DISGRACELAND - Run DMC Pt. 1: Innovation, Evolution and the Mysterious Death of Jam Master Jay

Episode Date: April 14, 2020

Run DMC is directly responsible for elevating hip hop to previously unimagined heights. They took rap music into an entirely different direction and helped mainstream the genre. They were beloved as musicians, innovators, and people – none more than their DJ, Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell, which makes understanding his senseless murder near impossible. Who killed Jam Master Jay and why? And why are there literally zero suspects when there were numerous eyewitnesses? To view the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. This episode was originally published on April 14, 2020. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway then Elizabeth Taylor. That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on,

from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court. On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder.

If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. But Run DMC are insane. But not in the way you think, not in a particular disgrace-land way. Their story, born in part out of the crime and grime of 70s and 80s New York City,

gang violence, stick-up kids, and assassins. Aside from the unsolved murder of DJ Jam Master Jay, the insanity surrounding RunDMC is more about the group's music than it is about true crime. Run DMC were the first rap group to grace the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, to be played on MTV, to be nominated, for a Grammy Award. Run DMC were not only real-deal B-boys from the block, they were the first rap group to sell half a million records, then a million, then the first to have a multi-million selling album, gold, platinum, and multi-platinum, and it was all

due to the groundbreaking music they recorded. Great music. That music you heard at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Mallory and Nick MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to jump by Van Halen. And why would I play you that specific slice of hairy chest virtuoso synth cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on March 27, 1984. And that was the day Run DMC released their self-titled debut album and changed the face of popular music forever.

On this episode, Truth in Hard Beats, Virtuoso cheese, the evolution of hip-hop and a dead DJ. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. In Jamaica, Queens, they had the savage skulls, and over in Brooklyn, the young barons cut a dude's nose off. Here in the Bronx, the gang murders were just as prevalent and no less colorful. The year before, in 1972, there were a total of 54 gang-related homicides. A dealer down in South Bronx was shot 37 times.

His body riddled with bullets in the form of a cross, his blood and his life escaping in the direction of the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. And for residents of the Bronx in 1973, there was no escaping the gang violence. The neighborhood in the 1970s resembled nothing less than a war zone. New York City's rent control policies had long ago de-incentivized landlords to care for their properties. As a result, the borough's apartment buildings fell into disrepair on mass. All of this, at a time when unemployment in South Bronx was hovering around 25%, which to give you some perspective was the national unemployment rate during the Great Depression. Crime was rampant in 1970s Bronx.

Violence was so prevalent that the streets were unwalkable, and for most, the neighborhood, unlivable. Soon it became clear to property owners that their Bronx real estate was worth more on fire than it was as is, and as a result, the Bronx burned. And while the insurance dollars poured in, the gangs took over. Hard times spreading just like the flu. Black assassins, majestic warlocks, brothers of Satan, the reapers, the henchmen, the dirty dozen, and the biggest, most dominant gang, the black spades, the gangs ruled the Bronx. Intimidating residents into respecting their authority, their turf and bending to their violent will, robbing whatever shop owners remained, peddling dope, raping young,

women, it was a brutal gang-ruled reality in the Bronx in 1973, especially if you were a teenager. But there was safety in numbers. Disco had already begun to rule the airwaves, but in the Bronx, disco represented a glitz and glam that was unrecognizable north of Times Square. 110th Street was a disco firewall. On the other side, the deep grooves of the JVs, Simon Day, and the Fatback band ran deep and far all the way up Lennox Avenue from Harlem to the Bronx. But this sophisticated funk was still adult music. It was cool, but not all that exciting. In order to turn a party out, to get a room full of young teenagers excited, something else was needed.

