Raising Hell: The Reign, Ruin, and Redemption of Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay

by Ronin Ro

Overview

The year is 1978. Saturday Night Fever is breaking box office records. All over America kids are racing home to watch Dance Fever, Michael Jackson is poised to become the next major pop star, and in Hollis, Queens, fourteen-year-old Darryl McDaniels—who will one day go by the name D.M.C.—busts his first rhyme: "Apple to the peach, cherry to the plum. Don't stop rocking till you all get some." Darryl's friend Joseph Simmons—now known as Reverend Run—thinks Darryl's rhyme is pretty good, and he becomes inspired. Soon the two join forces with a DJ—Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell—and form Run-D.M.C. Managed by Run's brother, Russell Simmons, the trio, donning leather suits, Adidas sneakers, and gold chains, become the defiant creators of the world's most celebrated and enduring hip-hop albums—and in the process, drag rap music from urban streets into the corporate boardroom, profoundly changing everything about popular culture and American race relations.

Through candid, original interviews and exclusive details about the group's extraordinary rise to the top—and its mortal end brought on by the tragic murder in 2002 of Jam Master Jay—Raising Hell tells of Run-D.M.C.'s epic story, including the rivalries with jealous peers, their mentoring of such legendary artists as the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, and the battles with producers, record executives, and one another. Ronin Ro delivers a meticulously researched, compellingly written, affecting behind-the-music tale of family, friendship, betrayal, murder, and the building of the culture and industry known as hip-hop.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061750694
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/13/2009
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	705,216
File size:	514 KB

About the Author

Ronin Ro is an award-winning author and music journalist. He has written for Spin, Rolling Stone, USA Today, Playboy, Vanity Fair, and Vibe. He is the author of five other books, including the critically acclaimed Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records.

Read an Excerpt

Raising Hell

The Reign, Ruin, and Redemption of Run-D.M.C. and Jam Master Jay

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By Ronin Ro

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2005 Ronin Ro
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0060781955

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Chapter One

Grandmaster Get High

During the spring of 1978, thirteen-year-old Darryl McDaniels was finishing eighth grade at St. Pascal-Baylon Elementary, a Catholic school that required students to wear blue and yellow uniforms each day. The short, stocky black kid with the close-cut Afro and earnest expression was also taking care to avoid being robbed by larger, poorer bullies waiting outside the school each day to run up on kids, tap pockets, steal hats, loot, and shoes, chase them in packs, or send them home naked on the bus.

Hollis was working class, but these ruffians acted as if the neighborhoods south of the Grand Central Parkway, west of Francis Lewis Boulevard, north of Hollis Avenue, and east of 184th Street were the drug- and crime-infested South Bronx. So he'd liter-ally cross streets to avoid someone coming his way while he was in uniform. Only after rushing past the group standing by the store on his block, getting home, and changing into streetwise jeans and sneakers would he go back out to buy whatever he needed.

He'd lived here since at least age five, among aluminum-sided one- and two-family houses, tiny patches of lawn, concrete driveways, and teens trying to live down the fact that their parents -- many from down south -- owned real estate and provided middle-class comfort. And because other boroughs were battling to determine which was toughest, and didn't consider Queens anything but a good place to come rob a wealthy soft kid, D's young neighbors and friends were acting even worse.

Unlike other neighborhoods, Hollis was filled with private houses, not apartment buildings, with black working-class neighbors, and bustling main streets with stores and movie theaters. It had a small-town feel, with everyone inevitably running into everyone else. If D and his friends weren't hanging out in an alley behind the only high-rise building in Hollis, a place they referred to as "the building," they were playing basketball in 205th Street Park near where the Hollis Crew, a group of somewhat older, tougher teenage neighborhood residents, spent their days and nights. Or D and his young neighbors passed each other while crossing the street at the corner near the park, where local dealers ran their drug supermarket. It was a small, remote enclave for the black working class and the children these hardworking adult parents hoped would have easier lives.

A typical weekday for Darryl involved going to school, then drifting over to "the building" after dinner to get high with his friends Butter, Ray, and Cool T; during weekends, he went to one of three local parks to shoot basketball, get a little high after the game, and escape his parents' strict rules. He didn't really fit in with the neighborhood tough guys, the drug dealers, the stickup kids, the older college students, the athletes, or the neighborhood DJs.

