47 Fun Facts About Run-DMC

In which New York City neighbourhood was Run-DMC formed?

Hollis, Queens. All three grew up in the middle-class neighbourhood, where Run and DMC first rapped for local DJ Jam Master Jay in a park.

Run-DMC's 1988 single 'Mary, Mary' reworked a 1960s song by which pop group?

The Monkees. Michael Nesmith wrote it before he joined the TV band, and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band recorded it before the Monkees released their own version.

Which member of Run-DMC handled the turntables?

Jason Mizell. Run had started out as a DJ himself, but the group's turntables went to Jam Master Jay, already the most popular DJ in their neighbourhood park.

Which promoter, the elder brother of one member, managed Run-DMC?

Russell Simmons. He co-founded Def Jam, yet the act he managed, his own brother's group, never recorded for the label.

As a teenager, the future Run worked the turntables onstage for which older rapper?

Kurtis Blow. Blow's manager was Run's own elder brother, and the teenage DJ was billed as 'the Son of Kurtis Blow'.

Despite their close ties to Def Jam, Run-DMC recorded for which independent label?

Profile Records. One Def Jam founder managed the group and the other produced their biggest album, so fans often assume they were on the label, but they never signed to it.

What was the A-side of Run-DMC's debut single?

It's Like That. Backed with 'Sucker M.C.'s', the 1983 record swapped party rhymes for talk of unemployment over a spare, pounding drum-machine beat.

Run-DMC's 1984 debut was the first rap album to earn what?

A gold record. Rap was then a singles business where albums rarely sold, so the label's co-founder asked only for a few more songs to round out the hits the trio already had.

Which 1984 Run-DMC single, driven by a blazing guitar solo, had the first rap video in regular rotation on MTV?

Rock Box. Run and DMC disliked the guitar-heavy mix and gave radio a version without it, but the take with Eddie Martinez's solo was the one that caught on.

Which double act play the three-card monte hustlers in Run-DMC's 'It's Tricky' video?

Penn & Teller. The rappers win every hand and shut the street scam down, and by the end of the clip the magicians are on stage in Japan passing themselves off as Run-DMC.

Which 1986 Run-DMC album, their third, reached number three on the Billboard 200?

Raising Hell. Its remake of a 1970s rock hit won Top 40 radio play that rap had rarely been given, carrying the album to suburban rock fans new to the music.

Who produced Run-DMC's third album alongside their manager?

Rick Rubin. Feeling the nearly finished record needed something for rock fans, he pushed the reluctant trio into remaking a 1970s hard-rock song.

With which rock band did Run-DMC record their crossover hit 'Walk This Way'?

Aerosmith. The remake reached number four, six places higher than the band's own 1970s original, and restarted their stalled career.

Run-DMC's biggest hit, 'Walk This Way', took its title from a gag in which Mel Brooks film?

Young Frankenstein. Stuck for a title, members of the band that first recorded the song saw the film on a studio break and borrowed Marty Feldman's line to Gene Wilder.

What does the rock singer famously do in Run-DMC's 'Walk This Way' video?

Breaks through a wall between two studios. The two acts begin as feuding neighbours drowning each other out, and the smashed wall leads to them sharing one stage.

What was Run-DMC's original plan for 'Walk This Way'?

Just rap over a sample of it. Run and DMC knew only the opening beat they rhymed over at shows, and they gave the visiting rock stars a chilly welcome when a full remake was pressed on them.

Which Adidas shoe, nicknamed the shell toe, did Run-DMC celebrate in 'My Adidas'?

Superstar. The 1969 basketball shoe had been overtaken on court by newer designs, and the song answered a rap that had mocked such footwear as 'felon sneakers'.

At which venue did Run-DMC fans hold their Adidas aloft, clinching the shoe deal?

Madison Square Garden. The group's management had invited an Adidas executive to the 1986 show, and the trio told the crowd to hold up their shoes during 'My Adidas'.

How did Run-DMC famously wear their Adidas sneakers?

Without laces. Earlier rap stars had performed in spangled stage costumes, and Run-DMC's unlaced street shoes helped make everyday dress the uniform for rappers.

Which 1985 film, a fictionalised account of their manager's rise, featured Run-DMC?

Krush Groove. Their manager co-produced the story of his own rise but handed his part to Blair Underwood, making his film debut, and took a cameo as a club owner.

At which 1985 benefit concert did Run-DMC perform?

Live Aid. They went on in Philadelphia straight after Black Sabbath, a rap act on a rock bill, and played 'King of Rock'.

Which magazine put Run-DMC on its cover, a first for a hip-hop act?

Rolling Stone. Its December 1986 story, 'Run-D.M.C. Is Beating the Rap', let the trio answer critics who blamed their music for gang fights at their arena shows.

Which Clarence Carter holiday song is sampled on Run-DMC's 1987 Christmas single?

Back Door Santa. The trio at first balked at making a Christmas record, and their publicist talked them round once Jam Master Jay had worked Carter's 1968 song into the track.

Which cause did the 1987 charity album carrying Run-DMC's Christmas single support?

