DMC: Mainstream hip-hop has become dull, generic

About 400 students decided to “Walk This Way” to Warriner Hall’s Plachta Auditorium to hear Darryl “DMC” McDaniels’ hip-hop history lecture Wednesday night.

McDaniels, a former member of hip-hop group Run DMC, was introduced to hip-hop as a seventh-grader in Queens, N.Y. He said the first time he heard the genre was an awakening.

“It totally changed the composition of my body and my mind,” he said.

The lecture provided students a glimpse into the early days of hip-hop.

McDaniels reflected on the formation of the hip-hop group Run DMC. He went to school with fellow member Joseph “Run” Simmons and Jason “Jam-Master Jay” Mizell who joined the group later.

DMC was the first rap group to have a video on MTV and the first to be nominated for a Grammy Award, McDaniels said.

Although Run DMC did not invent the genre, they did bring hip-hop to the cultural foreground.

“Some people think rap started with Run DMC,” he said. “No, rap started before Run DMC, before the music industry.”

Although their style of hip-hop was not entirely new, Run DMC was original, creative and innovative – three characteristics missing from mainstream hip-hop today, he said.

DMX was the last mainstream rapper McDaniels enjoyed listening to, he said. The lack of originality in popular hip-hop artists led McDaniels to underground rappers, he said.

“A lot of rappers today are good, but they are not great,” McDaniels said. “Hip-hop today is just like disco: It is glittery.”

Dan Pianki, a Milford senior, said he no longer listens to much hip-hop and McDaniels’ lecture helped him understand why.

“He put into words what the difference with rap music is today,” he said. “It’s all money and cars. It’s the same thing. He wasn’t saying all hip-hop now is bad; it is just the mainstream culture of monotony.”

Although he is critical of mainstream hip-hop music, McDaniels said he is not calling for rap to return to how it was during the ’80s, when Run DMC topped the charts.

“We want it to be better because we know it can be,” he said.

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