One afternoon in the spring of 1978, he reached his modest home and saw his brother Alford -- three years older, bookish, into sci-fi and comics -- playing new tapes he 'd bought on the street. Alford liked this new street music kids in other boroughs created with turntables and microphones in city parks, house parties, or rented halls and community centers. Darryl had heard it before, in concrete school yards in the neighborhood and on portable radios in Hollis, but had never paid much attention to it. But Al's new tape by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five was different.

Amid the usual calls for zodiac signs, a teen named Melle Mel (Melvin Glover) rapped about a high school dropout turned stickup kid who gets locked up and raped in Rikers Island. Darryl wanted to hear Mel's unsettling story-rap again.

The verse was cinematic, cautionary, and reflective of D's private fears about his own lifestyle of the past two years. Until 1976, D had been a quiet, meek, acquiescent A student, the sort neighborhood toughs would point at and call brainiac. Leaving St. Pascal's back then, he 'd come straight home and stay in the house. His father usually left at four to work as a station agent for the Metropolitan Transit Authority. His mother arrived from her job as a nursing coordinator at a nearby hospital at about five. After cooking dinner she usually went to bed by seven so as to be up early enough the next day to cook everyone breakfast before heading to work again.

After a certain hour, D found himself alone and unsupervised. For a while he 'd been content to sit in his mother's neat living room with some of the thousand comic books he and Al owned, or at a table in front of a window, spending hours drawing pin-ups and comics. And if that got boring, he 'd pull out his collection of G.I. Joe dolls or little green plastic army men and engage them in epic battles. But this too got boring, so at age twelve he gravitated to football, and spent a year lifting weights, feeling good about his broadening shoulders and the attention he received from girls, and seeing his reputation in the neighborhood change. With eighth grade graduation coming up, he learned his parents planned to send him to a high school in Harlem that didn't have a football field. He then gave football up and fell into the habit of sneaking out of the house after dinner. With his mom sleeping, he 'd walk to "the building" and join his friends to share joints, crack jokes, and drink quart bottles of Olde English 800 malt liquor.

The Flash tape ended. Darryl felt this new music offered a new, safer way to escape his boredom. He carried his mom's turntable down into the wood-paneled basement and tried to scratch a record. In the background, Alford stood, offering moral support and encouragement.

Days later, Darryl arrived from school with plans to spend the afternoon playing basketball at the new hoop their father had installed in the backyard. But Al led him into the . . .

Continues...

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Excerpted from Raising Hell by Ronin Ro Copyright © 2005 by Ronin Ro.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

	Prologue	1
Chapter 1	Grandmaster Get High	5
Chapter 2	Son of Kurt	11
Chapter 3	Disco Sucks	17
Chapter 4	Party Time	21
Chapter 5	The Broken Arm	25
Chapter 6	Jason Mizell	29
Chapter 7	Krush Groove 1	43
Chapter 8	Disco Fever	59
Chapter 9	Rock Box	68
Chapter 10	Taking the Throne	76
Chapter 11	Russell and Rick	87
Chapter 12	Kings of Rock	98
Chapter 13	The Silver Screen	115
Chapter 14	The Kid with the Hat	119
Chapter 15	Proud to Be Black	129
Chapter 16	The Mainstreaming of Hip-hop	141
Chapter 17	War and Peace	152
Chapter 18	The Long Beach Episode	155
Chapter 19	It's the New Style	164
Chapter 20	Def Pictures	170
Chapter 21	Rhyming and Stealing	181
Chapter 22	Suing Profile	200
Chapter 23	It's Called Survival	222
Chapter 24	Leaving Hell	226
Chapter 25	Ohio	234
Chapter 26	You Talk Too Much	256
Chapter 27	Run Ruins Everything	278
Chapter 28	Endgame	293
Chapter 29	The Party's Over	305
Chapter 30	Loss and Remembrance	313
	Epilogue	323
	Index	331

