← DISGRACELAND
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- [00:05]
Jake Brennan
Double Elvis.
- [00:07]
Narrator
You know how it goes. Getting super into something that can lead to watching it, listening to it, reading about it, maybe even picking up something to go with it. That's where prime comes in.
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Amazon prime isn't just fast free delivery, though to be honest, that's a lifesaver. It's also prime video, Amazon Music, and so much more.
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Whatever the interest, it's on Prime.
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Lately there's been a dive into new recipes, catching up on lifestyle documentaries, and building the perfect playlist to match. And prime has been part of it all.
- [00:38]
It's like a one stop shop for any passion, whether it's fashion, food, family, or discovering the next favorite show.
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So for anyone always exploring something new or rediscovering something meaningful, prime is right there.
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Whatever you're into, it's on Prime.
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From streaming to shopping, it's on Prime.
- [00:56]
Visit Amazon.comprime to get more out of.
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Whatever you're into Amazon.comprime ready for a.
- [01:03]
Jake Brennan
New way to play? Chumpa Casino lets you spin and play your way to fun anytime, anywhere. Enjoy classic slots, blackjack and live casino games, all with just a few clicks. Have fun with no fuss. Simply sign up and receive your free welcome bonus plus daily login rewards to keep the fun going. Let's Chumba. No purchase necessary. VGW Group voidware prohibited byLaw21 TNCS apply Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Run DMC are insane, but not in the way you think. Not in a particular Disgraceland 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 Run DMC is more about the group's music than it is about true crime. Run DMC were the first rap group to grace the COVID 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. Ever. On this episode, truth and Hard beats Virtuoso Cheese the evolution of hip hop in a dead dj. I'm Jake Brennan and this is disgrace. 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 deincentivized landlords to care for their properties. As a result, the borough's apartment buildings fell into disrepair en masse. 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 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 JB's, Simon Day and the Fatback Band ran deep and far all the way up Lenox 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 rec room of the 1520 Sedgwick Avenue housing projects on August 11, 1973. DJ Kool Herc's 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 hang. Sweating it out on the dance floor together. Admission 25 cents for the ladies, 50 cents for the fellas. 9pm to 4am 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 Herc improvised. He'd start out with the funk, with the Jimmy Castor Bunch and the Enclosure Incredible Bongo band. But when they're hits, It's Just Begun and Apache cut 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 partygoers deeper and deeper into the abandon of the dance floor. When DJ Kool Herc came to the breaks in those tracks, he did something revolutionary. He kept them going. DJ Kool Herc 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, Herk would jump to the same point on the same record on the other turntable. And when that finished, he jumped back to the beginning of the break on the same song on the original turntable and then switched back on and on and on. Should I say it? Really? Should I? On and 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. Until 4 or 5am But I'm not gonna 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 breakbeats that Herc played endlessly inspired dancers to go for it in ways their parents could never dream of. Herc'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 and 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 a block party. Herc had a mic in reserve for his boy Coke Laroque 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 friend 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, Pygmy Markham's Here Comes the Judge and Gil Scott Heron's the Revolution Will Not Be Televised. And when cochlear rock was done, voila. The MC was born. And so was rap as we know it today. Two turntables, a microphone, a breakbeat, an emcee and a rhyme. Herc's parties quickly became legend and were attended by those who would go on to become the founding fathers of hip hop. Afrika Bambaata, 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 Herc'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 Herc's early partygoers, MC Melly Mel, would form the group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious five. And by 1978, the their regular nights at Disco Fever in the Bronx were legend. Flash's name in 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 Meisel and he would one day go by the name Jam Master J. And his group was called Run dmc. I love my kids. I spoil the crap out of them. But until I started using Monarch Money and used their budgeting app and I actually sat down and I was actually going through what I was spending, that I realized how much I was spending on garbage that my kids frankly don't eat, they've got this whole complete financial command center for everything. I mean, it's not just for what I'm spending, it's for what I'm saving. It's for what I'm investing in. It's for what my goals are, my family's goals. But now that I have this financial command center, I can integrate my kids savings accounts as well. And I can clearly show them what we're spending money on and I can show them how much money they have and how quickly that would go down to zero if they were to be spending $70 on a Lego box on a whim, you know, something they're going to use for, I don't know, 90 minutes before they forget about it for the rest of their lives. But of course, Monarch Money does so much more than that. You can easily get a hold of your personal finances, you can become Your own personal cfo. Like I said, this whole financial command center that's part of their budgeting app is fantastic. It's going to give you visibility and control into what you're spending, into what you're saving. It's going to help you earn more and start growing. Highly recommend Monarch. Start managing your finances to build the life you actually want. Guys, without a clear financial picture, financial dreams are just that. They're just dreams, okay? And they can feel out of