RUN DMC

Rip It Up, Issue 136, 1 November 1988, Page 14

RUN DMC

Do Run DMC improvise their raps live? "Oh yes, most of the show is : all improvisation, so many things can happen that IT'S UP WWCLOSET..MMIGttUP 1 IN THE CLOSET,.. Sorry, go ahead." ' Having a little trouble with the kids there? "Mm-mmmm." Mm-mmmm.

Run, of Run DMC, AKA Joseph Simmons, is cool, even around screaming children. He's paid to be cool, Run DMC went to number one because they are cool. All popular music requires posture but rap requires strut, bravado, sprezzatura. You gotta be brave to get on stage with a turntable and.a mike and a bunch of samples and make rhymes, you have to have bottle and nerve. Run has all those things. Things have changed since Run DMC first began rapping. Rap has always been nasty but recent months have seen it turn wonderfully messy, a crossover nightmare of high art and kleptomania. It used to be thin white dukes like Cabaret Voltaire

('Slugging For Jesus', 1981) and Byrne and Eno (My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, of the same year) who advocated the wholesale collaging of voices, textures and tapes onto new bass and drum lines; now everybody's doing it, chewing it, spewing it. The first time the UK remix of Eric B & Rakim's 'Paid In Full' came on, you knew the art had come full circle, back to the street. That purring beat (still sexy after all that sampling), the third-world vocal chant, the dipsy radio announcer— just too damn clever. Eric B & Rakim spurned the UKremix but their new album Follow The Leader prescribes the same bewildering blend of found sound. To borrow from Run's laconic diction: such utility has influenced Run DMC, also. Listen to 'Mary Mary'; one crescendo after another, a succession of nuggets swiped from rock's rusty bowl. And 'Papa Crazy', with the old "Papa was a rolling stone -"line stopped right afterthefirst word. The timing is exquisite—you hang out through the whole song for the rest of that line but they hold it back. Butyou can't use words like "exquisite" when you're on the phone to New York. Run is so laid back on the phone he sounds completely fucking horizontal. His voice is weary. I spent half the afternoon trying to ring you up, Run. "Oh, well you're here now." He's been over at his mother's house for dinner. The kids in the background are making a racket. He keeps yawning. Run has been doing interviews all day. Run DMC's latest album Tougher Than Leathers mixing more than just beats and words; it's sampling jazz and rock riffs, making for the jumble of a more complex music. Run likes that. "We're happy with the album, everything's cool. We put more rock in and stuff like that, but we're satisfied with the outcome, mainly. Rock and rap go together nice. I think a lot of rock groups, they sound like

they're rapping to me. They really can't sing that good anyway, they sound like they're just talking." How do you feel about rockers like Bon Jovi getting to the top of the charts?

"I think it's good, it's betterfor us because we make rock too. When rock does good, I feel good." You've been sampling a lot of jazz, as well.

"Yeah, there's gonna be a lot more of that coming up now, it's the new thing that rappers are doing. And it sounds good." What's making people latch onto jazz again? "I dunno, that's just how it is. Somebody does well once,

everybody tries it. It all comes from the beginning, things seem to evolve back to the start, over and over. Things that are new to the kids now were old to other people. Lotto times we do things that are new, but actually they're old. Like the kids now are wearing straight-legs, and that was from a long time ago. A lot of jazz we're using now, a lot of those jazz records are becoming very popular, like Bob James, yeah." In some ways Run DMC are the cleanest of the rap crowd. Their raps are often bracketed by a strong social conscience. Certainly they're less prone to preaching violence than Public Enemy but it was at a Run DMC concert where a fan was shot.

Is that memory still a problem? "With us we had one bad incident and ever since then it's been blown out of proportion. Mainly, we do millions of concerts and there's never any violence at all." There's also the case of the Run DMC movie, like-titled Tougher Than Leather, a Rick Rubin-encouraged project conceived in the days when Run DMC and Def Jam were not big . names. The group had difficulties finding a distributor for the film once. it was completed, first (it was said) because of the violent content, and later because of its allegedly containing "anti-semetic" remarks. "There is no controversy over that any longer, (yawns) Just making a movie is good, we feel. It's released in America. It's been going very well." And yet your raps are often anti-drugs and so on — do you maintain that stance? "That's just things that come out of us. We're positive people, so when we're writing, we're like in a trance, and positive things just come out." Do Run DMC think they have a responsibility to be positive? "No, it's just something we do. It's like, this is how we got where we are now, and that's what comes out of us." v ' US. Run DMC's stage show is meant to be pretty impressive, what does it consist of? "Lights... cameras, and action. A lotto action. It's gonna be, uh, very incredible. Because of the visual thing, mainly (yawn). That's why it's gonna be better for you to see it." You're sounding a bit tired, Joseph "I'm sorry. I've been doing a lot of interviews tonight. The others didn't have any, I had 'em all. Butthat's okay." You looking foward to rapping in New Zealand? Wes. I'll be much more awake by then."

CHAD TAYLOR