And this something else was exactly what an innovative young DJ brought to the first floor wreck room of the 1520 Sedgwick Avenue housing projects on August 11, 19th, 19th. DJ Cool Herks back to school jam, a place to escape the heat off the street, a cause to get out from under the nightly terror of the gangs, a late summer hangs sweating it out on the dance floor together. Admission, 25 cents for the ladies, 50 cents for the fellas, 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. 7 hours of fun, 7 hours of partying, 7 hours of dancing. And that's a long time to keep a hot, restless crowd of kids entertained. Relying on their parents' music alone wasn't going to cut it. So Herk improvised. He'd start out with the funk, with the Jimmy Caster Bunch and the Incredible Bongo band. But when their hits, it's just begun in Apache, got to their respective breaks, the breakdowns,

the parts of the songs where the world seemed to drift off to strip the listeners of their cares and worries, leaving them out on the dance floor with nothing but the beat, those incredible beats, those beats that propelled party-goers, is deeper and deeper into the abandon of the dance floor. When DJ Cool Herk came to the breaks in those tracks, he did something revolutionary. He kept them going.

DJ Cool Herk knew this. To keep rocking the party, can't stop, won't stop. Herc was the first DJ to bring two copies of the same record to the party, and of course, two turntables. Just as the breakdown of one funky song was ending on one turntable, Herc would jump to the same point on the same record on the other turntable. And when that finished, he'd jump back to the beginning of the break on the same song on the original turntable

and then switch back on and on and on and on. Should I say it? Really? Should I? On and on to the break of dawn? I mean, because it was literally to the break of dawn. That's how long Herc would rock the parties until 4 or 5 a.m., but I'm not going to say it. It's cheesy.

Anyways, I digress. This extension of the track, this extension of the beat, this merry-go-round, as Hurt called it, was virtually endless and had the desired effect of keeping kids on the dance floor for long stretches of time. It was so simple, so genius, and it would go down in history as the innovation that sparked the beginning of what we now call hip-hop. These beats that played continuously in the song's breaks, these break beats that Herc played endlessly, inspired dancers to go for it in ways their parents could never dream of. Herk's music inspired them to take what James Brown was doing and to push his dance style over the top,

to reimagine it into something futuristic, athletic, youthful, competitive. So, a new form of dance emerged over the break beats, break dancing by kids who would utilize the time afforded by the extended beats to compete against each other in dance. These kids came to be known as B-boys, identified as much by their dance as they were by their style. Like everyone else within the walls of the Sedgwick Avenue rec room, these kids were from the street, jeans, t-shirts, sneakers.

In the Bronx, it was a far cry fashion-wise from the fur and leather of downtown Manhattan Nightlife. And the crowd was wild. It was dark, mysterious, exciting. Smoke from grass and angel dust hung heavy under the low ceiling and all of it along with the music, created a vibe that was more trance than block party. Herc had a mic in reserve for his boy,

Coke La Rock, to weaponize in an instant in case the crowd needed a little something extra to keep them going. Coke was Herc's party rocker, his de facto master of ceremonies. While Herc kept the beat going, Coke would jump on the mic and call out his friends in the audience, make them laugh, entertain them, guilt them into getting back on the dance floor.

While doing so, Coke would tend to his other job for the night. selling nickel bags of cannabis while on the mic, dispensing dope to his friends on the side. On an average night, a quarter pound of nickel bags in under two hours, all while keeping the party going with Herc with his shoutouts, that took flight from his mic in the form of rhymes inspired by his parents' record collection. Pigmeet Markham's Here Comes the Judge, and Gil Scott Herons, the Revolution will not be televised.

And when Coke La Rock was done, voila. The MC was born. and so was rap as we know it today. Two turntables, a microphone, a breakbeat, an MC, and a rhyme. Herk's parties quickly became legend and were attended by those who would go on to become the founding fathers of hip-hop. Africa Bambata who would unite the warring Bronx neighborhoods with his parties that emphasized community and shared culture. And a young kid who went by the B-boy moniker Grandmaster Flash, who would take Herk's DJ style and evolve it further, going as far as turning his turntables into instruments

in an effort to avoid the clunky, inelegant sounds of switching records by manually dropping the tone arm from one record to the next. Flash would be the first to put his hands on the vinyl to turn back the beat on one table with one hand, while pausing the beat on the other turntable with his other hand, cutting the record from side to side and creating a seamless transition

where the beat was never disrupted, scratching the record for emphasis and effect. It was revolutionary, infectious, and inspiring. Flash, along with another one of Herk's early partygoers, M.C. M.C. M.E. Meli. Mel, would form the group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and by 1978, their regular nights at Disco Fever in the Bronx were legend. Flash's name and hip-hop culture spread through Manhattan's Five Boroughs, making its way to Hollis Queens, a neighborhood where the violent gang the Savage Skulls once reigned supreme.

