DMC of Run-D.M.C. bares the soul of hip-hop at Sole DXB

DMC is a pioneer of rap and hip-hop culture, having founded the hip-hop group Run-D.M.C. with Joseph Simmons and Jam Master Jay.

Hip-hop. More than a music genre and movement, it's a culture that has swept the world in just 40 years. However, the 10 billion dollar hip-hop and rap industry of today is far removed from its roots. Ask Darryl McDaniels, known the world over as DMC, who was there when hip-hop was born.
DMC is a pioneer of rap and hip-hop culture, having founded the hip-hop group Run-D.M.C. with Joseph Simmons and Jam Master Jay. To say that Run-D.M.C. were pivotal in the hip-hop movement is an understatement. They brought the urban beats of hip-hop and rap to the mainstream, cementing them into music history and opening the door for generations to come.
In 1978 DMC taught himself to DJ in the basement of his adopted parents' home, using turntables and a mixer given to him by his older brother. He wrote rhymes, drew comics and was a straight A student. Music was a hobby for him but not a career option and he enrolled into university to study business administration. Not your clichéd gangster rapper story, is it? However, DMC didn't feel inspired in his studies and while trying to figure out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life, he kept getting calls about signing a record deal and making an album.
"No man, I'm trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. I'm grown up now, I don't have time for this."
Eventually DMC made the time and hip hop history was made. Run-D.M.C. was the first rap act to have a number one R&B charting rap album, the first rap act to receive a Grammy nomination, the first to have a video added on MTV, the first to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and the first ever rap act to sign an authentic product endorsement deal.
DMC was there at the start and now, where hip-hop has grown beyond just music to fashion, lifestyle, TV and films, he watches with a critical and concerned eye. During his visit to Sole DXB where he performed to fans, DMC told City Times that the world of hip-hop is more than just about money, wealth, fame and disrespect.
What do you think it is about hip-hop that has adapted itself to different cultures and countries?
With rock 'n' roll it was more about the music. When you say classic rock, Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, it was more about the music that related to the times. With hip-hop you can take the music completely out of it and it's about the style, it's about the feeling, and the fashion and the look.
Historically rappers have always made music about the unfiltered truth. Do you think that's changed with contemporary rappers and hip-hop artists?
Yeah, nobody is speaking anything worth hearing. It's bigger than just the hip-hop music. It's the culture in America. America celebrates negativity if it makes you money. Now in America if you're disrespectful, this goes with the music, the reality shows our leaders and the adults. If you're disrespectful, if you're ignorant, if you're illiterate and under educated, if you lie and cheat and steal, it's cool! They celebrate it.
So how do you stay relevant in this atmosphere when you're not about that kind of life?
I show up in there and I do hip-hop the way that I do it. Real DJ using vinyl, scratching, rapping, it steals the show. Old school isn't a time period, it's a presence, it's a way of creatively and artistically presenting yourself. I'm 51 years old and I can go to a party with rappers from 18 to 21 (years old), and they can do their thing that's hot now but when I get up on stage, that young crowd is like 'I've never seen that before'. The hip-hop industry refuses to let us in there and be artistic and inspirational, it's all about money. The real gangsters of hip hop told you their story but then at the end of the record said, 'but you don't do it shorty.' That was the power.
So hip-hop isn't what it used to be. It's lost something?
In my generation when you said hip-hop, adults didn't shy away from it. They were like, 'I want to hear that.' It might be a funny song, it might be a gangster rap song, it might be a Will Smith song, it might be a Public Enemy song - but now when you say hip-hop adults are like, 'I don't want to hear that'. Cause they know it's going to be disrespectful, lots of cursing and disrespecting women. Parents can't sit in the room with their kids and listen to hip-hop.
Do you feel the hip-hop community have a responsibility to speak up about what's happening in the world right now?
Yes. I answered that really quick. It's not their responsibility to be role models, but hip hop's showbiz relationship with the audience is way different than all the other relationship. In hip hop it's completly different. The appeal is us. So if you're rapping that shooting and killing, and disrespecting and drug taking it's cool, it's believable cause it's hip-hop. People know a movie is a movie, a book is a book, fiction and non-fiction. Hip-hop, I don't care what it is but when we represent it, people think it's real. So there is a responsibility to do this. You can make a whole album about shooting and drug use, but when it comes to hip-hop there needs to be one record on that album about not shooting and not taking drugs.
What, in your opinion, needs to change in hip-hop?
Hip-hop now is at a point where we need to take back control of our culture. What I mean by that is the Lauren Hills, the DMCs, the Naughty by Natures, we are at a point now - there needs to be a hip-hop festival that doesn't allow any cursing or nudity. Every year for life that would be the number one selling festival, why? Cause fathers and mothers can bring their families. Me and Chuck D are talking about doing it.
What's been a highlight in your career so far?
Live Aid (concert). We were the only rap group in Live Aid and Bill Graham the promoter had to fight to get us there. They were thinking of having Tina Turner and Queen and this and that and Bill Graham said Run-D.M.C. - this was 1985 and we were just coming out. And 85 percent of the board said 'no, rap? hip hop? No.' And Bill Graham said he wouldn't do it if they didn't have us.
What do you do when you're not working?
Well 25 percent of what I do is work. I got to concerts, recording, you know even doing a comic book. 75 percent of what I do is I go to schools, group homes, orphanages and youth detention centers and speak to kids. What happened was at age 35, this is before Jay (Jam Master Jay) got shot and my father died, at age 35, I found out I was adopted. That was a shocking revelation. I got a special relationship with those kids. If I walk into a room of kids, say 5 to 17 a lot of them don't know me, but then when they realize and I start speak then they are going to look at me, like 'let me see what this dude is about.' I don't need to play my records to still be hip-hop to this new generation.
What do you listen to right now?
A lot of heavy metal, particularly this group called Pentagram.
But my playlist right now I can tell you, I'm listening to Guns N' Roses's Appetite For Destruction, Nirvana, Sugar Hill's compilation album. If I'm listening to that then just imagine my new album.
maan@khaleejtimes.com