If Only Run-DMC Had Been Able to Release Tougher Than Leather in 1987…

These past few days, I started imagining an alternative timeline where Run-DMC released Tougher Than Leather in 1987 and how that might have changed the trajectory of their career. By no means do I believe it would have prevented the inevitable slide down from the top of the mountain, but it certainly would have softened the impact. The story goes that following the unprecedented success of Raising Hell and conquering the world, the group found themselves unable to release new music in a timely fashion.

As a listener who didn’t start following rap until 1987, this was the first Run-DMC album that I got to experience in real time, so Raising Hell didn’t have the life-changing impact it did on Chuck D in 1986. When it finally hit the shelves mid-way through 1988, the impact of ‘Run’s House’ was inescapable, as the video was one of the few rap videos to get regular airtime on local TV, but I didn’t pay much attention to the rest of the album – I was too busy listening to Long Live The Kane, By All Means Necessary and Act A Fool.

In this May 1988 SPIN cover story, Run vents his frustrations at the hold-up:

‘What I would really like to do, to tell the whole truth — fuck the whole business. I think that I should just be able to drop records when I want, and when I got these hits, or these notions come. But man, shit is hectic in this business. We got to put out our album a certain time of year, and this type of money. I wish I could just sell the motherfucking record from my door, and put the money in the safe, and give D and J their cut. I made “Mary, Mary” so long ago, this jam would have bust their face. A record called “Dedicated” [to Runny Ray], when I first made it — could have dropped that. I’d have been busting everybody’s ass so bad by now. But “Mary, Mary” got to sit and wait. Fucking headaches. I’m surprised I’m still here—didn’t pull a garage job: car in the garage, radio on, going to sleep. You get suicidal for the longest time. Dusted out my mind. Because I can’t take it when I’m not fucking doing what I know I’m supposed to be doing. But sometimes shit goes that way. I guess it is kind of ready now. I’m still on that tip a little bit. I ain’t shaved today.’

While ‘Dedicated’ has yet to turn-up as a bonus track on the deluxe edition releases, it made me wonder just how the fourth album might have sounded like if it hadn’t been held up by the one-two punch of Russell trying to bluff Profile into letting the group move to Def Jam and Rick Rubin’s brief dalliance as a ‘film maker’. Speaking of the Man Without Shoes, here’s an interesting quote from a Village Voice profile:

‘I like Rick because he eats like I eat,’ says Darryl McDaniels, the ‘D.M.C.’ of Run-D.M.C. ‘We met Rick in 1984 back when he was the DJ for the Beastie Boys. DJ Double R they used to call him. His room was packed tighter than Afrika Bambaataa’s — records all over the place, posters everywhere, and it was kinda b-boy. For a white person, it was really hip. He had every rap record and beat jam that you could possibly have. We started asking his opinion on our stuff ’cos he has the feeling like we have the feeling. Our first producer, Larry Smith went on to bigger and better things with Cameo, so we needed some­one to help us with Raising Hell.’

Hold up, what was Larry Smith doing with Cameo? I can’t find any record of Larry producing or touring with the other Larry, but maybe it’s something that just never got released.

Ronin Ro’s 2005 book, Raising Hell: The Reign, Ruin, and Redemption of “Run-D.M.C.” delves deeper into what went down and how much impact Public Enemy had on the sound of the 4th Run-DMC LP:

During the tour [‘Together Forever’ with the Beastie Boys], D.M.C. kept playing Public Enemy’s debut album, Yo! Bum Rush the Show despite sales of 150,000 copies making it what Rick Rubin called “the least successful Def Jam record at the time.” Though rap radio DJs had been playing only instrumental versions of rapper Chuck D’s songs since the album’s release in March 1987 — “They felt the beats were good, but he wasn’t,” Rubin said — D.M.C. saw Chuck as the future of rap.

Public Enemy had decided to sign to Def Jam in June 1986. The deciding factor for Chuck D was hearing Run-D.M.C.’s Raising Hell album. “The Raising Hell record told me this rap thing is growing up,” Chuck explained. For Chuck and his producer, Hank Shocklee, Raising was the greatest hip-hop record ever recorded: the first concept album and, Hank quipped, “a greatest hits record.” Hearing the album and its variety of styles and themes inspired Chuck to say that he and his group would accept Rick’s offer of a recording contract with Def Jam. “There wouldn’t be a P.E.,” Hank added, “if it weren’t for that album!”

D.M.C.’s support was unwavering. “I would bang all their records twenty-four-seven,” D recalled. “Everything Chuck and them made.” He’d also memorized every word on the album. “That shit was mean. And it wasn’t ‘social’ to me. That was dope-ass rapping. One rhyme went: ‘Run in the room hang it on the wall in remembrance that I rocked them all! Suckers! Punks!’ He knew slang! And he was the educated college motherfucker — dope. I thought he was better than me and Run. Way better than Run-D.M.C.”

While they created more songs for Tougher Than Leather, D noticed Run changing his distinctive style, rapping faster and cramming too many words into each sentence. “He’s fucking bugging out,” he told himself, but he also figured Run wanted to compete with rappers KRS-One, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane, and let them know “I could do it better than you.” Still, D felt it wouldn’t go over well with the audience. “Regardless of what was going on, people wanted to hear us as we were,” he said.

