments. someone linked me to this: http://www.hiphopisread.com/2012/04/secret-meeting-that-changed-rap-music.html?m=1
now either this is hoaxy fiction or some dark dark stuff. I'm finding it hard to believe myself, but an interesting read

that is some silly conspiracy theory nonsense

what are his words

that story has been going around for years

well the url *is* from 2012

I'm more interested in the DMC vid to be honest. Agree / Disagree?

seems like yr standard old-man-rapper-yells-at-cloudrap sorta stuff - some elements of truth in it, some oversights and self-serving aspects to it too

this was published 21 years ago

https://booklife-resi✧✧✧.s3-us-wes✧✧✧.amazon✧✧✧.com/cbf437c384297ac8ce03fa8cbc3d9f69-w✧✧✧@1✧.j✧✧

[old man yells at cloud services]

https://i.imgur.com/83Mi0yj.jpg

it's kinda funny for DMC to be talking about how disco people were invading NYC with all their drugs considering how coked up and dusted the early rap scene was

And the fact much of early hip hop was based on sampling disco records

Run DMC were new school though

not sure what relevance that has, but it never occurred to me that 'new school' was an actual established subgenre. Always used 'old school' alternatively with 'Golden Age' hip hop, so I didn't know that

Yeah, Run DMC were the act that signified a change of the guard - their stagewear (black Levi's, white Adidas) was a decisive break from the disco/showbiz/superhero costumes that rappers had worn before. Their personas were harder, too, more minimal and aggressive. They weren't dandies the way a lot of early rappers were.

Plus their music sounded completely different

They used "old school" as an insult, difficult to imagine after decades of it being a marker of prestige.

yes and you often get people using 'old school' to mean 'any hip hop that is before my time'. I'm sure a lot of Gen-Z trap kids would refer to people like Cam'Ron as 'old school'

Yeah, the term moves, like "classic rock" - a person once told me they liked "old school Hip-Hop, like DMX".

old school ended exactly 20 seconds into Kool Moe Dee’s verse at Harlem World, you can hear the crowd absolutely shit their brains at what’s happening

The shift from traditional hip hop to southern trap as the dominant style feels like one of the biggest shifts in hip hop history to me, and that's why I think there's been such a big backlash against it. Trap-style hip-hop is designed to be consumed in a way that's more like dance music, music for loud club-based contexts as opposed to personal and home-based listening. The production is bassier but more minimal, more reliant on rippling 808 rhythms and synths than samples or live instruments, therefore easier to tweak for big rooms. The rapping is less about clever rhyme-schemes and more about short, snappy, often repetitive slogans that sound good in the mouth. The content is usually less about strong messages or story-telling, and more about opaque, surreal ephemeral imagery. As such I'd say there's an argument to say that trap is less a subgenre of hip hop and more a style in itself.

traditional hip hop

what

designed to be consumed in a way that's more like dance music, music for loud club-based contexts

yeah hip-hop has NEVER been this before. block parties. electro. Uncle Jam’s Army. The Latin Quarter. Tunnel bangers. never happened.

exactly 20 seconds into Kool Moe Dee’s verse

hip hop has betrayed its original purpose: finding out what everyone's astrology sign was

lol

Sic otm

usually less about strong messages or story-telling, and more about opaque, surreal ephemeral imagery

https://i.imgur.com/u0vTlwP.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Xl5PGQN.jpg https://i.imgur.com/3VBfG6A.jpg

bassier but more minimal, more reliant on rippling 808 rhythms and synths

I mean, just imagine music like this, overturning the orthodoxy of traditional hip-hop, how revolutionary it would sound for the first ti--

https://i.imgur.com/4ci72IC.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EheLN-MDzrA

some of us do not use/cannot see Facebook links BECAUSE FACEBOOK FUCKING SUCKS

I feel like this needs to be in a very prominently conspicuous place on the front page of ilx.

in re these quotes
yes and you often get people using 'old school' to mean 'any hip hop that is before my time'. I'm sure a lot of Gen-Z trap kids would refer to people like Cam'Ron as 'old school'

― Scritti Vanilli - The Word Girl You Know It's True (dog latin), Friday, August 24, 2018 11:35 AM (yesterday)

Yeah, the term moves, like "classic rock" - a person once told me they liked "old school Hip-Hop, like DMX".

― Daniel_Rf, Friday, August 24, 2018 11:44 AM (yesterday)

had a conversation few years ago with 2 very nice guys who are the up-and-coming electronica producers in Ethiopia, so I ask them how they got into that as not a normal part of ethiop music scene and was told 'into old school hip-hop' and when i asked def of old school got biggie & tupac which left me (almost speechless)

it does seem to be a part of your age but to me old school is late 70s-mid-80s (ish), Sugarhill thru Funky 4 + 1 thru Whodini etc (when i was listening to this stuff on radio or a il after)
RUN DMC and LL first break with that style in mid 80s then thru the PE/Native Tongues late 80s/early 90s Malcolm/Martin dichotomy being presented then you get the ground zero of teh Chronic and THEN way way after that is Biggie/Tupac.

