DMC On Krush Groove, Glasses, DMC Adidas & More

Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC sits down at the Morrison Hotel Gallery to look through photographs spanning Run-DMC’s career and tell the stories behind them. From Hollis, Queens, to the cover of Rolling Stone, he walks through how Run-DMC became the face of hip-hop. He recalls shooting Krush Groove with director Michael Schultz, who had made Car Wash, and admits the experience wasn’t what fans assume. DMC had a single line in the whole film while Run carried the scenes. Darryl McDaniels also clears up a long-running myth about Run-DMC’s cars, since Run never actually drove the white Eldorado from the movie. The glasses that made Darryl McDaniels a target as a kid in Catholic school became a signature once Run-DMC started rapping about them, to the point where fans started wearing glasses they didn’t even need. He explains the origin of the laceless Run-DMC Adidas look too. Add Fresh Fest as hip-hop’s first national arena tour and the Together Forever tour with the Beastie Boys, which the media bet would never work, and Darryl McDaniels lays out how Run-DMC kept proving the doubters wrong Darryl McDaniels also makes the case for hip-hop as the cousin of disco, pointing to 2001 Inductees Queen and their “Another One Bites the Dust” and 1989 Inductees The Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” as rock acts who made disco records of their own. When Run-DMC’s self-titled 1984 album went gold and landed the group on MTV, it proved hip-hop could work as a full-length format. But Darryl McDaniels is clear that the real achievement for Run-DMC wasn’t being first to go platinum or first on the cover of Rolling Stone. It was becoming the chosen representatives of the culture, echoing Grandmaster Caz: hip-hop didn’t invent anything, it reinvented everything.