But for an aspiring 13-year-old Hollis B-Boy in 1978, music, not gangs, was starting to pave his road out. A road that he would travel to bring hip-hop beyond the boroughs to mainstream Middle America and beyond. That B-boy was named Jason Mizell, and he would one day go by the name Jam Master Jay, and his group was called Run DMC. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have a lot of you. some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, and my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in.

Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance like he's about to attack me. Like making karate noises. And his entire the Kardashians family over over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over?

Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things. Zana Muju. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie. to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay. That's another film, Grip, I got two.

Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline. the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network.

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face,

and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, It'll push you to your limits and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened.

Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stick Up Kids sat in the back of the 78 Cadillac, Coop deville. Dressed head to tone, black, black jeans, black, black, black love. their jackets, black hats, all. The bad guys in their own movie. And their driver, Larry, complete and total herb, his best attribute, aside from his cunning, was his lead foot. He pushed the caddy to 90 as soon as he'd hit the on-ramp onto Interstate 95, north out of the city to Boston,

south to Jersey. It didn't matter. Wherever there was money to snatch. Speed was necessary, and there were parties to rock, shows to do, sometimes three in a day. With every appearance, more money. They'd take their fee off the top after the show as was customary for any performer, and as was far from customary. While they were on stage, Larry, the Herb, their driver, would rob unsuspecting promoters and attendees while they were distracted by the ongoing stage show. They'd get them coming and going. Rime, steal, steal, rhyme, rhyme, steal, repeat. For the leather-clad stick-up kids on stage, it was a thrilling way of life. except it was a total fantasy.

A fantasy of one of the stick-up kids, Darrell McDaniels, who, in all reality, was nothing like an actual stick-up kid. He was a freshman at St. John's University, who, as of just a couple years prior, cut his hard-earned academic career short to take the stage name DMC and team up with his Rice High School friend Joseph Simmons to form the rap group, run DMC.

For DMC, the fantasy was a youthful, daydream, but for Jammaster Jay, the fantasy was a little closer to home. Of the three group members, who all hailed from Hollis Queen's New York, Jay's experience was the most street, which isn't to say that Jay was a gang member, but he was hard as nails and not to be fucked with, smart but less academic and more school of Hard Knocks than his two other group members. When Jay was 13 years old, he built himself a reputation of fearlessness. He'd flash what little money he had, daring, older neighborhood real stick-up kids to attempt to tap his pockets just so he could beat them down, whoop their asses, and send them on their way, sending a message to the rest of the block that his

domain was his own. It's like that, and that's the way it is. In addition to being tough, Jay was smart. Despite the fighting in the street antics at the age of 14, Jay was in the smartest group in his class. And this is all to say he was a natural leader, a natural leader who was obsessed with the burgeoning world of rap music being spread by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five and others. But being the leader that he was, Jay wasn't content to imitate his heroes. Naturally, he did what was authentic to him, and ultimately, the complete opposite of Flash, Melly Mel, Bambata, and others. Right around the time of the eighth grade, Jay started to take his personal fashion seriously.

He started shopping for clothes that represented a style he could envision in his head. a style that matched the innovative beats and the excitement of the music that was fueling him. He bought a black velour hat with a feather. He preferred jeans, lee jeans. They fit better than Levi's and were easier to find. Along with the black jeans and black hat, he'd wear a different colored t-shirt and matches color to the shoelaces and his white shell-toe Adidas. So if he wore a blue shirt, blue laces, red shirt, red laces, white shirt, white laces, etc.

The matching was crucial. He'd even match his underwear to one of the other colors he was rocking, but Calvin Klein's aside, the matching of the laces have become a giant pain in the ass. Relacing his adidas every single morning before school was time-consuming, so he decided to just ditch the laces altogether. No shoelaces in his shell to Adidas because no shoelaces matched everything. And his style was born, B-boy style. Jay's B-boy style, out on the streets anyway, wasn't as novel as it sounds.

