Raising Hell and a New Generation of Rap LPs
This week celebrates the 38th anniversary of Run-D.M.C.’s milestone album Raising Hell. This article will unbox the musicological facets of the album itself, and also explore the broader contemporaneous cultural context of Raising Hell, and further seek to amplify the dawn of a new era of album. Ultimately, this article will attest that 1986 brought the rap LP - as a reification of hip hop culture - greater presence and into clearer focus.
Raising Hell was released on 15th May 1986 by Profile Records, and subsequently achieved a global release via support by established labels London Records, Mercury, Metronome, PolyGram, King’s, and Jugoton. From Yugoslavia to Singapore, hell was being raised.
Even before the sonics and their impact in 1986 and beyond, Raising Hell held a mystique and curiosity purely through its sleeve. There was the purple sleeve with the red back that I bought in HMV. Then, a few weeks later, a friends of mine returned from a trip to West Germany with a copy in a green sleeve with a lucid blue back and bright orange text. Then I clocked the cassette – red? Bright red? You gotta be kidding me. This album was already a palimpsest of sleeve design, and the colour wheel trip forced a thought … how many variations are out there? In some manner, this is suggestive of the multifaceted approach to the creation of Raising Hell’s sound.
Last year, Jay Quan wrote a super concise article which talked about the essence of Raising Hell for Rock The Bells, and across social media the celebration of Raising Hell has been prominent this week, so in a sense, I was in a quandary whether to write about it or not. What forced the decision for me, was opening the course handbook for the Music Cultures module I am about to examine. I had no prior knowledge of the module or any detailed content as an external examiner before being invited to assess, yet there, as I was prolificating about the content for this week’s article, I opened the handbook and the first image was that famous studio photograph with Rick Rubin, Russell Simonds, Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith shot during the studio sessions for ‘Walk This Way’. As a nonbeliever of chance but a champion of cosmic coincidence, I set about this article.
Raising Hell deepens the rock rap sensibility that Run-D.M.C.’s previous LP King Of Rock affirmed through its insightful timbre and infectious cadence, and herein lies the first point of significance of this article. These insightful and infections sonic representations clearly follow an intensely focused trajectory; the uplift from King Of Rock to Raising Hell is almost spiritual. How so? All twelve songs – from the elongated title track to the ort of ‘Son Of Byford’ – itself almost a reprise of ‘Hit It Run’ – is the food of the hip hop gods.
For the first time, many audiences were party to a reification of traditional DJ praxes through Jam Master Jay’s wizardry on ‘Peter Piper’. No more were cuts in chorus breaks simply heard, but back and forth beat matching with a subtle underslung 808 kick during lyrical delivery were apparent. The positionality of ‘Peter Piper’ as ode to the DJ-as-musician (much like ‘Jam Master Jay’ and ‘Jam-Master Jammin’’) and ode to the Roland TR-808 - the break of Bob James’ ‘Take Me To The Mardi Gras’ both working in synergy with one of the most established pieces of teknology in hip hop history - act as a gateway into a fluid new world of breaks on rap record, as much as it acts as a respectful departure from drum-machine and electro-rap.
There too are the juggling cowbells and clanging congas, open hi-hats and creative drum rolls of the go-go jam ‘Is It Live’, a song which, through a cut up soundbite of LL’s ‘El Shabazz’, poses a rhetoric and persuasive question which challenges the percussive culture of the time - significant in its inducement.
Then there is the bass-heavy minimalist ‘Dumb Girl’ – a definite acknowledgment to Larry Smith (subconscious or not - this could even be a Whodini track) – the mischievous piano riff of ‘You Be ‘Illin’, and the unquestionably drum-tough ‘My Adidas’ and ‘Proud To Be Black’. Add the title track and the biggest crossover hit ever, and the world was witnessing the makings of genre redefinition.
One song still to mention is ‘Perfection’, the second slowest rap jam of 1986 running at 85 bpm. Although Beastie Boys’ ‘Slow And Low’ paces at 84 bpm, there is something about the unaccompanied percussion with its confident open hi-hat and swinging snare that oscillates gorgeously with the lyrical delivery. Furthermore, the heavy drums and incessant rolls which consistently switch up speak of rock; a self-sonnet to the drummer, or, give the drummer some of that polyphonics.
Then, the title song ‘Raising Hell’ seems long. At 5 minutes 33 seconds, ‘Raising Hell’ runs at almost two minutes longer than the next lengthiest song. This is not insignificant; whilst it is true that album title songs attract a sense of length and musical sustaining – particularly when they are not intended to serve also as single releases - ‘Raising Hell’ additionally hints with some intent at the idea of the album rock song, which during the preceding decade-and-a-half had experienced a seismic shift in length through a progressive lens.
This direction of travel is also accentuated by the song’s chords and solos – all performed by Rick Rubin via the electric guitar, positioned in an interesting dialectic with Joe Perry’s playing on ‘Walk This Way’. Yet where ‘Walk This Way’ carries stadium-rock spirit and visual glam, ‘Raising Hell’ is beneath the paving stones, heavy and lo-key; respectful of the origins of heavy metal, prog rock and, in fact, the origins of hip hop itself. This is perpetuated by Jam Master Jay’s slicing of Cerrone’s ‘Rocket In The Pocket’ which brings that grounding of true hip hop. The choice cut of ‘Rocket In The Pocket’ is not incidental, and as an epic journey in its own right (and particularly as part of Cerrone's In Concert album), further suggests the spatial and sonic similarities between progressive rock and the fusions of hip hop.
As Jay Quan stated, Raising Hell was the first Run-D.M.C. album where super producer Larry Smith was not involved, rather, production was handled largely by Rick Rubin. Without knowing this though, there are evidently tell-tale signs of Rick’s touch. Drums, guitars, drums, guitars. Percussion, guitars. Drums. However – and here is the second point of significance this article makes - Raising Hell is a genre-deep album which intensifies any aura of what hip hop needs to sound like.
How does it do this? The answer lies in Raising Hell’s concurrency of genre expansion and accentuation of existing and acceptance of novel hip hop motifs and tropes, rich cultural history and blatant musicological counter position.
There were albums that explored a wider sense of genre previously, such as Fat Boys’ The Fat Boys Are Back LP from the year prior, equally there was Beastie Boys’ Licenced To Ill released the same year as Raising Hell. The Fat Boys Are Back works with only eight songs, a common maximum for rap LPs up to 1986 (see my article on sophomore LPs for more on this), while Licenced To Ill presents 13 songs. However, one of the major differences between Raising Hell and Licenced To Ill is that although the number of songs are comparable (12 and 13 respectively), the genre exploration, experimentation and framing is significantly different.
Raising Hell is a journey, Licenced To Ill is a showcase.
There is no denunciation of Licenced To Ill here, but where Beastie Boys opened up questions about rap as a genre, reached audiences hip hop had yet to touch and interrogated the musicology of rap music, Raising Hell affirmed and deepened the gravity of rap as a highly intellectual, complex and musicological artform with absolute precision.
Through its reflexive processes of production, Raising Hell laid a pathway for Bigger & Deffer, 3 Feet High And Rising, People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm, Critical Beatdown, and a multitude of albums to come that were both genre-affirming and ground-breaking.
All hail the Kings from Queens.
Many thanks to my brother DeeJay Skamrok for the photograph of the Raising Hell product.