Former Run-DMC rapper, Darryl McDaniels (aka “DMC”) will release his debut solo album "Checks, Thugs and Rock N Roll" on Attitude Music on May 29th. The first single taken from the album is entitled Just Like Me, a hybrid of rap/hip-hop and folk music which includes the chorus from Harry Chapin’s folk single Cat’s In The Cradle (the latter originally appeared as the title track on Chapin’s 1974 album Verities & Balderdash).
Following the fatal shooting of Jam Master Jay and four years in the making, “Checks Thugs and Rock N Roll” features a virtual who's who of artists from various musical genres. The music challenges a new generation of hip-hop fans and original enthusiasts to re-evaluate hip-hop.
Musically rich, the title of the album eviscerates the lifestyle-driven mentality that has come to dominate the rap world at the expense of authenticity.
In 1986 Run-DMC were the first rap and hip-hop group to mix hip-hop with rock’n’roll, resulting in a collaboration with Aerosmith on the smash hit single Walk This Way. Twenty years later, McDaniels returns with a politically aware, thought-provoking solo album featuring an infectious rap/hip-hop gem that tells the story about how he discovered that he was adopted. Combined with a hook-laden chorus taken from Harry Chapin’s (the latter whose life was cut short by an auto accident in 1981) Cat’s In The Cradle sung by Canadian singer-songwriter, chanteuse, Sarah McLachlan, the song is set to become the first hybrid of folk and rap/hip-hop to hit the charts since Run-DMC combined rock and rap with Walk This Way.
DMC’s story reads like a classic Spike Lee movie. The solo album is culmination of pain, suffering, torment and self realisation. On the surface, you’ve got one of the biggest rap and hip-hop bands in the world, riding the crest of the wave since 1984 to 2002. Along the way, DMC’s journey has been full of highs and lows, being diagnosed with the vocal disorder ‘spasmodic dysphonia’, the discovery of being adopted, Jam Master Jay’s brutal murder and suicidal thoughts - it’s a miracle that Checks, Thugs and Rock N Roll saw the light of day.
Back in the eighties, there were three seminal rap/hip-hop bands that set the blueprint for urban street music - Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC If it wasn’t for these bands there would be no 50 Cent, Nelly or Emenim. Twenty years on, DMC’s solo effort consolidates the entire spectrum of urban music and street culture on one album and features the crème de la crème of musicians including former Run-DMC co-rapper Rev. Run, Doug E. Fresh, Aerosmith’s Joey Kramer & Tom Hamilton, The New Cars’ guitarist Elliot Easton, Kiara, C.S.I.’s Gary Dourdan, Kid Rock, Romeo Antonio, DJ Lethal, Ms. Jade, & Napoleon (Outlawz).
The new album celebrates DMC's musical influences, including Bob Dylan, Harry Chapin and Hendrix." Other standout tracks on the album include a version of Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower”, and “Machine Gun” featuring C.S.I.’s Gary Dourdan on vocals – a song that deals with the Iraq war – “This song isn’t pro-war or anti-war,” says DMC, “it’s an honest look at what war is and how it affects people.” Other songs like “What’s Wrong (With This World Today)”, which like the album’s title, captures DMC’s frustration with today’s media obsessed culture, its effect on children, and what some desperate adults will do to claim their 15 minutes of fame.
The up-tempo club track Freaky Chick is aimed at media obsessed celebrities like Paris Hilton, while Lovey Dovey skillfully walks the line between old school funk-groove and a post Zappa parody. The album’s most heartfelt track, Missing My Friend, is a tribute to the late Jam Master Jay. Says DMC, “I remember when he taught me to swim. He’s the reason why I’m rockin’ the brim.”
For those uninitiated few, DMC is known to millions worldwide as one-third of the pioneering Run-DMC, the rap/hip-hop trio who paved the way for rap and hip-hop music. They embodied the vibrant, creative subculture of a young black New York. They were the first rappers to earn multi-platinum sales, the first to have their videos played on MTV, the first to appear on Saturday Night Live, and the first to appear on the covers of Rolling Stone and Spin. Originally born in Harlem in 1964, and raised in Hollis, Queens, New York, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels first discovered hip-hop when he started listening to the Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five.
His childhood friend Joseph "Run" Simmons convinced him to switch to rapping when mutual friend Jason "Jam Master Jay" Mizell was starting earn a reputation for himself for his turntable talents as a gifted club DJ.
The three formed Run-DMC in 1982, released their self-titled, debut album in 1984, but it wasn’t until the 1986 album Raising Hell when they released the Aerosmith collaboration Walk This Way, when they became a worldwide phenomenon.
During Run-DMC’s 1997 tour, DMC’s music lifestyle began to take its toll, to the point where he seriously began to contemplate suicide. Run-DMC underwent creative differences and DMC was battling against the vocal disorder ‘spasmodic dysphonia’, characterised by involuntary movements of the larynx's muscles.
Later that same year DMC heard a song on the radio by Sarah McLachlan called Angel (which originally appeared on her 1997 album Surfacing). DMC instantly became obsessed by the song. It not only touched him, but it made him re-evaluate the direction of his life and career, and gave him the will to live. He was so taken with the song that he religiously played the track every single day for a year.
For the next few years he considered different solo projects before writing his autobiography. While re-discovering his roots, his mother told DMC for the first time that he was adopted. The shocking news was the beginning of a quest for the rapper, and soon he was working with the VH1 network in America on a documentary that chronicled his search for his birthmother. By 2002, his life was shaken again when Run-DMC’s DJ Jam Master Jay was senselessly murdered in a studio in Queens, New York, which brought the career of Run-DMC to an end.
After DMC discovered that his mother was not his real birthmother, and that he was adopted, and McLachlan’s Angel saved from committing suicide - all of these things became the inspiration for the song Just Like Me (a hip-hop re-make of Chapin’s Cat’s In The Cradle). When it came time to choose a collaborator to sing the Harry Chapin chorus, the only person DMC wanted was McLachlan; his real-life guardian angel. When he approached her, explained to her about how “Angel” saved his life, she agreed to record Just Like Me with him.
"Sarah and I recorded a remake of Cat's in theCradle by Harry Chapin," the former Run-DMC rapper said recently of the track famously covered in 1992 by rockers Ugly Kid Joe. "It's pretty awesome."
DMC wrote new verses for his version. "It's very personal," he said. "It has to do with stuff I'm going through in my life, stuff I found out about. You gotta hear the record. The video for the single is very moving, and it’s going to make a lot of people cry.”
Run-DMC’s contribution and influence on hip-hop culture and DMC’s new solo offering have gone full circle. For the first time in his life, DMC has finally made an album that is personal, uplifting, socially aware and heartfelt. He’s embraced his heritage, shaken off all the demons and in spite of the tragedies he has experienced, somehow he’s managed to record a collection of songs that are sincere, true and real.
“The last five years of my life have been an emotional storm of change," DMC recently told AllHipHop.com in a statement. "The profound personal loss with the deaths of Jam Master Jay and my father, the shocking discovery that I was adopted and the pain of the impact of living in a world where the ravages of war continue to destroy so many lives, this album is not something I wanted to do - its something Ihad to do.”
