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I'm not sure you're giving Run DMC enough credit. They actually run a lot further back than their first records. Run was Kurtis Blow's DJ in the late 70s and they were crewed up by 1980 or so. All the crews at that time were rocking doubles live and had house bands for the records. Everybody was one-upping each other with flashy clothes and whatnot. Run DMC completely changed up the game by coming with those stripped down drum machine beats and wearing street clothes. That pretty much ushered in the era of the mid 80s where most everybody was using drum machines and later lacing them with samples. Their rhymes were pretty unique at that point as well. Then Marlie started chopping up samples and that ushered in the late 80s and early 90s. It's really easy to overlook a lot of the big milestones in hip hop because they seem so obvious in retrospect but at the time they were blowing people's minds. I don't know if you guys are up on JayQuan's "The Foundation" channel on Youtube but they are superb. I just checked and sure enough he has a Run DMC episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuK89yCo894 I recommend starting with episode 1 and moving forward. The dude is a master.

These would be some of mine:

Supreme Clientele was technically in the second wave of Wu solo albums. I was going to mention that but I've split hairs once already in this thread! Seeing as I'm the only person who would rate anything on Return to the 36th a ten...

Same, although I know that Supreme Clientele was technically in the second wave of Wu solo albums. But it's so good it get's a free pass.

The second Method Man solo LP has some good stuff on it too: Streetlife is underrated IMO

There was a bunch of 10s. I should have posted my breakdown of each album, cos if I do it again I bet it won't be exactly the same, haha. A few of the 10s: -

Valid. It's rap not hophop. Like you said, all this shit has been levied against hiphop since practically the beginning with very few exceptions. Run DMC was definitely portraying a hard image. He kinda sounds like a grumpy old man to me. "When we created hiphop..." What? You were early but you didn't help create hiphop man. And so what if you didn't put those drug/drinking themes on record... “I’m the rapper of the year and this the year of the rap / And I’m never drinking beer, it’s champagne at the tap / And I’m cold making money on a regular basis / Pullin out, knockin sucker MC faces” Yeah.... really some De La Soul shit there. That all said, yeah I definitely agree there is a problem with violence in the USA and specifically in the black community. The numbers for black on black crime is staggering. Fact is nobody can/will talk about that... it's all sensationalizing police shooting... which is fucked too of course but just a small sliver of a much larger problem. They way that video started I was happy he was going to actually talk about black on black crime but instead it turned into a "You dang kids" lecture real fast.

Without getting into the social issues being violence, gun violence, rappers getting shot etc and just focusing on his comments about the current state of hip-hop, I feel like guys like DMC may have lost touch with underground hip-hop. All the artists he seems to be complaining about are pop artists. They might be rapping (albeit poorly) but it's not really hip-hop as we know it, it's pop music. It's manufactured by a pop machine with almost no artistry from the performer whatsoever. It comes from a pop music industry culture, not hip-hop culture. It follows the tradition of manufactured bands in the same tradition as labels like Motown. For me, the continuity of quality hip-hop has never been lost. The stuff I listen to now, I love just as much as the stuff I bought in the late 80s or early 90s. I don't whinge about the quality of the rap I see on TV etc because that stuff has ALWAYS been poor. There are exceptions of course, but in my experience, the good stuff didn't just land on your lap by turning on the TV or the radio. You didn't see Big Daddy Kane or Kool G Rap videos all the time back then, you saw Snap! and Monie Love and Vanilla Ice. You had to go looking for the good records. Plus, almost all of these criticisms about the imagery and message could be (and were) applied to the music back in the day. The lavish consumerism, the drugs, the guns... it was all there. Rappers were emulating the drug dealer/pimp lifestyle back then. Hell, Run-DMC wore Adidas with no shoe strings in them, copying the way people in jail wore them (I guess they were 'felon shoes' after all).

Yes rocky, Ill try and get something done for this.

Sweet, never heard of these before, cool stuff.

SABOTAGE!