It was just more fully realized, cultivated, than what other B-boys usually rocked at whatever block party or dance they attended. Jay just took what was being worn on the streets and amped it up a bit, personified it. On the street, it looked normal, if not fully realized, compared to most. But still, aside from the no shoelaces, pretty basic. But once Jay took his style to the stage with his group run DMC, the style became revolutionary. Up to this point, earlier rap performers, Jays and his groupmates' heroes, The Furious Five, the Funky 4 Plus One, Curtis Blow, Sugar Hill gang. They all dressed like they were trying to get into the clubs that their music was rebelling against.

They dressed up, aspirational, like the discos and clubs they were avoiding for their own block parties and rec room jams. Instead of dressing in a way that was relatable to their friends and fans from the hood in the audience, they dressed in leather and feathers, elaborate headdress. and jewelry, matching denim and in some cases even formal wear. It was more village people than East Village, where white punk rock kids, with their own tendencies to dress down, were fast picking up on the hip-hop sounds emanating from north of Central Park, but as of yet, not fully adopting the culture. Instinctively, Jay was on to something.

And so was his band's manager, Russell Simmons, brother of Jay's bandmate, Joseph Runn Simmons. When it came time to record the group, just as Jay was going for something different with his B-boy fashion, Russell was going for something different with the group sound. Despite the incredible musical innovations brought to life by Herc and Flash, when it came to recorded rap music, the genre was still stuck in the dark ages. What was being released on record in the early 80s

was vastly different than what was being played on the streets and in the clubs. Sugar Hill Gang had the first bona fide mainstream rap hit with Rapper's Delight and Funky 4 Plus One would set off a whole new style of rapping with their first single, that's the joint. But as legendary and influential as those songs would become as musical productions, Russell Simmons saw them for what they were, limiting and unrepresentative of what true hip-hop culture was actually about and where it could actually go. Rapper's delight, in essence, was just Sheik's good times, plus a funny story about eating shitty food at a friend's house.

While that's the joint was just a rap over rescue me by a taste of honey. Those songs, despite their lyrical and melodic brilliance, are each built on existing tracks by other artists, samples of whole songs, instrumentalized and extended cut to allow for new rap melodies. None of that sounded like what was being played by rappers and DJs at block parties, in the parks and in rec rooms. It was all too produced to elaborate. The sound on the street was straight.

it down, simple, and begged for something more representative of the street, something hard. Russell Simmons knew that that hardness could be achieved with simplicity of production by stripping away the sonic elements instead of adding to the production. Fuck the full tracks. Forget the Nile Rogers funk guitars and the Bootsie Collins style baselines. Forget about the synths, forget about the strings, lose the bongos, lose the congas, and get rid of those horns, get rid of those flutes and completely eliminate any and everything. that didn't contribute to the bigness of the beat. Strip it all away.

Keep the programmed drums, accent them with other drum samples, and effects were necessary to maximize their impact. Give it all to Jam Master Jada cut and sequence with the rhymes his brother Run and friend DMC would lay over it, while all of them were clad uniquely in their own, fully realized, B-Boy style. This, this was Run DMC, and this was the way. The way toward a new sound, with a new image to accompany

new, previously unimaginable success for any group of rap artists. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

Dennis Leary. I wake up. And I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me. Like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming.

And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction. or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead.

Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do.

You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us.

I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film grape I got to.

Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over it, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart Radio app, Apple, Apple,

podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Scragly Rocker emerged from his CD Times Square Hotel and dragged himself in what was left of his $20 a day allowance out onto the street and over to 9th Avenue to score dope. He needed it, bad. It was a daily habit. Out here on that jagged edge where vice meets inspiration, he could hear the sound of a city and a culture evolving. Stick them by fat boys and Houdini's freaks come out at night.

seeped out of random boom boxes, as did run DMC's rock box. Radio stations were still insisting on playing Tana Gardner's heartbeat and TomTom Club's genius of love. And of course, Blondie's Rapture, all mainstream affiliated bangers that sonically moved beyond disco to flirt with this new style of music known as rap. The rocker loved it, all of it, even if it was completely foreign to the beefy blues-based hard rock

his band was filling coliseums with. His band was Arrowsmith, and his name was Stephen Tyler. He may have been part cartoon character, but there was no part of him that was a dummy. Stephen could sense a shift in youth culture, right there on the streets of New York City. A new form of music was coming, rap music. It was very real, not a fad at all, as its detractors would claim, so real and impactful that one day in the not-too-distant future, it would save his and his bandmate's career.

