Listen Live
Stone Soul Vendor Graphics
99.3-105.7 Kiss FM
CLOSE

Run-D.M.C. star Darryl McDaniels has launched a scathing attack on modern hip-hop music, accusing today’s rappers of popularizing gun and drug culture. The hip-hop pioneer says too many current chart stars focus on negative themes in their music, without making any tracks with a positive message, and justify it by comparing their work to Hollywood movies.

Run-D.M.C. stormed onto the hip – hop scene in 1983 with smash hits like “My Addidas”, “U Be Illin”, and their first single “It’s Like That”, which took the group from the streets of Hollis Queens to the palm trees of Beverly Hills.

“A rapper will use this excuse — ‘Man they don’t go after Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis when they make their violent movies’ and I go ‘If you’re going to use that excuse get off the mic, don’t produce. I’ll personally kick your a– out of hip-hop ’cause if you’re using that excuse, go be an actor.'”

McDaniels told the paper that his group made some negative records during their heyday, but they also put out positive releases too. “If you make a record about a gun, on that very same record or album there’s gotta be a record about not using a gun. If you’re making a record on the b–ch or the h–s (sic), there’s got to be a record about your aunt who worked all of the days of her life to send all her children to college,” he said. “It seems like stupid America celebrates a person that says ‘Yeah I’m a drug dealer, I’m bringing the drugs into the hood.’ The reason why hip-hop exists is because it started out with good intentions; once all the good intentions left, the music became polluted, it became disrespectful, it became immature.”

McDaniels also criticizes the quality of many modern records, adding, “98 percent of hip-hop music that’s out now I say is just bad demos. … If you want to see real hip-hop you gotta go to concerts and festivals because hip-hop on (the) radio sucks.”