Raising Hell (1986)

Raising Hell is the third studio album by American hip-hop group Run-D.M.C., released on May 15, 1986, by Profile Records. The album was produced by Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin. Raising Hell is notable for being the first Platinum and multi-Platinum hip-hop record. The album was first certified Platinum on July 15, 1986, before it was certified as 3× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on April 24, 1987. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most important albums in the history of hip-hop music and culture.

Raising Hell peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, and number one on the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums (at the time known as the "Top Black Albums") chart, making it the first hip-hop album to peak atop the latter. The album features four hit singles: "My Adidas", "Walk This Way" (a collaboration with Aerosmith), "You Be Illin'" and "It's Tricky". "Walk This Way" is the group's most famous single, being a groundbreaking rap rock version of Aerosmith's 1975 song "Walk This Way". It is considered to be the first rap/rock collaboration that also brought hip-hop into the mainstream and was the first song by a hip-hop act to reach the top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100.

Raising Hell has been ranked as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 1987, it was nominated for a Grammy Award, making Run-D.M.C. the first hip-hop act to receive a nomination. In the same year, the album was nominated for Album of the Year and won Best Rap Album at the 1987 Soul Train Music Awards. In 2017, it was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The album was reissued by Arista Records in 1999 and 2003. An expanded and remastered edition was released in 2005 and contained five previously unreleased songs.

Selling more than three million copies, Raising Hell is credited with heralding the golden age hip-hop as well as hip-hop's album era, helping the genre achieve an unprecedented level of recognition among critics and mainstream audiences.

Background

Returning home to Queens in late 1985 after their extensive touring, they soon put themselves on lockdown at Chung King studios in Manhattan for three months. In place of producer Larry Smith, a cocky new maverick was brought in: Rick Rubin. Even though Rubin's and Russell's names were on the production marquee, the two non-group members oversaw and added to the music on Raising Hell more than created it. "Rick and Russell got production credit, but we [the group members] really did everything", DMC states. "We did that album in like three months. It was so quick because every rhyme was written on the road and had been practiced and polished. We knew what we wanted to do. Rick was all music and instruments. Jay was music and DJing. And me and Run was lyrics. We definitely had a game plan."

Raising Hell features the well-known cover "Walk This Way" featuring Aerosmith (largely the work of its leaders, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry). While the song was not the group's first fusion of rock and hip-hop (the group's earlier singles "Rock Box" and "King of Rock" were), it was the first such fusion significantly impacting the charts, becoming the first rap song to crack the top 5 of The Billboard Hot 100. Raising Hell peaked at No. 1 on Billboard's Top R&B Albums chart as the first hip-hop/rap album to do so, and at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.

Reception

Raising Hell was voted fifth best album of 1986 in the Pazz & Jop poll of American critics nationwide, published by The Village Voice. Robert Christgau, the poll's creator, wrote in a contemporary review: "Without benefit of a 'Rock Box' or 'King of Rock,' this is [Run-D.M.C.'s] most uncompromising and compelling album, all hard beats and declaiming voices."

In the Los Angeles Times, Richard Cromelin wrote: "If the same old boasts are wearing thin and the misogyny gets grating, the beats are infectious and varied and the vocal trade-offs can be dazzling."

It ranked number 8 among the "Albums of the Year" in NME.

In 1987, the Soul Train Music Award for Best Rap - Single was jointly awarded to Run-D.M.C. and Aerosmith for "Walk This Way".

In 1989, the Toronto Star music critics took to look over the albums they had reviewed in the past 10 years to include in a list based on "commercial impact to social import, to strictly musical merit." Raising Hell was placed at number four on the list, describing it as "the record to move rap from the ghetto to the suburbs. Blame it or celebrate it, you can't deny Raising Hell's impact.