But first, Stephen needed to save himself. That meant fixing up before his Jones really kicked in, and that meant scoring from one of the various gang-affiliated dealers out on 9th Avenue. Pushers, pimps, muscle, henchmen, they were all the same to Stephen. The only thing that distinguished any of them from the other was their ability to take a $5 bill out of one of his hands and put a tenth of a gram of dope stamped in a neat little wax paper packet into his other. Stephen Tyler remembered this time fondly as he listened to the pitch from David Geffen's henchman. Geffen, at the time, some four years later in 1986, had one of the most powerful gangs in the music industry,

Geffen Records, and the henchman slash A&R Man was desperate, just like Stephen Tyler was. His band, his charge, Stephen Tyler's band, Arrowsmith, couldn't buy a hit in 86, and they were over, weakened by the excessive drug use. and a strong tumble off the charts. The band, once the biggest in the country, was effectively dead. If Geffen Records were going to recoup the millions that had invested in Arrowsmith, and if the A&R man was going to save his job,

then something bold was needed, which was why Geffen's henchman took the meeting with the kid with the new label, death plan, or dead tan, or death jam, or whatever the fuck, a meeting in a goddamn dorm room of all places. The A&R man was no regular suit. His name was John Caledner, and he was known for his long hair, his beard, and discerning ear. He signed XTC and Susie and the Banshees, but still a fucking dorm room.

However, despite the inauspicious digs, he knew he had to take the meeting with the kid. And that kid, Rick Rubin, despite not having a real office to work out of, was currently producing one of the biggest acts on the planet, Run DMC. Run DMC was a goddamn sensation. their self-titled debut had gone gold, their follow-up platinum, and Run DMC was the first rap group to get played on MTV, and at the moment we're getting more airtime from the influential network than Arrowsmith was. Rick Rubin's idea was simple,

mixed the rap vocal stylings in one of the hottest groups going at the time with the hard-hitting riffs of one of the most iconic rock bands of the time, and the opening drumbeat to walk this way was already familiar at block parties. But the three members of Run DMC had to be sold on the idea. It was a cover song. They had plenty of their own rhymes. Wasn't this just the type of artistic compromise that had soured them on the sampled backgrounds of other rap acts?

But a compromise was necessary to win over a larger audience. Arrow Smith needed relevance, collaborating with Run DMC, would give them that. And Run DMC and rap music in general needed to be seen as a credible art form from the mainstream establishment rock press. Working with Arrowsmith would give them that. So a deal was struck, studio time was booked, and the rest, as they say, is history. Just as Rubin suspected,

the collaboration went, gangbusters, rocketing the joint-run DMC Arrowsmith single, a remake of the Arrowsmith classic Walk This Way to number four on the Billboard charts. Arrowsmith was relevant again and on their way to their own singular chart dominance, and for Run DMC, working with Arrowsmith, ushered the group and rap as a genre into the mainstream. RunDMC went on to headlines sold out arena tours in Madison Square Garden.

They became the first rap group to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. They were the first rap group nominated for a Grammy Award, but the gains were short term. Despite Walk This Way's success, ultimately the track was a regression, just as they suspected. And the wheel of success it put them on, caused them to take their eye off the ball, to cease innovating and ultimately left them vulnerable to a potent threat coming out from the streets. As groundbreaking as walked this way was, it was a double-edged sword for Run DMC.

Sure, the genre-melving single blew them up beyond their wildest dreams, but the arrangement of the song and its composition was the exact opposite of the hard, simple, beat-oriented records run DMC came to prominence with. Seesaw slinging the same style while their next record, tougher than leather, suffered creatively, suffered at a time when they could least afford it, a time when the streets of New York were about to give rise to a new breed of MC. Darrell McDaniel sat in his Cadillac stone still.