Special Olympics. The album series it launched has raised many millions for the charity, and Run-DMC's track was the first record's only newly written song.

Which band sued Run-DMC two decades on for sampling 'My Sharona' on 'It's Tricky'?

The Knack. Explaining the twenty-year wait, its songwriters said they had only recently learned that the 1986 hit was built on their riff.

Which act joined Run-DMC on the 1987 Together Forever Tour?

The Beastie Boys. The acts were already studio neighbours: when the 'Walk This Way' session had no bass guitar, one of the Beasties went home and fetched his.

Which 1988 Run-DMC album shares its title with a crime film the trio starred in that year?

Tougher Than Leather. Unhappy with how tame their first film had been, the trio planned this one as a violent revenge story in which they hunt down a friend's killers.

Which Late Night with David Letterman regular plays the guard in Run-DMC's 'King of Rock' video?

Larry 'Bud' Melman. Actor Calvert DeForest, in his Letterman guise, tells the trio 'you guys don't belong in here' at a rock museum, and they storm straight past him.

Which 1990 Run-DMC album dabbled in new jack swing?

Back from Hell. Chasing a tougher, more current sound, the group saw the album stall at number 81 after two straight top-ten records.

Which 1993 Run-DMC comeback album, made with Pete Rock and Q-Tip, topped the R&B chart?

Down with the King. After a new jack swing misfire and three years away, rap's veterans hired the hottest producers of the day to catch up with a scene that had moved on without them.

In which 1988 action film does a limo driver play Run-DMC's Christmas rap on the car stereo?

Die Hard. Limo driver Argyle plays it for John McClane on Christmas Eve, and the film's long afterlife helped turn the rap into a seasonal standard.

Which group and which rapper were discovered by Jam Master Jay's label JMJ Records?

Onyx and 50 Cent. Jay signed Onyx before their 1993 breakthrough, then taught the unknown 50 Cent how to count bars, write choruses and structure a song.

Which MTV reality series, named after a 1988 Run-DMC song, followed Joseph Simmons's family from 2005?

Run's House. It recast the hard-rhyming rapper as Rev Run, an ordained minister raising a large family in suburban New Jersey, with the old single as its theme tune.

What did Darryl McDaniels discover about his own childhood as an adult?

He had been adopted. His mother told him while he was researching his memoir, and his search for his birth mother became a VH1 documentary that ends with their reunion.

Which Sarah McLachlan song did Run-DMC's DMC credit with turning his life around?

Angel. He heard it on the radio at his lowest point and says it saved his life, and McLachlan herself later sang on his solo single 'Just Like Me'.

Which future rap star, then 16, wrote the lyrics of Run-DMC's 1985 single 'Can You Rock It Like This'?

LL Cool J. The teenager had got his own break by mailing a homemade demo tape to a record label that was run from a college dorm room.

Where was Jam Master Jay shot dead in October 2002?

At his recording studio in Queens. Fans built a memorial of Adidas sneakers, albums and flowers outside, and nobody was charged with the killing for eighteen years.

Which New York school did Jam Master Jay co-found in 2002, the year of his death?

Scratch DJ Academy. He launched it with two partners on the premise that anyone could learn the DJ's art, and the school carried on after he was killed that October.

In 2009 Run-DMC became only the second hip-hop act to enter which institution?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Eminem inducted them, 24 years after their 'King of Rock' video showed a guard telling the trio they did not belong in a rock museum.

Which honour did the Recording Academy give Run-DMC in 2016?

Lifetime Achievement Award. In the trio's mid-1980s prime the Grammys had no rap category at all: the first one was presented only in 1989.

Which Jamaican dancehall star guested on Run-DMC's 1985 track 'Roots, Rap, Reggae'?

Yellowman. Shunned as a child in Kingston because of his albinism, he became one of Jamaica's biggest dancehall stars, and the duet was one of the first meetings of rap and dancehall.

In Run-DMC's 1985 film, the manager and his rapper brother both fall for which Prince protégée?

Sheila E. She had no part in the rap scene the film portrays: Warner Bros., the studio behind it and her own record label, installed her to give the story a love interest.

A gang riot at a 1986 Run-DMC concert in which California city left dozens of people injured?

Long Beach. Blamed in the press for the violence, the trio went on Los Angeles radio station KDAY to take calls and urge the gangs to make peace.

Whose 1998 dance remix of an early Run-DMC single went to number one across much of Europe?

Jason Nevins. In Britain his remix kept the Spice Girls' 'Stop' at number two, ending their run of six straight chart-toppers.

At which venue did Run-DMC give what they called their final performance in August 2023?

Yankee Stadium. The concert marked fifty years since DJ Kool Herc's block parties in the same borough, the Bronx gatherings counted as the birth of hip-hop.

Which national institution added Run-DMC's 1986 album to its registry of historically significant recordings?

The Library of Congress. Three decades after critics blamed the group's music for violence at its shows, the national library chose the album for permanent preservation.

For which WWF wrestling faction did Run-DMC record the entrance theme 'The Kings'?

D-Generation X. The track opened WWF Aggression, a 2000 album on which rap acts re-recorded the entrance music of the federation's wrestlers.