The legendary DMC at Willy P

Photo courtesy of images.google.com

Joseph Simmons (Run), left, Darryl McDaniels (DMC), and the late Jason Mitzell (Jam Master Jay).

By Kelly O’Neil
Staff Writer

The auditorium in Science Hall, Room 200A is one the last places you’d expect to see a legendary hip-hop pioneer. But not long ago, D.M.C. was in the house.

“I can’t believe Willy P actually got something like this,” said Amanda Addotta, a freshman psychology major.

“He’s a hip-hop legend,” added Keresse Burton, a music management graduate student. “It was like going to see Jesus.”

Darryl McDaniels, also known as D.M.C., was part of the group Run D.M.C. whose 1986 album “Raising Hell” (Profile Records) became the first African-American double-platinum hip-hop album. It was also the first rap album to hit the #1 R&B spot, and the first to enter the U.S. Billboard Top 10.

McDaniels was at William Paterson University recently for a talk that was sponsored by the Music & Entertainment Industry Association club on campus, according to a club official about 150 people attended.

McDaniels, along with Joseph “Run” Simmons, and the late Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell started making rhymes together when they were 12 years old in Mizell’s bedroom in Queens.

“His mother didn’t mind because she’d rather she knew where we were,” said McDaniels. The trio would take old albums that belonged to their parents and rap over them. They preferred rock and roll to R&B, because rock had “hot beats, drum solos, and hard guitars,” he said.

Russell Simmons, Def Jam Records founder, heard what they were doing and said, “Yo, this is gonna be big. We’re gonna change the format of rap,” McDaniels recalled. Simmons urged the group to change their name from Orange Crush to Run D.M.C. After a bit of fussing, the guys gave in.

Run D.M.C. became the first rap group to enjoy mainstream success, have a video screened on MTV, make the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, and perform on American Bandstand. They were also the only rap group to appear at the 1985 Live Aid concert.

The 1986 “Raising Hell” album featured “Walk This Way”, at that point a 10-year-old-hit by Aerosmith, that they covered and which jump started their career becoming “the deafest record ever” for Run D.M.C., McDaniels recalled. The group wasn’t too pleased with the idea of actually covering a rock and roll song at first.

“Jay was always the visionary. Me and Run thought it was dumb,” said McDaniels. The song broke barriers between generational and racial gaps.

The group’s hit “My Adidas” paved the way for them to become the first non-athletes to endorse Adidas products.

Run and D.M.C. were the rappers; Jay was the DJ. He provided the beats for the other two to rhyme over. Before getting signed to Profile Records, the guys were selling records off the street. It wasn’t about the money. They were “doing the music cuz of the love.”

McDaniels described rap as “the CNN of the hip-hop world.” Through the music, Run D.M.C. wanted to “let people know what was going on in New York,” he said, adding that the group always “made sure we gave a balanced view of the world on our records.”

“It takes a real man to talk about the soft stuff and not just the hard stuff,” said McDaniels. “Rappers don’t know the power that they have.”

Rap music reaches a lot of people, especially younger listeners, he said who may may be more impressionable. Rappers can “dictate what we eat, what we drink, what we wear, what we drive, and how we talk,” he said Run D.M.C. promoted, “Be cool, stay in school.”

“If only the rapper right now took that power and used it to make a major change, say something positive,” said McDaniels. “We [Run D.M.C.] didn’t go out to prove anything – we wanted to make people happy.”

McDaniels recalled a trip the group took to Japan and they saw kids in Tokyo dressed like them with the Adidas with no laces and the startup jackets. Kids halfway around the world, who may not have even understood what they were saying, emulated them.

“We knew rap was universal,” he said. He thinks that kids today may be disillusioned with the rap scene due to the monotony of it on the radio and programs like “MTV Cribs.”

“Life isn’t all gravy,” he said. “It takes hard work and dedication to be successful.”

McDaniels believes that the group’s greatest achievement was longevity.

“If Jay was still alive, we would still be making records,” he said. Jam Master Jay was fatally shot in a recording studio in Queens last fall. No arrests have been made.

Dr. Stephen Marcone, chair of the music management program and moderator for the evening believes that D.M.C.’s “insights should be taken very seriously.”

The talk attracted students outside the music management area.

“II wasn’t bored at all,” said Robert Velasquez, a sophomore psychology major. “He was great, a lot better than I expected. It was completely entertaining – I was completely into it.”

Ilias Stoilas, a freshman business major said D.M.C. was “off the hook and down to earth.”

After the lecture D.M.C. posed for pictures with students, signed autographs, and plugged his new album “Checks, Thugs, and Rock and Roll” due out Oct. 23.

April 10 , 2003 Issue