To cope, D.M.C. looked to Public Enemy’s Chuck D for inspiration, reciting crowded, Chuck-like lyrics on “Beats to the Rhyme” (their take on P.E.’s “Rebel Without a Pause”), “Radio Station” (informed by a lyric from “Rebel”), “I’m Not Going Out Like That” (which, like “Rebel,” opened with a sampled speech), and “Soul to Rock and Roll” (which included the same Chubb Rock sample as “Rebel”). It bugged Chuck D out a little, but the influential Public Enemy star understood what was happening. If a few Run-D.M.C. tracks evoked the music on recent Public Enemy songs, Chuck said, “That was Jay and [new coproducer] Davy D getting together” and only right since “they influence you and they’re influenced by you, no different from Motown and Stax.”

Chuck D presented a more positive view of his influence on the Tougher Than Leather album when he wrote the liner notes for the 2005 deluxe re-issue, recalling that he went through three copies of the tape (purchased from local record stores) while on the tour of the same name.

Rolling Stone reviewer Cary Darling had this to say in their 3/5 review in July 1988:

‘No matter how good some of the new material is, there’s an underlying timidity on Tougher Than Leather that is troubling. Perhaps the group has been shackled by success, because there’s nothing on the album as uncompromising as earlier tracks like “Hard Times,” “It’s Like That” and “Proud to Be Black.” It seems as if Run-D.M.C. has let the likes of Public Enemy and Ice T take over the more militant and politically aware hip-hop turf.

Thematically and musically, Run-D.M.C. has started to repeat itself. The updating of the Monkees’ “Mary, Mary,” the only track in which Rick Rubin had a hand, is humorous, but it appears to be a blatant attempt to follow in the lucrative footsteps of “Walk This Way.” Further, “Soul to Rock and Roll,” “Tougher Than Leather” and “Miss Elaine” are hamstrung by either tiring braggadocio or predictable rock-guitar rhythms.

In the end, Tougher Than Leather doesn’t raise hell, but it does raise more questions than it answers. While the members of Run-D.M.C. aren’t yet in danger of losing their self-applied titles as the kings of rock, the future is far less certain than it was two years ago. In the wake of such acclaimed new hip-hop stylists as Eric B. and Rakim, DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince and a myriad of others, there are many more pretenders to the throne, and the citizens are restless.’

Tensions within the group were also apparent. As Run sought to keep-up with the ‘Class of ’87’, he began to question DMC’s vocal style. In his 2001 autobiography, King of rock: Respect, Responsibility, and my life with Run-DMC, Darryl McDaniels recalls:

‘When we made the Tougher Than Leather album that coincided with the movie, Run once told me that he couldn’t understand why I was so def. After all, he said, ‘Your rhymes are so simple.” That hurt my feelings, but I didn’t let on or confront him. Yet when the album was complete, I went back and listened to the album and because of that conversation, I felt something was missing from my delivery. I was sort of depressed about it.’

Bill Adler reflected on the whole scenario in the 2002 edition of book, Tougher Than Leather: The Rise of Run-DMC:

‘When this book was originally published in the spring of 1987, Run-DMC had been on a winning streak for the entirety of their four years in the music business. More to the point, most of us who worked with Run-DMC, as well as the crew themselves, figured that streak would never end. Even this book was supposed to be a sure thing, one-third of a genius cross-promotional trifecta. Suddenly there was going to be a new album by Run-DMC, a movie starring Run-DMC, and a book-length biography of Run-DMC, all of them entitled “Tougher Than Leather” and all of them exploding in the marketplace at the same pregnant moment.

Well, shit happens, and perhaps nowhere more frequently or distressingly than in the wonderful world of hip-hop. Both the album and the movie eventually joined the book in the light of day, but not at the same time. The album trailed the book by a full year and the movie skulked into theaters five months after the album — by which time our hopes of “cross-promotional synergy” had long since gone up in smoke. I could tell you why, but it’s not an especially unusual story, nor a very instructive one. There were three separate teams working on three separate projects and there was virtually no coordination, even if our projects did share a name. The book was mostly ignored, the album found nowhere near as much favor as its predecessors, and the movie was panned even by hardcore hiphoppers.’

So how does the album hold-up in 2024? Pretty effin’ well, actually. Hearing Run and D rap over classic breakbeats is always a treat, so the album starts off with a bang and carries an urgent momentum for the opening four tracks. The similarities to the Public Enemy sound pointed-out in Ronin Ro’s book are a little overstated - using ‘Funky Drummer’, speech snippets and Chuck D vocals for hooks was as common as muck in 1988 for everyone making rap in 1988. The only similarities that stands out to me is using the same riff on the title track as heard on P.E.’s ‘B-Side Wins Again’ and the previously mentioned shared Chubb Rock scratch, but even those are minor infractions in the grand scheme of things. The only real clanger for me is the Slick Rick ‘tribute’ heard on ‘Ragtime’.

If the tussle between Profile and Def Jam (and the whole film fiasco) never happened, and Tougher Than Leather hit shelves in 1987, I like to imagine that Run, DMC, Jam-Master Jay and Davey D could have built on the foundations of this album and delivered one more great LP before the rot that is Back From Hell set-in. I also have to agree with DMC when he told The Guardian that Run-DMC’s last three albums were ‘really awful’.