{"id":11470,"date":"2014-09-05T21:09:52","date_gmt":"2014-09-06T01:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/?p=11470"},"modified":"2016-08-02T16:26:09","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T20:26:09","slug":"sucker-mcs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/2014\/sucker-mcs\/","title":{"rendered":"Sucker MCs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sasha Frere-Jones was recently asked by The Guardian to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/music\/2014\/sep\/04\/beyonce-run-dmc-perfect-recordings-music-playlist?CMP=ema_565\" target=\"_blank\">make a list of perfect songs<\/a>. I don&#8217;t agree with all of his choices &#8212; Taylor Swift? &#8212; but I can definitely get behind his nomination of &#8220;Sucker MCs&#8221; by Run-DMC.<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/rXVFNs0piP8?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p>This track was the B-side to Run-DMC&#8217;s first single in 1983, and was produced by <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Larry_Smith_%28producer%29\" target=\"_blank\">Larry Smith<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"https:\/\/ethanhein.com\/wp\/2010\/one-for-the-treble\/\" target=\"_blank\">Davy DMX<\/a> of Orange Krush (thus the subtitle &#8220;Krush Groove 1.&#8221;) It&#8217;s beautiful in its simplicity: two guys rapping, an <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Oberheim_DMX\" target=\"_blank\">Oberheim DMX drum machine<\/a>, some turntable scratching, and nothing else. It&#8217;s the most minimalist hip-hop song I know of, other than &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0wbWPyhW7fE&amp;feature=kp\" target=\"_blank\">Top Billin&#8217;<\/a>&#8221; by Audio Two.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->The most perfect part of this perfect song is the beginning of DMC&#8217;s verse:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I&#8217;m DMC in the place to be<br \/>\nI go to St John&#8217;s University<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Everything there is to love about hip-hop can be found in these two lines. Before we even get to the words, let&#8217;s talk about their musical accompaniment: Jam Master Jay&#8217;s rhythmic turntable scratching, and nothing else. Hip-hop musicians use <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Musique_concr%C3%A8te\" target=\"_blank\">avant-garde techniques<\/a> to create what <a href=\"https:\/\/ethanhein.com\/wp\/2012\/theres-joy-in-repetition\/\" target=\"_blank\">Susan McClary<\/a> calls &#8220;cycles of kinetic pleasure,&#8221; rather than a <a href=\"https:\/\/ethanhein.com\/wp\/2012\/who-cares-if-you-listen\/\" target=\"_blank\">godawful racket<\/a>. Good on them.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, the rhymes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I&#8217;m DMC<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;I have a nickname that&#8217;s related to my birth name (Darryl McDaniels), but that is harder, cooler, and more futuristic. It looks great in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rundmc.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">huge white block letters<\/a> on a black background, and it has &#8217;emcee&#8217; right in there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>in the place to be<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;Where is that place? It&#8217;s wherever I am.&#8221; Places are cool if they have cool people in them.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I go to St John&#8217;s University<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which has instantly become cool just by virtue of being mentioned in this song. Hip-hop is about epic fantasies, but even more, it&#8217;s about elevating the facts of real life to epic status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sasha Frere-Jones was recently asked by The Guardian to make a list of perfect songs. I don&#8217;t agree with all of his choices &#8212; Taylor Swift? &#8212; but I can definitely get behind his nomination of &#8220;Sucker MCs&#8221; by Run-DMC. This track was the B-side to Run-DMC&#8217;s first single in 1983, and was produced by &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/2014\/sucker-mcs\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Sucker MCs&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[924,9],"tags":[220,329,470,632,638,758],"class_list":["post-11470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-key-musicians","category-music","tag-eighties","tag-hip-hop","tag-minimalism","tag-run-dmc","tag-sasha-frere-jones","tag-turntablism","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pAPdE-2Z0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11470"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14639,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11470\/revisions\/14639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ethanhein.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}