Raising Hell - Run DMC (1986)

Tell me you were a midwestern white kid without telling me you were a midwestern white kid. “Walk This Way was the first rap track I ever heard.”

I did have a friend who’d grown up in Philadelphia and had a neurodivergent interest in Philly street rap, but I don’t think I knew that about my friend until after I heard this.

Are Run DMC the best rap group of the 80s? I mean they were good. But they were so successful that they kind of defined what a good rap group sounded like, so it might be a chicken-and-egg argument.

This album launched Hip Hop as pop music, launched the careers of a host of people like producer Rick Rubin, launched the album-length hip hop statement for what had been singles-focused, and launched million kids onto a new track of how to make music.