Editorial Reviews

Run-D.M.C. is synonymous with hip-hop, and, appropriately, Ro's look at the pioneering, influential band's history plays like a history of the genre. Drawing on interviews with many of rap's biggest names, Ro (Have Gun Will Travel) charts the rise and fall of Run (Joe Simmons, younger brother of impresario and Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons), D.M.C (Darryl McDaniels) and Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell). Hailing from middle-class Hollis, Queens, Run-D.M.C were the first to blend rock and rap, a formula that took them to the top of the pop music charts in the mid-1980s and early '90s. The book's supporting cast includes L.L. Cool J (who had an intense rivalry with Run), the Beastie Boys, Def Jam co-founder and producer Rick Rubin, and Aerosmith, who embraced Run-D.M.C and their 1986 remake of the chart-topping single "Walk This Way." Success, however, was fleeting, owing to bad record deals, lawsuits, alcoholism, meandering film projects and a rape charge pinned on Run (he later found God, to the skepticism of some close friends). Tragedy reigns, however, as the story opens and closes with the unsolved murder of Jam Master Jay in his Queens studio in 2002. Agent, Robert Guinsler. (Nov.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Music journalist Ro (Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records) chronicles the influential hip-hop group Run-D.M.C., from its formative years in Hollis, Queens, NY, to its massive success in the 1980s to the tragic death of DJ Jam Master Jay in 2002. Though the stories are interesting-witness, for instance, Run-D.M.C. battle-rapping a young L.L. Cool J backstage during the Raising Hell tour-it's often hard to tell if the anecdotes are made up of skillfully pieced-together facts or hyperbole that borders on fiction. While the information coming from group members and their associates feels legitimate, quoted conversations from 20 years ago are a little suspicious, if not totally whack. Ro, too, fails to follow up on Jay's murder, a tantalizing subject he introduces in Chapter 1, but perhaps that's for another book. Regardless, Raising Hell proves its cultural worth by illustrating how hip-hop as a genre evolved alongside Run-D.M.C.'s career; Ro reminds readers that without Run-D.M.C. or producer Rick Rubin, Eminem and 50 Cent might today be irrelevant. Recommended for libraries with substantial music collections.-Robert Morast, Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, SD Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The rise of the Kings of Rock, and how they did everything wrong. Hip-hop pioneers Run-D.M.C. were a trio of kids from Queens who came together in the late 1970s under the tutelage of party promoter Russell Simmons, whose younger brother Joe was an up-and-coming M.C. at the club events and parties where the new style of music was gestating. The fiercely sparse beats laid down by DJ Jam Master Jay (whose still-unsolved 2002 recording-studio murder bookends the narrative), and the combative rapping of Run and D.M.C., took some time to catch on with an audience used to the more melodic flow of the Sugar Hill Gang. But once it did, Run-D.M.C. quickly became the first superstars of the new genre. As told by Ro (Tales to Astonish, 2004, etc.), the combination at first seemed unbeatable: Simmons handled the business and marketing end, while long-haired metal-head (and future A-list producer) Rick Rubin helped the group craft their sound. It's a short, happy period in the book, with hits like "My Adidas," "King of Rock" and their rock-rap smash with Aerosmith, "Walk This Way" (credited with bringing hip-hop to the masses), helping the group rack up first after first: first hip-hop group on American Bandstand, first hip-hop platinum album and so on. But while Run-D.M.C. helped create the first big wave of hip-hop, greatly influencing the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy, a combination of bad management and lousy decisions fueled by binge drinking ensured that their time in the sun wouldn't last long. Their decline is chronicled here in sad, lengthy detail. The author doesn't let his obvious affection for these men get in the way of telling the real story in boldly dramatic strokes. A cautionary taleon the fate of cultural revolutionaries: grim, but rewarding. Film rights optioned to Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way

Kirkus Reviews

Will enthrall both pop sociologists and armchair thrill seekers.

Entertainment Weekly

A definitive book.

New York Times

The read of the year.

Chicago Tribune

[Ro] pulls no punches in a work of nonfiction that reads like a novel.

Miami Herald

As gory as a car wreck that we are unable to turn away from.

Washington Post

A revelatory (and titillating) page-turner for fans and the uninitiated alike.

San Francisco Chronicle

Brilliant reporting...Hip-hop fans of all ages will delight in this gripping tale of sex, drugs, and rock n’rap.

Smooth Magazine