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

by Ronin Ro

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 " 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.

Genres: Music, Biography

352 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2005

Reviews

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since the 1990s when I was a kid, I had always heard about Run-D.M.C. and of course heard so many of their songs, but to be honest, Ronin Ro's 𝙍𝙖𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙃𝙚𝙡𝙡 book gave me more of an education on the legendary group than anything I ever heard, seen, or read on the group.

𝙍𝙖𝙞𝙨𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙃𝙚𝙡𝙡 chronicled the life and times of Run D.M.C. from their humble beginnings in the Hollis, Queens section of New York City to around the year 2005. The book didn't really pull no punches. It described the tension between the group members in different stages of their run, the lack of cash flow at different points of the group's run, how the group had to put out albums just to help them pay their bills (mostly in the late 1980s and early 1990s), the period when the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy were more popular than Run-D.M.C., and more. If you don't know anything about Run-D.M.C. from their inception to the mid 2000s decade, then you need to read this book.

The author of this book packed a lot of information about the group into 329 pages. He really wanted his readers to be more educated than they ever were about a rap group that were not only pioneers, but who showed that rap music could meld not only with R&B music, but rock music too.

As with any book Ro writes on a musical group or artist, I am always happy to see pages and chapters dedicated to the different albums these artists released during their run. Every album Run-DMC ever made from 1983 (𝘙𝘶𝘯-𝘋.𝘔.𝘊.) to 2001 (𝘊𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘯 𝘙𝘰𝘺𝘢𝘭) was analyzed and dissected in this book. And because of the analysis of those albums, I was compelled to go on YouTube and revisit and listen to those albums to further educate myself on the Run-D.M.C. sound and mystique.

This book also let me know how deep in the streets Jam Master Jay was and how his street cred helped the group navigate their way up the popularity chain in certain parts of New York City in the early 1980s. There were parts of New York where Run-D.M.C wasn't wanted or allowed to perform (by their own race, LOL), but Jay's street cred opened doors for the group.

This book also showed me how a label president at Profile Records (Cory Robbins) believed in the group more than Run's own brother Russell ever did in the 1980s. But it was Russell ironically (page 131) who helped the group create one of their signature songs, "My Adidas."

Pros of 𝑹𝒂𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑯𝒆𝒍𝒍: The book wanted to be a deeply researched chronicle on the ups and downs of Run-D.M.C, and it was. Ro did his own research on the group, he grew up during the golden ages of rap music (1980s and 1990s), the man knows rap music very well, and he didn't rely heavily on news articles, books, and other publications and such on Run-D.M.C. to write this book. And I respect that.

Cons of 𝑹𝒂𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑯𝒆𝒍𝒍: There was a solid portion of this book dedicated to the Beastie Boys and their success and as I was reading these pages on the group, I was like man, Ro could have dedicated all of them pages to some more little-known information about Run-D.M.C. I guess Ro was a fan or so influenced by the Beastie Boys' music back in the 80s and 90s he saw fit to dedicate part of this book to them. I was not amused.

In conclusion, Ro did it again. He wrote another music-based book that made you the reader see an artist(s) in a different light or least on a more introspective or deeper level. I would recommend this book to rap music historians, Run-D.M.C. fans, or those who are curious about what the group was about during their prime and how they lived their lives after the fame.

[Kingrhythm · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a lot of information that was interesting. It could have been written better. I do like the fact that the author chose to include a lot of the groups that were influential at the time of Def Jam's beginning and not stick solely with RUN DMC. We learn about Kurtis Blow, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, Russell Simmons, Rick Rubin, how Def Jam started and was operated as well as some lesser known media people whose names you might recognize if you were into hip-hop in the late 80's early 90's.

[groove · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of great information that I never would have known without reading and some cool behind the scenes interviews...but I wish the author would have made some claims or pressed more to find truth rather than simply printing everybody involved's version of events. Perhaps he was simply reporting the facts and letting us decide, but it ended up reading like a wikipedia article with dialogue from recorded public interviews rather than a quest to capture a deeper storyline. It was pretty good and maybe I'm being spoiled, but as a lifelong fan (well since 1983), I wanted more.

[Eyun · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having listened to Run DMC in my youth, and still hanging on some of those tunes, I enjoyed this book in a nostalgic sense. If I wasn't a fan, I probably would not have finished the book. But I was, so I did. I feel like there was a period of time where Run DMC were sucked into an intergalactic vortex, then BAM, Jam Master Jay was shot and we heard about them again. It was good to read about what happened to them when they were out of sight, out of mind.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Closer to 3.5 stars

[Marc Baldwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The content of this book, if you're an old school rap fan, is fairly interesting. But the writing is terrible. It could have been written much better and it almost seemed as if he intentionally wrote the book as if it was a newspaper article instead of a book with a story line. I plowed through it, because I have always loved Run DMC, but that was the only thing that got me through it.

[dirt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sad story of how music politics prevented Run-D.M.C. from putting out more revolutionary and pioneering music.