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x-posted at PostBourgie as part of weekend endorsements:Quiet as kept, this weekend is as good a time as any to get down with The King: Run DMC is getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame today.
So to mark the occasion, dust off your boombox and slip in an old cassette of “Raising Hell” or “Tougher Than Leather.” Feel free to put on some shell-toes, a dookie chain and a bucket hat.
The Hollis, Queens, trio – minus late member and deejay Jam-Master Jay - will be only the second hip-hop group to be inducted into the Hall, following the selection of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five in 2007. Run DMC’s induction will complete the circle of irony, which started with their 1985 hit “King of Rock” – a video that shows them trashing a museum that resembled a rock and roll hall of fame. Nice, right?
To be honest, I missed out on much of Run DMC’s heyday. Some of this was because I lived in Houston. Some of this was because I wasn’t yet able to buy my own music. And some of that was by design.
By the time I was a teenager in the early ‘90s, I thought Run DMC was corny and – this is embarrassing to admit – sort of wack. I wasn’t moved by the groundbreaking nature of “Walk This Way.” And I damn sure didn’t own any Adidas. If it wasn’t Tribe or Cube or Public Enemy, I really didn’t want to hear much about anything else.
Oh, the folly of youth. I'm going to pay proper homage this weekend. Won't you do the same?
P.S. Kudos to Rev. Run for Daddy's Girls, too. I wouldn't have thought he had it in him. (Did I really write that down? Wow. Sorry.)
2 comments:
"Hit It Run" may be the first time I heard a rapper and went "Whoa." Run DMC deserves kudos.
I was in elementary school when "Walk This Way" hit. I lived in a predominately white neighborhood and went to a school that reflected that. Before that, they used to argue that rap music wasn't music. After "Walk This Way" all of that ended. I can't thank Run DMC enough for that.
See, I can feel that. That was never a problem for me in my neighborhood because by the time rap started getting popular, almost all the white folks had moved away.
And I was an R&B cat until middle school, which was about the time when Yo! MTV Raps and Rap City started infiltrating popular culture. So I never had to argue that hard at my school for the validity of hip hop as an art form.
But even then, I was never holding it down for Run DMC. Chalk it up to my youth but I sort of grouped them with more commercial acts at the time.
Giving their catalogue a recent relisten, I know now that I was just a silly kid.
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