Used to have to be ready by 10 am Sat morning in college for Yo MTV Raps w/Fab 5 Freddy, the one hour a week we got back then so def odd hearing the various defs of old school which all does now seem to be, before mine

H, I think your definition of the term is 100% correct historically but what's happened is the term/ideal of "old school" has stayed in the popular consciousness in a way that its artists haven't - so ppl know that it's a thing but have never heard of Whodini in their life and just apply it to "the oldest Hip-Hop I know of" instead.

Recently came across a definition of “Old School” in a novel by the original Chuck D, Charles Dickens.

agree with both H and Daniel

Run-DMC is up there with the Beatles in terms of really representing this break like "it was like that, now it's like this"

still they try to Xerox / The leader of the new school, uncool

Cant believe ums skipped the obvious its like that/AND THATS THE WAY IT Is joke

haha off my game

Interesting points in this Matorialist post about the narrative that Run Dmc made the previous generation irrelevant

http://themartorialist.blogspot.com/2015/10/rap-bullshit-conventional-rap-history_87.html

...I guess we all earn a living as we do.

After firing hundreds of staff, the WeWork CEO held a somber all-hands meeting explaining why it was a necessary move, but then trays of tequila were handed out and DMC from Run-DMC burst into the room and performed "It's Tricky" https://t.co/t9oGq8ebTb pic.twitter.com/cuq0aM1Tqi

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) September 18, 2019

"It's Like That" would've been a better choice there

Or 'Walk This Way'

"Hard Times" imo

or Kick The Frama Lama Lama

their first 3 releases are classic then they went to crap!

Tougher Than Leather is also a classic

The fourth is underrated - great album.

i was a big fan till tougher than leather as i only liked runs house and beats to the rhyme and back from hell had pause which was nice and christmas in hollis is ok but other than that they lost me pretty much after raising hell!

Apparently tonight’s 50th anniversary celebration of hip-hop at Yankee Stadium may be their farewell performance, and holy shit it’s a long show - they still haven’t gone on yet.

I hope that wasn’t their final appearance because they deserve a better send off. The show started at 6pm and by the time Nas came on at 1 am, you can tell the crowd was already tired - few people wanted to stand and they weren’t making much noise. (A surprise appearance by Lauryn Hill momentarily brought them to life.) By the time Run DMC came on around 2 am, the stadium was probably half empty with people steadily leaving. You can tell they noticed how the audience wasn’t making much noise, and after “Walk This Way,” they just walked off stage without much of a goodbye and the lights came on. Given the introduction near the start of the day by a U.S. Senator and the state governor, it seemed like a strangely anti-climactic end to a 8 hour show that probably should have started much earlier.

Not that those intros were exciting or anything, but they virtually declared today (or rather yesterday) a national treasure.

The three people who voted Dud are bad people.

I didn't realize Bob Dylan played "My Adidas" on the 'Shoes' episode of his Theme Time Radio Hour show. His introduction:

"I remember buying this next record when it came out, down at St. Mark's Records in New York. Actually I bought the twelve inch single, and it blew my mind. It was a powerful, exciting piece of music. Now when people listen to it, they think it's quaint and old fashioned. They're already condescending to it and turning it into an 'oldie'. That's the problem – people don't always realize how powerful the innovators are. Take someone like Chuck Berry. When his records came out they were dangerous. There was nothing like them on the radio, they were like a stampede. Now all these bands just play it louder and faster and don't really add anything to it. And so Chuck Berry, the creator, sounds 'quaint' and 'old fashioned'. They're doing the same thing to Run-DMC. Rap records have gotten louder, more camouflaged, faster and dirtier, with a thousand samples. Those records are colorful but it doesn't mean that Run DMC should just be considered 'oldies'. They're important pieces of art, and art isn't looked at as something old or new, it's looked at as something that moves ya. And here's a record that moves me."

I also watched their set on the livestream that's still up. It's remarkable what a difference it makes. 1) The sound is so much clearer, and without the stadium's boomy acoustics mashing the sound together, you can hear that they're rapping over the actual records, not just the backing tracks. In other words, their present voices coexists with their youthful ones, and in Run's case, the difference is huge given his current growling old-man rasp. 2) Thanks to some judicious on-the-fly editing and how dark the rest of the stadium looks on camera, you can't see how many empty seats there are. Rolling Stone's reporter estimated it was only 40% full when they took the stage, and he also mentions how many people were heading for the exits, something I clearly saw from my vantage point (first level, stage left) but fortunately that's not seen during the broadcast. For their final number, "Walk This Way," DMC is focused on the floor where their most enthusiastic fans are clustered around the stage. On the other hand, Run is looking out to the stands - at one point, he waves his arm wildly and yells "LOUDER!" From where I was sitting, it was sadly comical, because at that moment everyone who was still in my section was slumped in their seats, perfectly still and completely silent. They were just dead tired, and when it was time to go home, they all slowly got up like someone getting off the couch to go to bed.

Dylan OTM

Karl Jordan Jr. and Ronald Washington finally convicted of murdering Jam Master Jay

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/27/nyregion/run-dmc-jam-master-jay-conviction.html

RIP JMJ ♥

Wow

Looks like DMC is giving a talk at BMCC on Wednesday afternoon. I think it's open only to students, faculty & staff, but if that includes you, it's free.