Thoughts on this video from DMC of Run-DMC?

[Steve]

 

Watch the whole thing. Don't judge it from the thumbnail.

[jeljms]

I agree with pretty much everything he said.

[danswift]

I agree with pretty much everything he said.

+1.

 

It's a yes from me.

[Guest broke]

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).

[djdiggla]

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).

 

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.

[Guest broke]

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.

Good point. Run-DMC were good at the time, but they were also more or less a manufactured group, made by Russell Rush. The look, the sound, it was all taken from what was going on. They certainly weren't a groundbreaking or even original sounding group. Remember when they tried to update their sound for the early 90s? That did not go well.

 

In fact, of all the stuff I listened to back in the day, Run-DMC's sound has not aged well at all IMO. Yet their logo perseveres. RIP Jam Master Jay and all due respect, but it seems like their legacy after all this time was their branding.

[Jam Burglar]

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.

[Jam Burglar]

For me there's a whole lot to unpack there. In many ways I think early hip hop has been romanticized but, all in all, I agree that the lack of main-stream, commercial viability made the music and the culture special. There really was an element there of the culture saving people's lives by giving them a positive alternative. I'm not saying there was not a lot of drugs and violence, but DMC has a point about that not being glorified in quite the same way as it is now. Hip hop used to have a very important and real cultural purpose for poor urban youth. To me it's always felt like the record companies capitalized the music, gutted out the core, and then used up and wore out the music, leaving the people who were originally uplifted by hip hop out in the cold. I know that's a little dramatic but I really do believe there's a lot of truth in that.

 

And while hip hop was not mainstream to the rest of the world in the early days, it kind of was mainstream to the people that were most likely to benefit from it. Urban kids were keyed in to hip hop and, like Chuck D says, it was kind of like CNN for black kids. By the time certain acts started to rise to "mainstream" viability and the term "underground" started to get some real meaning, a lot of the underground was not reaching that core urban audience as easily. Importantly, the underground was where all of the sustenance was. Underground sort of became the thing for the educated, hip hop aficionados and your average urban kid was listening to Biggie, Tupac, Jay Z, DMX, etc. All the mainstream acts seemed to be pandering to stereotypes. The underground was always there for that true hip hop "food" but it was only really reaching the initiated, who probably don't need the sustenance as much as the starving masses.

 

So anyway, I think DMC's got a point that the message (see what I did there) is not being spread in the same way as it was in the early days. It would be nice to see some sort of revolution but I suspect it will come in the form of some new type of culture.

[djdiggla]

You're probably right Broke. Their imagery is far superior to their sound. Beasties came out of that same era with a similar sound and kept refining and developing it. Run DMC could never do that. But they sure looked fresh and that logo is iconic.