Here are some things about Run-DMC that you might already know: They were the first rap group to go gold, platinum, and multi-platinum, to perform on American Bandstand, to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone, to land in rotation on MTV, to endorse a sneaker, and to tour the country. Here's what that impressive list of accomplishments tells you about the group's music: just about nothing.
It's hard to hear Run-DMC's music as music in 2005. For 20 years, their singles have been dorm-room staples like Hendrix and Marley; they danced with Steven Tyler on a hundred VH-1 video countdowns, their fedora-clad images have fossilized into pop consciousness. The group hasn't been relevant to rap in nearly 20 years; most of the music played on urban stations' old-school mixes comes from years after the group's peak. More importantly, the group spent the twilight of its career making embarrassing career move after embarrassing career move: performing at the VMAs with Kid Rock, endorsing Virgin Cola, releasing the god-awful 2001 failed-comeback album Crown Royal (featuring collaborations with douchebags like Fred Durst and the guy from Third Eye Blind), and performing at every college in the country again and again and again even though DMC's voice was clearly gone and Run had to help him with all his lines.
Now that the group's first four albums are being reissued, it makes sense to ask whether they're worth buying, especially since multiple hits collections have already compiled their essential singles. The simple answer is no. Every one of these studio albums has filler, especially now that they've been loaded down with bonus tracks, and the excellent compilation Together Forever is still available at finer used record stores nationwide. But Run-DMC remains probably the most important group in rap history, and its albums deserve careful scrutiny, as historical documents and sometimes as more.
The group's self-titled debut album, released in 1984, remains its most powerful and immediate studio record, the LP that forever tore rap away from disco and made it its own thing. Famously, the album's production removed all the glossy live-band funk popular on the rap records of the day and replaced it with a harsh, spacey stripped-down electronic boom. Album opener "Hard Times" is a good case in point: Producer Larry Smith lays down a spooky, chilly electro beat, nothing but a few drum-machine ticks and claps, some heavy breathing, a couple of synth stabs. Run and DMC toss lines back and forth in a tag-team style that never really caught on, yelling rather than flowing, building up to the end of the verse where they're both yelling in tandem. Lyrically, it's nothing special; their street reportage is just another take on their first single "It's Like That", which is itself a vanilla version of Melle Mel's rap on "The Message".