A few weeks ago I reached out to you readers for help in my entry into the genre of Hip Hop. I realized that there's no excuse for being ignorant of such a pervasive element of pop culture and it would be a huge mistake to leave it out of the definition of pop music, thereby ignoring it on this site. Like everything else in this world, there is both good and bad Hip Hop. The purpose of this project is to submerge myself in the good, not just for my own education but hopefully as a way to inspire others to embrace this music.

When I asked for suggestions of what artists to pursue, especially at the beginning, there were dozens of Internet fingers pointing to Run DMC. Joseph Simmons, Daryl McDaniels and Jason Mizell formed the group in 1983 with not just a little help from the elder Simmons brother, soon-to-be iconic producer Russell Simmons. While the rap scene in New York had a healthy underground movement going, Run DMC would be the first to really attain a measure of mainstream success. They were the first rap act to break into the Top 10 pop charts, the first to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone, the first to be nominated for a Grammy and the first Hip Hop group to have a video appear on MTV.

The reason why they managed to be so popular struck me right away. The first track on their self-titled debut, Hard Times is a rap with universal appeal. Even more than that, its lyrics are ever more relevant today than they were in 1983. It's a simple, frank expression of what it's like to be poor but determined. In that sense, it's as good an example of early Hip Hop as anything. The stereotypes of tracks about crime, sex and general materialism didn't really come until later in the 1990's. As it stood in the 80's, rap focused on more positive messages.

But a socially responsible tone without levity is nothing but preaching. That's why tracks like Tricky are necessary to the group. If you can listen to that track without smiling, you need to make an appointment with your doctor because something is obviously wrong with you. By appealing to the party-goer in all of us, Run DMC plugged Hip Hop into something that transcends the streets of Hollis, Queens. It's possible that the group's willingness to meet their audience halfway is what made Run DMC popular enough to get the attentions of award academies and the like. Can You Rock It Like This and really the entire album from which it comes is a respectable early attempt to bring Hip Hop to listeners of rock and dance music.

The latter of those two branches is the more fertile, I think. Take Groove To The Sound off Back From Hell. That track is House, the variety of electronic music that provided one half of a one-two punch in the rave scene along with Trance. In the late 1990's, rap-inspired House was genius, even if the rap/rock of Limp Bizkit was pretty egregious.

Listening to Run DMC is like consuming a sample platter of Hip Hop from its inception to the end of its Golden Age in the mid-1990's. I feel like it's laid a good foundation and that it'll help me put the rest of this project into context. I'll be back next week with another artist. Thanks again to everyone who dropped suggestions.