The group that Rick Rubin called “The Beatles of rap”
Calling any artist ‘The Beatles’ of a particular genre can be a bit of a double-edged sword. As much as any band might like the idea of being in the company of legends like the Fab Four, many curses come with being the next version of history’s greatest group, whether that’s the responsibility to deliver quality material or having that many eyes on whatever the next project you have in the pipeline. However, in terms of raw impact on the hip-hop world, Rick Rubin thought only one act was the closest thing that the genre had to the 1960s legends.
Then again, The Beatles of any genre isn’t going to someone who has solid hooks or vocal harmonies by any stretch. The whole appeal behind The Beatles was about doing something that no one had ever seen before, and by the time rap officially started in the late 1970s, it wasn’t clear that it had any staying power beyond being yet another offshoot of disco.
Although many rock fans would have proudly stomped out disco for questionable reasons, Rubin never saw a problem with rap. He had grown up as a child of punk rock, and that DIY aesthetic of making music on your own terms spoke to kids who never dreamed of being the Jimmy Pages of the world.
So when Rubin formed Def Jam with Russell Simmons, Run-DMC was among the first bands to blow him away. Sugarhill Gang might have come first, but Run-DMC were the ones inventing the new school of rap, whether that was hearing Run and DMC trade verses midway through or bragging about their skills behind the mic whenever they played tunes like ‘It’s Like That’ or ‘It’s Tricky’.
Like The Beatles before them, they weren’t about to stop once they dominated one style of music. Even though they used rock instruments as an aesthetic on ‘King of Rock’ or their version of ‘Walk This Way’, they indirectly helped pioneer the rap-rock movement years before it happened with artists like Rage Against the Machine.
While Rubin believed in Run-DMC as a cultural entity, he said that it was that blend of rock and rap that helped push it over the line for record companies, saying, “They were The Beatles of rap music, but someone at the record business said, ‘What do you attribute the success to? After all, it’s not music’. The purpose behind [‘Walk This Way’] wasn’t to be a hit. It was to explain that rap music is not foreign.”
Regarding the influence of rap, ‘Walk This Way’ might be as important as ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ was back in 1967. From there, the samples from a record by A Tribe Called Quest or a Nas record were suddenly a lot more familiar to people who would have probably never listened to a rap record outside of Beastie Boys.
So, really, Run-DMC might actually have more influence over rap than The Beatles have over theirs to some degree. While the Fab Four had taken the template of what Elvis Presley had done and pushed them to their limits whenever they went into the studio, Run-DMC was the equivalent of Elvis Presley shocking the world with the same camaraderie you’d get out of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
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