EMP|SFM Oral History Videos

Category: Hip-Hop

Video Title: Essence of Hip-Hop

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Who: DMC, aka Darryl McDaniels
What: MC
Interviewed: November 5, 1998
Where: New York City

The Players:
DMC formed Run-DMC with DJ Run and Jam Master Jay in the early 1980s, and the trio quickly established themselves as the first hardcore rap group.

Learn more:EMP's exhibit, Yes Yes Y'All, is based on the book of the same name by Jim Fricke and Charlie Ahearn. The exhibit features rare photographs and artifacts of hip-hop's founders and stars, old school and new, including Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Kool Herc, Melle Mel, Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Caz, Rahiem, Fab 5 Freddy, Tony Tone, and DMC.

Read the transcript:

DMC:
This is the whole essence of rap for everybody out there listening [rapping]: Not anyone can write a rap and say yes y'all.But a real DJ rapper, you do not call, because you can't write a rhyme at a quarter to two, to be a real DJ rapper before the day is through. Now all your MCs they're all like that, you gotta take a message from the good old cat. You need a voice that is clear, a DJ like Chase, a good imagination and a strong steady pace. You gotta have both feet on the ground, and you can't be a duck, you gotta be down. You gotta be looking good at all times, but you gotta have tough and original rhymes. Put all that together and you know hat it brings to Grand Master and I'm runnin' things. So JDL ha...

Then you started to go ha, ha, ha. JDL ha hoo, just so much, so much...personality, and motivation. My throat is so homeboy funny, get on my mic with your rhymes galore. Then he says, "Some people seem to think that they be an MC. You need a closet full of clothes and lots of jewelry. Pocket full of dollars, walkers every flavor," those were the shoes popular at the time. "A stuck-up attitude and that kind of behavior, I'm sorry to say, that's how it was before, but people ain't goin' for that no more. You got to give a performance 'cause by night you should know that you're giving a party and not a fashion show." And just me hearin' those words right there knew that the thing that I was doing, "C to a apple, apple to a core, I am the c with the rhymes galore. Rock a rhyme for me and then a rhyme for you, and everybody catch the bugaloo for you."

You remember my early rhymes and stuff like that. But those are the things that started to get lost when rappers was making records, you know what I'm sayin'? Even the transition from 1980 into '90 the way rappers now, everything is about iced out, and Rolex, and this and that, and everybody's talking about mills, and record deals, and this and that. The reason why Run-DMC lasted so long, we just [rapping] Jam Master Jay the big beat blaster, he gets better 'cause you know he hasta. It's '83 and he's a little faster, and only practice makes a real Jam Master. J-a-y, all the letters, it's not about the stuff that, it's not about any material, the material, it's about, it's about rock'n'roll, you know what I'm sayin'?

It's about rock'n'roll; it's about the heart and what's coming through, and that's what Cold Crush personified. They used to tease the Cold Crush, Oh they bones, they don't got, you know...Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, everybody started dressin' up, they had a little bit of money. They used to tease the Cold Crush. So they bums from the Bronx. But one thing they had that nobody else had? They had heart, and they had the essence of hip-hop, what that means. And that's why everything we do is just the emulation of them. And I'm not embarrassed to say that, you know, and we always say it. The reason why we're def 'cause we're out to beat the Cold Crush, not just back then, every day because the thing that they did is untouchable.

As a matter of fact there was tapes of the Cold Crush Four vs. the Force MCs. Before the Force MDs became the singing group they used to be the Force MCs, but they was incredible, too. It wasn't as good as the Cold Crush, although they might have been, but I loved the Cold Crush because the Cold Crush was just harder. Like how we make our music hard, but the Force MCs, they had crazy routines too. They did "The Adam's Family." "Dr. Rock, Dr. Rock"—that was their DJ name—"we're the Force MCs from Staten Island, and on the ferry boat we came sailin'. We go back and forth, and forth and back and keep the Sucker MCs on off our track. And on the microphone you know this is where we belong. Ha, ha, ha, ha well I'm the M-e-r, the C-u-r ride, the baddest MC that you can't deny with my..." Just, you know, crazy things. But the Cold Crush, Cold Crush came along shut everybody up, and you just had to look at them because now, how they looked or what they talked about and how they did it.