‘Greatest Hits’ ain’t just time-pieces

This Run-DMC’s ‘Greatest Hits’ collection – they had one back in 1991, subtitled ‘Together Forever 1983 – 1991’ – is the big testament to the band’s monumental career. It is enough to hear the remixed version of ‘It’s Tricky’ here and realise that what this band did back in 1987 justly stands very tall and extremely proud.

Their rhymes and beatz have survived so well, still sounding rootsy and authentic, more vital than majority of the current Hip-hop, shamelessly flirting with the R’n’B crowds. We reprint here an interview, our last with the slain DJ Jam-Master Jay – conducted on 06 February 2001 – to salute their pioneering spirit.

DJ Jam-Master Jay/Jason Mizell: 21 January 1965 - 30 October 2002 RIP

Run-DMC, they had skillz, major league!
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And now, for our feature presentation...

As we settled in an empty office in his British record company HQ at the north end of Putney Bridge, a pop tune is heard through a partition by an artiste de jour. That prompts a reflection on how long before you become a veteran in the business when a weekend-of-fame has replaced lifelong career is one of the topics discussed with Run-DMC and we agree on a figure of five years.

Well, the rap-pioneers have been around four-times as long; this hip-hop crew, formed in 1981, has interred many a milestone on the way. But that was a while back because the trio remained without a new album for 8 years;, with ‘Crown Royal’ supplanting ‘Down With The King’ from 1993.

DJ Run (Joseph Simmons), DMC (Darryl McDaniels) and DJ Jam-Master Jay (Jason Mizell) have singularly dragged rap into the mainstream and, after collaborating with Aerosmith on the latter’s ‘Walk This Way’ (in 1986), the first rap record to reach the Billboard’s Top 10, pointed the way to the 1990s rap-rock crossover.

“We don’t need to justify our time (off) because we work a lot,” Jay-Master Jay protests behind his star-regulation shades, “we are a touring band, like The Rolling Stones or Michael Jackson… We played over each of the past seven or eight years about 100 shows, on a light year, which is a couple of shows a week; when it really gets heavy, we play about 250 shows… We have family obligations as well, we all are parents; Run’s got five kids, DMC has one and I have three kids.”

In 1998 a new version of ‘It’s Like That’, released as Run-DMC Vs Jason Nevins, became their only Number One in the UK; few months later it was followed by the issuing of ‘Together Forever: Greatest Hits 1983-1998’.

“We want you to hear what we got new and fresh to offer and we have a lot to offer you. We are having fun and still dropping some serious beats. We do it when we feel it is good time to do it.”

Run da rule

‘Crown Royal’ is a collaborative record with some of the most prominent names on the contemporary music scene – Fred Durst (of Limp Bizkit), Kid Rock, Everlast, Nas, Method Man and members of Third Eye Blind and Sugar Ray. Some of the songs included on the album are somewhat surprising choice, like reworking of the Steve Miller’s classic ‘Take The Money And Run’ but these Queens-hailing hip-hoppers have never done things by the book.

“For example,” Jay-man sighs under the band’s trademark headgear, “Everlast wanted to do ‘Take The Money And Run’, Santana was on it, everybody was psyched up, including the President of the (record) company, when we heard from Steve Miller that he didn’t like it. Run didn’t want to do the old lyrics and was ready to give up all copyright just to be able to tell it his own way, the same story, but in his own words. He wrote it like an old-skool rap but there was no go; when somebody doesn’t want his work messed with, it is fair – it is their work. It makes sense although it can make you mad…”

Run-DMC, for the difference from other hip-hop ‘bros’ in da hood, have never glorified violence and were anti-gangsta rap, vulgar or brutal imagery. The New Yorkers preferred a humorous lyrical approach decked out in their fedoras and (lace-less) Adidas.

Re-rap the Crown

Run-DMC’s influence and inspiration is far and wide and justly so because they were the first hip-hop artists to sell million albums, the first one to go multi-platinum, the first rapsters to win a Grammy Award, first to have video-clips shown on MTV and to have appeared to ‘American Bandstand’ as well as on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and the first to grace the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, the bible of Caucasian Rock.

“I have to disagree with being originators of rap-rock crossover,” JMJ goes humble, “it would have happened without us doing what we did. It might have taken longer but the kids were moving in that direction. It wasn’t only because of us and Aerosmith, our record might have made a lot of older people, the ones in power, aware… We had already done ‘Rock Box’ on our first album and there were other songs on our second album, ‘King Of Rock’, which MTV were playing, the Beastie Boys had a hit with ‘Fight For Your Right To Party’, there were also Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone…”

Very noble but in direct contravention to the Rap Rulebook’s Prime Directive – ‘We’re the greatest’, but when you are ‘Kings Of Rock’, whom else do you need to impress?