reach. And Monarch makes managing money simple, even if you're super busy. Especially if you're super busy. All right. Monarch Money, the budgeting app that I'm talking about, over a million households are using it. It was named Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money. Use code disgraceland@monimalmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% of your first year@monatormoney.com with code DISGRACELAND. Hey, discos. If you want more Disgraceland, be sure to listen every Thursday to our weekly after party bonus episode, where we dig deeper into the stories we tell in our full weekly episodes. In these after party bonus episodes, we dive into your voicemails and texts, emails and DMs and discuss your thoughts on the wild lives and behavior of the artists and entertainers that we're all obsessed with. So leave me a message at 617-906-6638, disgracelandpodgmail.com orisgracelandpod on the socials and join the conversation every Thursday in our afterparty bonus episode. I think the last time I spoke to you guys about Quint, I told you about the transit quilted duffel bag that I got from my wife. Well, I got myself a Napa leather duffel bag from Quint as well, and I just used it. We used both our bags on this family trip that we took out west. I love this bag, okay? It looks cool. It looks casual. It looks way more expensive than it is. Not that I care about that, but it just, it's good quality, and you can kind of tell when you just look at it. I stuffed it with my new double brush stretch jacket from Quince. You know, when you're. You're going out to dinner, it's summertime, it's too hot to wear a jacket, but you're going somewhere kind of dressy, but you don't want to wear a blazer. You're kind of in that sort of formal fashion. No, man's, land. That's where the double brushed stretch jacket from Quince comes into play. It dresses you up casually and smartly and you can rock it out around town as well if you're just running errands and you want to look good. This jacket is my new favorite addition to my wardrobe and like I said it along with my Go to Quince Merino all season base tees fit perfectly in my Nappa leather duffel bag from Quints. The best part of all this everything with Quints is half the cost of similar brands. Okay, that's important. That matters. And they can do this because they work directly with top artisans. They cut out the middlemen and Quint gives you luxury pieces without the markup. So keep it classic and cool with long lasting staples from quints. Go to Quince.com Disgraceland for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E.com Disgraceland to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com Disgraceland the stick up kids sat in the back of the 78 Cadillac Coupe Deville dressed head to toe in black. Black jeans, black leather jackets, black hats. All the bad guys in their own movie. 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 he 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 em coming and going. Rhyme 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 Jam Master Jay. The fantasy was a little closer to home. Of the three group members who all hailed from Hollis, Queens, 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 a 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 and 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 5 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, Mellie, Mel, Bambaata, 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 match his color to the shoelaces in 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 had 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 toe Adidas, because no shoelaces matched everything. And a 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 for the 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, Jay's and his groupmates, Heroes, the Furious Five, the Funky Four one, Curtis Blow, Sugarhill 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 headdresses 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 Run Simmons. When it came time to record the group, just as Jay was going for something different with his B boyfriend, Fashion, Russell was going for something different with the group's 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. Sugarhill Gang had the first bonafide mainstream rap hit with Rapper's Delight. And Funky 4:1 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 chic's good times, plus a funny story about either 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, too elaborate. The sound on the street was stripped 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 Rodgers funk guitars and the Bootsy Collins style basslines for 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 where necessary to maximize their impact. Give it all to Jam Master J to 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. What's up, guys? I'm headed out for a short vacation next week. There is a beach involved. So for the past month or so, I've been doing my best to get the dad bod in beach shape. One of the things that I do to stay healthy, as you all know, is I take groons daily. I love the taste, I love how they give me energy, make me feel more balanced, which is tough to explain, but you guys know what I'm talking about. When you're just going through the day and you're just like, I feel right, I feel good. Gruens helped me achieve that. They're not your average vitamins. Grunds packs greens, prebiotics, 20 plus essential vitamins and minerals, plus 60 plus whole food ingredients into eight gummies a day. Gruen's ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications because Groon's ingredients get you serious results. If you guys are interested in feeling better and getting your nutrient levels right, getting that gut health right, getting more energy, better immunity, better recovery. Get in on the new Raspberry lemonade flavored Groons that just launched. This flavor is only available through August and like I said, tastes great. But honestly, the green gummies that I usually take, they taste great as well. You can't go wrong with grunds. Grab your limited edition Raspberry Lemonade Grunds now and get up to 52% off. Use the code Disgraceland Possibility means you have a chance. Passion opens the door to all possibilities. When I feel like anything's possible, I feel kind of giddy. I want to be an astronaut, an artist, be an actress to visit another country. All I need is a backpack and a pair of shoes and I'll find a way I'm able to do anything.
- [27:27]
Narrator
I set my mind to.
- [27:28]
Jake Brennan
I've never felt like more things are possible than right now. In the right shoes, anything's possible. Dsw countless shoes at bragworthy prices. Imagine the possibilities.
