Comeback kids

Run-DMC and KRS-One keep trying

by Michael Endelman

Run-DMC

How does an artist stay relevant five, 10, or 20 years into a career? That's a question that's troubled everyone from Madonna to Metallica. For pop and rock musicians the struggle to stay current is difficult, but for hip-hop acts, it's an exercise in futility. Almost 30 years old, hip-hop culture has become a global artistic and economic force, ruling the pop charts, filling stadiums, and teaching white people how to say, "Yo!" But the damn thing still can't sustain a healthy career past two or three albums. The problem is that mainstream hip-hop has no room for yesterday's news. The genre's market-driven center evolves far too quickly for old MCs to play catch-up. Aging b-boys just don't have a chance against the new-school flows of multi-platinum guys like Jay-Z and Eminem.

For the mid-'80s MC on the comeback trail in the 2000s, the wisest decision is to forgo the mainstream black-pop audience for other paths in the ever-expanding hip-hop universe. And that's exactly what Run-DMC and KRS-One attempt to do on their respective comeback albums. Run-DMC's seventh full-length, Crown Royal (Arista), targets the suburban rap-rock mooks; KRS-One's new The Sneak Attack (In the Paint/Koch; out this Tuesday) posits the Blastmaster as godfather to the collegiate indie-hop elite. Neither album is likely to be a major smash or a critical success. But the results suggest there may be life after death for graying MCs.

Crown Royal has already been panned for its grab-bag track selection and incongruous guest spots and for being a "sellout" move. All true. The 12-cut disc features cameos by Kid Rock, Third Eye Blind frontman Stephen Jenkins, Method Man, and many more. It jumps from mellow R&B cuts ("Let's Stay Together") to Steve Miller covers ("Take the Money and Run") to DJ Premier-style hip-hop ("Queens Day"). Haphazard and seemingly produced by committee, it's a far fall from Run-DMC's artistic pinnacle, 1986's Raising Hell (Profile).

But what critics have failed to mention is that Crown Royal is also damn good fun. Hardcore hip-hop followers and underground rap cognoscenti are advised to run away screaming. Just about anyone else might want to give the album a chance. It's the best reverse crossover album -- black guys reappropriating the rap-rock mix they invented -- out there, even though the competition for that title (Chuck D's Concentration Camp) isn't so stiff.

Fred Durst, who is probably my least favorite wigger in the world, chips in on the album's best track, a tame "I love all the ladies" number called "Them Girls." Over a surfalicious boogaloo beat that sounds like Fatboy Slim doing the frug over a Smashmouth cut, Durst and the Reverend Run trade verses about "Girls in tubetops/Who rock to 2pac." The result doesn't sound like hip-hop or metal; it turns down the aggro attitude of both for a concentrated blast of goofy fun delivered with a good hook and a sleazy look.

The second-best track is the Kid Rock collaboration, "The School of Old." Self-consciously alluding to the Run-DMC classics "It's like That" and "Rock Box," the song amounts to Kid Rock and Run screaming over a trashy guitar riff and a skeletal drum-machine pattern. Direct, aggressive, and blunt (but not blunted), it's the closest Crown Royal comes to that classic boom-bap shit that everybody loves.

The rest of the album meanders from pretty cool to decent to not so good. The rock tracks actually fare the best: the Stephan Jenkins collaboration ("Rock Show") is a nugget of psychedelic thrash, and "Here We Go 2001" matches total nonsense rhymes ("dum-didee-dum-didee-dum") over a chunky, stuttered metal riff. The hip-hop cuts are harder to get excited about. There's histrionic, opera-sampling bounce ("It's Over," with Jermaine Dupri), a mellow neighborhood reminiscence ("Queens Day," with Nas), and the ubiquitous Latin track ("Ay Papi," with Fat Joe).

Despite all the cameos and the genre jumping, Crown Royal's biggest problem isn't overabundance. Rather, it suffers from an absence of something. Or should I say, someone. Darryl McDaniels, the DMC, is virtually absent. Originally scheduled for release more than a year ago, the disc was postponed and scuttled numerous times, partly because of the problems that arose from having so many guest appearances, but also because of a major rift between McDaniels and Joseph "Run" Simmons. As documented on a particularly excellent episode of VH1's Behind the Music, McDaniels didn't want to take part in a Run-DMC comeback. And he doesn't. On Crown Royal, he rhymes exactly two verses, doubles Run's rhyme on one track, and yells out a hook on another song.

KRS-One

Jam Master Jay does his best to compensate by sampling and scratching DMC's voice into the mix as much as possible. But the truth is that DMC is very absent here, and he's sorely missed. Run-DMC's legacy isn't just about rap-rock hybrids, or MTV breakthroughs, or double-platinum albums (as Run reminds us incessantly), it's about the fierce double team of Run and DMC on the mike bouncing rhymes back and forth like gladiators on the attack. Without DMC, Crown Royal feels just like a Run solo album, or, worse, a vision of Run-DMC perpetrated by major-label execs and marketing drones.

KRS-One's ninth album, and his first since 1997's I Got Next (Jive), is the polar opposite of Crown Royal. Produced primarily by KRS and his long-time DJ, Kenny Parker, and with no guest spots, The Sneak Attack is a self-helmed, back-to-basics project powered by nothing more than the Blastmaster's stentorian bark. Unlike I Got Next, it has no radio singles or Puffy remixes; this is stripped-down rap stocked with bumpy loops and lo-fi basement funk. In fact, the disc sounds a lot like the kind of anti-corporate, pro-black, "conscious" rap that's categorized as underground or independent hip-hop these days. Which is fitting, since KRS is worshipped by a new generation of rabble-rousing and self-righteous rappers like Talib Kweli and Dead Prez.

And KRS can still hang with these young bucks. His flow doesn't clump along with the rigid syntax and square carriage returns of an old-schooler like Run. And as he proved at his explosive 45-minute set at the Orpheum on April 1, he still has crystal-clear diction and superhuman breath control. The man can rap for days without pausing for air, twisting up words and syllables into long strings of rap DNA.

A well-documented egoist, KRS definitely gets off on the sound of his own voice, which is fine, but sometimes he takes it too far. I don't mind the comparisons with Jesus, Martin Luther King, and Moses, but the spoken-word fables ("False Pride") and lectures ("Doth Thou Know") on The Sneak Attack get real tired after the first listen. And even KRS can't save the tinny Mannie Fresh-isms of tracks like "Hot" and "Hush," the latter featuring this embarrassingly awkward hook: "A North Face and skully hat don't make you a thug/An army suit and a pair of Tims don't make you a thug/A real thug is a thug that's hush!" What?

Still, KRS's voice ends up being the best thing here, because it's definitely not the low-budget beats. Barking out commands, rattling off lists of society's ills, asking and answering questions without pause, he smothers the mike with a barrage of nation-building positivity and anti-mainstream attitude. It doesn't sound as revolutionary as it did in 1986, but The Sneak Attack is still powerful enough to impress kids who didn't hear it the first time around. And that seems to be the point.

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Run-DMC play the Phoenix/FNX Best Music Poll party on Lansdowne Street in Boston on May 16. Call (617) 423-NEXT.