He was sweating. His signature big-framed black Cazale glasses were sliding down his nose, greased by the perspiration. He cranked the AC, but it didn't matter. The proverbial heat was on. He could feel it beating down on the back of his neck. And the assassin was coming for him. It was only a matter of time.

He knew it. He didn't know where the fatal shot would come from, and frankly, he was tired of looking over his shoulder. Part of him wished it would just happen already and have the whole thing be done with. This thing, this game, the constant pressure of it all. Pressure on the street to stay alive. pressure in his head to stay relevant.

Pressure back home to keep slinging those royalty checks to keep the lights on. So many lights. He could feel the assassin creeping, sense his presence. His man Larry could too. Larry had betrayed him, brought the assassin into his world, welcomed him, thought bringing him around would motivate Dee. All it did was send fear sprinting down his spine. The assassin was no joke, lethal as they come.

And on some completely new trip, He didn't fuck with the old way, the way of the gun. No, he worked a different set of weapons completely, his mind and his tongue. Larry put the cassette into the mouth of DMC's Cadillac cassette player. Dee sunk back into his seat, resigned to listen to the assassin's weapons blast out and accept his fate. The voice of the lyrical assassin Rakim blast out over his DJ Eric B's beat through the speakers. And when Darrell McDaniels heard it, he knew. Run DMC was dead.

Rakim as an MC was something entirely different, completely abnormal to what was accepted as rap before him. His style was so unique that it necessitated the invention of the concept of flow as a means to describe what he was doing with his voice. Rakim grew up on Long Island, away from the Bronx, Hollis, Harlem, and the growing world of hip-hop. To experience it, he had to imagine it. The process of doing so sharpened his imagination, and as a result, the imagery in his lyric, was crystal clear, technical to the listener. As a boy, he grew up playing saxophone and obsessed over bebop. So when the MC bug bit, and he finally got on the mic,

it wasn't Ron or DMC or Mellymel or Cochlorock or Pig Meat Markham who informed his style. It was one of the greatest jazz innovators of all time, John Coltrane. His melodies had little to do with the established MC style on the street, the simplified rhymes that DMC traded on. Instead, they traced the horn melodies Coltrane blue onto his classic records blue train in a love supreme. And the rhythm of it, of his melodies combined with the lyrical imagery, struck a unified technique so influential that it would change hip-hop forever. And leave Run DMC in their career shot down, dead on the side of the road.

As far as Run DMC's future was concerned, Rakim marked the beginning of a new phase in hip-hop's evolution. Eric B and Rakim, public enemy and boogie down productions, would inject consciousness into the scene, one that sounded much more vibrant and compelling than the party-rocking anthems and park jams run DMC in the previous generation of rap, the D, MC Run, and Jam Master J were born out of and traded on. And out on the West Coast,

an entirely new style of hip-hop was emerging from South Central Los Angeles, gangster rap, a style that would soon be as prevalent on the minds of American teenagers as it was on the streets, and all told, the entire shift ultimately left run DMC stylistically irrelevant and creatively spent. The group introduced America to rap and conquered the mainstream with the Walk This Way fueled album Raising Hell in 1986, and their 88 follow-up, tougher than leather, did well, but not nearly as well as its predecessor.

The slip was on, and by the time the group released back from hell in 1990, the writing was on the wall, tagged with thick, bold lines. Darrell DMC McDaniel struggled with depression and pill addictions, overcoming them to write an autobiography. MC Run got religion becoming Reverend Run and a reality TV star with MTV's Run's house. Jam Master Jay kept his feet firmly planted in the game, and in 1989 started Jam Master Jay Records. Part of owning and running a record label is about investing, investing in the future of younger artist. That generosity of spirit suited Jay's personality, a man beloved worldwide and especially

back home in Queens, where he set up shop with the JMJ Records recording studio on Merrick Boulevard. Jay found early success with the signing of a local rapper Curtis Jackson, who went by the name 50 Cent. Fitty, as he's now referred to, was Complete Street, beyond even the gangster rap that shot down run DMC's career. 50 Cent began dealing drugs on the streets. of Jammaster Jay's Queens at the age of 12. Later, a friend introduced him to Jay, who not only recognized Fiddy's emerging talent, but also his authentic image.

