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

Ro, Ronin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060781955 ISBN 13: 9780060781958

Publisher: Amistad, 2005

Synopsis

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 rhyme: "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.

About this title

About the Author

Ronin Ro is an award-winning author and music journalist. He has written for Spin, Rolling Stone, USA Today, Playboy, Vanity Fair, and Vibe. He is the author of five other books, including the critically acclaimed Have Gun Will Travel: The Spectacular Rise and Violent Fall of Death Row Records.

Reviews

Run-D.M.C. is synonymous with hip-hop, and, appropriately, Ro's look at the pioneering, influential band's history plays like a history of the genre. Drawing on interviews with many of rap's biggest names, Ro (Have Gun Will Travel) charts the rise and fall of Run (Joe Simmons, younger brother of impresario and Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons), D.M.C (Darryl McDaniels) and Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell). Hailing from middle-class Hollis, Queens, Run-D.M.C were the first to blend rock and rap, a formula that took them to the top of the pop music charts in the mid-1980s and early '90s. The book's supporting cast includes L.L. Cool J (who had an intense rivalry with Run), the Beastie Boys, Def Jam co-founder and producer Rick Rubin, and Aerosmith, who embraced Run-D.M.C and their 1986 remake of the chart-topping single "Walk This Way." Success, however, was fleeting, owing to bad record deals, lawsuits, alcoholism, meandering film projects and a rape charge pinned on Run (he later found God, to the skepticism of some close friends). Tragedy reigns, however, as the story opens and closes with the unsolved murder of Jam Master Jay in his Queens studio in 2002.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Amistad
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060781955
• ISBN 13: 9780060781958
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352