The 1985 Project Part 32: Run-D.M.C. - The King of Rock

Hip Hop leaps forward into critical consensus

Continuing my weekly looks at albums of 1985, starting with the top 40 finishers in the Village Voice Pazz and Jop Poll for that year.

As a 26-year-old white guy, even working in a racially neutral record store in 1985, hip hop was still something of a novelty to me back then. My friends and I had fallen in love with Run-D.M.C. the year before, thanks to singles like “Rock Box” and “It’s Like That” from their debut album. That was my first understanding that the music I had enjoyed a few years earlier, from Sugarhill Gang, Kurtis Blow, and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, was evolving and still making an artistic impact.

King of Rock upped the ante. “Rock Box” had introduced rock guitar power chords to hip hop, but the song “King of Rock,” along with a couple others on this album, pushed that sound harder and with more intensity. Run and D.M.C. came up with some of their most indelible rhymes for this song – “I’m the king of rock, there is none higher / Sucker MCs should call me sire.” “You can’t touch me with a ten foot pole / I even made the devil sell me his soul.” “Every jam we play we break two needles / There’s three of us but we’re not the Beatles.”

I remember at the time some speculation in reviews that this last lyric was a dig at the fact that since John Lennon had died, there were only three Beatles left. An interview I read at the time revealed that they actually didn’t know enough about the Beatles to realize there were four of them, not three. They were just comparing themselves to one of the previous kings of rock groups. The next year it would be revealed that Run-D.M.C. were more influenced by Aerosmith, anyway.

When I saw Run-D.M.C. live, there was no backing band. Just Run and D.M.C. up front, and Jam Master Jay on the turntables behind them. On record however (and with tapes providing these sounds in performance), there was music provided by Larry Smith and his group Orange Krush. Smith co-produced the first two Run-D.M.C. albums with Russell Simmons. According to an interview with D.M.C. quoted in Wikipedia, Smith was the one who brought the guitar parts to the records. The decision was a fine one, both artistically and especially commercially. With or without guitars, the drum machine programming was loud, hard, and syncopated.

It’s probable hip hop would have broken through the barriers keeping it underground anyway, but those guitars helped it get exposed to a larger, white audience. Once “King of Rock” and later “Walk This Way” were on the radio and MTV, record labels started snapping up hip hop acts, and more music was released, thus enabling even the original African-American audience to get more exposure to this freshest musical form.

The three members of Run D.M.C. worked together brilliantly. I don’t know if they were the first to switch off words in the same lyric lines, but they were surely the ones who made it famous. D.M.C. has the deeper, more forceful voice, while Run’s was probably a little more fluid rhythmically. (Certainly, the ways he plays with the oft-repeated line “You never shut up” in the song “You Talk Too Much” reveals an insistence on keeping even the most basic hook lines fresh throughout a song.) Jam Master Jay adds turntable skills which were highly original; he manipulates with verve the word “funny” from some record or another throughout the song “It’s Not Funny”, and the scratching he uses on a short motif at the end of “Daryl and Joe – Krush Groove 3” is sublime.

Larry Smith was also producing Whodini around the same time as this, and some of the r&b flavor he emphasized with that group is here on this album. “You Talk Too Much” and “It’s Not Funny” especially have that feel. The rapping is heavy enough to make it distinctively Run-D.M.C., though. I’m not sure who hooked the group up with Yellowman, who dominates the cut “Roots, Rap, Reggae.” It seemed like a better idea than the actual execution turned out to be. The rhythms didn’t flow the way Yellowman was used to, and yet Run and D.M.C. weren’t used to the kind of beats provided for this song, either.

I was surprised to learn (or more likely be reminded) that “Can You Rock It Like This,” possibly my second favorite song here, was written by LL Cool J (who we will revisit in a few weeks). There was also a demo done of a Run-D.M.C. original called “Slow and Low” which was snatched up by the Beastie Boys for their own use. Soon enough, it would be unimaginable for a hip hop artist to rap lyrics written by another hip hop artist. But in those days, when the rules were still being made, it was just another possibility when it came to making records.

I think this was the last year the Pazz and Jop Poll would fail to have at least one hip hop record in the top fifteen, let alone the top 32. In fact, Run D.M.C’s next album would place fifth in 1986. It was still a few years until hip hop became an undeniable force in American music, but records like King of Rock rewarded listeners who found them this early. I’ll call it 7.5 out of 10 points.