Jay recorded his unreleased debut album, and 50 Cent eventually signed with Columbia Records with a controversial as fuck song up his 12-inch sleeve entitled Ghetto Quran. Hold up. There'll be more on this song in 50 Cent in an upcoming episode on Curtis Jackson, but for the purposes of this episode, all you got to know is that,

Ghetto Karan went where no other gangster rap went before. It actually named names. Names of real drug dealers and Queens hustlers, bona fide killers, gangsters from 50 cents' life. The track was controversial for a number of reasons, but this reason landed the snitch label squarely on 50 cents forehead in the street blacklisted 50 cent, putting the word out that anyone who worked with or aligned with 50 cent would be killed.

Jam Master Jay didn't get the memo Or so the story goes 50 cent was well on his way But apparently Jay kept his ties And 50 cent was on the come-up And Jay was barely hanging on to his place In the music industry Times were tight

People close to Jay Have speculated that he had tried Or at least considered the purchase Of a major drug package to offset some debt But that the deal had gone wrong And Jay was being blamed by his partners Either way, on our country. October 30, 2002, Jason Mazzle, aka Jammaster Jay, feared for his life enough that while sitting in his queen's studio lounge playing Madden with his friend, O'Reikio Rincon, he kept a gun at his side, fearful of the danger that he could feel at his door.

Little did Jay know just how real that fear was. At approximately 7.30 p.m., studio receptionist Lydia High buzzed in what one can only assume was a friendly face. Otherwise, why would she have let the person in, who proceeded to storm up the stairs into the studio, gun drawn, and immediately discharge it execution style into Jamaster Jay's head? The unmasked shooter had an accomplice who stood also apparently unmasked, and as court papers claim, quote, pointed his gun at those present in the studio,

ordered them to get on the ground, and provided cover for his associate to shoot and kill Jason Mazzle. Jamaster J was dead, shot in cold blood in his own studio, while his receptionist, who buzzed the shooters in, sat at her desk, where his driver and friends sat next to him playing video games, and his business partner and another friend sat in the adjacent control room working on a new artist's track. Four potential eyewitnesses, two shooters, one dead DJ, and no answers.

How the fuck did this happen? How does this case continue to go unsolved? For as many conspiracy theories as there are, there are zero suspects. The police have turned up in a word, nothing, which is astounding giving the amount of other people who were on the scene during the time of the shooting. The conspiracies live on, as does the confounding nature of the unsolved crime. But regardless, in the end, this is a story about life, not death, about innovation and evolution, how Jamaster J's group,

Run DMC took hip hop from its nascent childhood into adolescence, and yes, the genre run DMC helped mainstream eventually pass them by, but eventually the teenager in all of us dies. In this episode of the so-called Music and True Crime podcast is heavy on music and light on crime but teeming with truth. The truth that Jam Master Jay and Run DMC brought to hip-hop culture, repping true style and true attitude, style and style and attitude. style and attitude they saw happening all around them in their own neighborhood. Beboy style.

Beboy rhymes, party rockers, park jams, jeans, t-shirts, sneakers, honest, relatable, groundbreaking, entertaining, inspiring, immortal. Jam Master Jay's killers may be in the wind, but his and Run DMC's legacy will never disappear. And that is anything but a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this. This Grace Land was created by yours truly and his produced in partnership with double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com.

If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month. Weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio, collections and early access to merchandise and events.

Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at disgraceland pod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at disgraceland pod. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in.

Do that. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gait and Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Mongeau. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the On I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes a suspect is found guilty before a verdict is ever read in court.

On the Wicked Words podcast, I talk with the writers who dig deep into the cases that changed history, including Marsha Clark, who went from prosecuting one of the most famous murder cases to writing crime fiction. It doesn't matter that you didn't take part in the murder. If you were at the scene at all, you're guilty of murder. Every week, the real story is revealed. Join us every Monday for new episodes of Wicked Words. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.