- [27:38]
Narrator
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- [28:08]
Jake Brennan
The scraggly rocker emerged from his seedy Times Square hotel and dragged himself and what was left of $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 Em by Fat Boys and Houdini's Freaks Come Out At Night seeped out of random boomboxes, as did run DMC's Rockbox. Radio stations were still insisting on playing Tana Gardner's Heartbeat in 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 Aerosmith and his name was Steven 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 Steven. The only thing that distinguished any of them from the other was their ability to take a $5bill 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. Steven Tyler remembered this time fondly as he listened to the pitch from David Geffen's henchmen. 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 and R man was desperate just like Steven Tyler was his band, his charge. Steven Tyler's band Aerosmith 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 was going to recoup the millions it had invested in Aerosmith, and if the A and R man was going to save his job, then something bold was needed. Which was why Geffen's henchmen took the meeting with the Kid, with the new label, Death Plan or Dead Tin or Def Jam or whatever the fuck. A meeting in a goddamn dorm room of all places. The A and 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 Aerosmith was. Rick Rubin's idea was simple mix the rap vocal stylings of 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 drum beat 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 and 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. Aerosmith needed random 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 Aerosmith would give them that. So a deal was struck. Studio time was booked and the rest, as they say, is history. Just as Ruben suspected, the collaboration went gangbusters, rocketing the joint. Run DMC Aerosmith single, a remake of the Aerosmith classic Walk this Way to number four on the Billboard charts. Aerosmith was relevant again and on their way to their own singular chart dominance. And for Run dmc, working with Aerosmith ushered the group and rap as a genre into the mainstream. Run DMC went on to headline sold out arena tours in Madison Square Garden. They became the first rap group to appear on the COVID 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 up from the streets. As groundbreaking as Walk this Way was, it was a double edged sword for Run dmc. Sure, the genre melding 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 See Saw 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. Darryl McDaniel sat in his Cadillac stone still. He was sweating his signature big frame. Black kazao 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 D. 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. D sunk back into his seat, resigned to listen to the assassin's weapons blast out and accept his fate. The voice of the lyrical assassination assassin Rakim, blast out over his DJ Eric B's beat through the speakers. And when Daryl McDaniels heard it, he knew Run DMC was dead. Rakim as an MC was something entirely different, completely abnormal to what was accepted as wrath 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 lyrics was crystal clear, Technicolor 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 was. It wasn't Run or DMC or Mellie Mel or Cochlear Rock or Pyg 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 blew 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 and 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 in 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 and 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, Darryl DMC McDaniels struggled with depression and pill addictions, overcoming them to write an autobiography. MC Run Gut Religion becoming Reverend Run and a reality TV star. With MTV's Run's House, Jam Master J kept his feet firmly planted in the game and in 1989 started Jam Master J Records. Part of owning and running a record label is about investing, investing in the future of younger artists. 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 Jam Master Jay's Queens at the age of 12. Later, a friend introduced him to Jay, who not only recognized recognized 50'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 and 50 Cent in an upcoming episode on Curtis Jackson. But for the purposes of this episode, all you gotta know is that Ghetto Quran went where no other gangsta rap went before. It actually named names, names of real drug dealers and queens, hustlers, bonafide killers, gangsters from 50 Cent's life. The track was controversial for a number of reasons, but this reason landed the Snitch label squarely on 50 Cent's forehead and the street blacklisted 50 Cent, putting the word out that anyone who worked with or aligned with 50 Cent would be killed. Jam Master Jade he didn't get the memo, or so the story goes. 50 Cent was well on his way, but apparently Jay kept his ties. 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 October 30, 2002, Jason Meisel, aka Jam Master Jay, feared for his life enough that while sitting in his Queen's studio lounge playing Madden with his friend Riccio 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 7:30pm 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 discharged execution style into Jam Master J'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 Meisel. Jam Master 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 friend 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 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 given 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 Jam Master J's group Run DMC took hip hop from its nascent childhood into adolescence. And yes, the genre Run DMC helped mainstream eventually passed them by. But eventually the teenager in all of Us dies. And this episode of the so called Music in True Crime podcast is heavy on music and light on crime. But teeming with truth. The truth that Jam Master JJ and run DMC brought to hip hop culture repping true style and true attitude. Style and attitude they saw happening all around them in their own neighborhood. B Boy style B Boy rhymes Party rockers park jams jeans, T shirts, sneakers. Honest, relatable, groundbreaking, entertaining, inspiring, Immortal. Jam Master J'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 is Disgraceland. Foreign Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page@gracelandpod.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 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 disgracelandpod.com membership for details, rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter and Facebook @Disgracelandpod and on YouTube at YouTube.com Disgracelandpod Rocka Rolla He's a bad bad man if.
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Narrator
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