Today In Black History: Run DMC
The group brought rap music into the mainstream.
Issue #1,036 Today In Black History, Wednesday, June 10, 2026
June is Black Music Appreciation Month. Black Music Month was initiated in 1979 by Philadelphia songwriter Kenny Gamble, pioneering radio DJ Ed Wright, and media strategist Dyana Williams. These three music icons successfully campaigned the idea to President Jimmy Carter, who held the first White House reception celebrating Black music on June 7, 1979.
This month in Today In Black History, we will highlight a few of the famous and lesser-known Black musicians.
Run DMC: The Kings from Hollis Who Changed Everything
I must admit that, as a really OG Boomer, I’m not as into rap music as most of my younger friends and family members are. But I know and understand the importance of Run DMC. I enjoyed researching and writing about this group.
They walked out of Hollis, Queens, wearing black hats, black leather jackets, and unlaced Adidas shell-toe sneakers — and they walked into history. Run DMC didn’t just make music. They fundamentally transformed what hip-hop could be, what it could look like, and who it could reach.
Formed in 1981, Run DMC consisted of Joseph “DJ Run” Simmons, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, and Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell. They were not street hustlers or gangsters. They were middle-class Black kids from Queens who chose to represent themselves exactly as they were — and in doing so, they gave an entire generation permission to do the same. Their aesthetic was deliberate: no glitter, no capes, no showmanship borrowed from funk or soul tradition.
Their 1984 debut single It’s Like That / Sucker MCs announced an entirely new era. Run DMC used the form to deliver blunt social commentary. “It’s like that, and that’s the way it is,” they rapped, cataloging unemployment, poverty, and the indifference of a system that turned its back on Black communities.
But it was their self-titled debut album, also released in 1984, that announced hip-hop as a serious album format. It became the first rap album to go gold, the first to be nominated for a Grammy, and the first to crack the pop charts in a meaningful way.
The group’s most explosive cultural moment came in 1986 when they collaborated with Aerosmith on Walk This Way — a track that didn’t just cross racial and genre lines but practically erased them. The music video, which featured Steven Tyler and Joe Perry crashing through a wall to join Run DMC on stage, was a visual metaphor for everything the collaboration represented: the forced integration of two American musical traditions that had long been kept apart by industry segregation. The song became a top-five pop hit and, crucially, reintroduced Aerosmith to a new generation while simultaneously proving that hip-hop could command the mainstream on its own terms.
Their 1986 album Raising Hell became the first rap album to reach platinum status, and the tour that followed introduced hip-hop to arenas across America. For many young people — Black, white, Latino — it was the first time they had seen the culture in that kind of space, at that scale. Run DMC didn’t bring hip-hop to the mainstream by becoming something else. They brought the mainstream to hip-hop.
Beyond music, the group reshaped fashion, media, and commerce. Their relationship with Adidas led to a groundbreaking endorsement deal — the first major corporate partnership with a hip-hop act — after the company saw thousands of fans at Madison Square Garden raise their sneakers in the air during a performance of “My Adidas.”
Tragedy struck on October 30, 2002, when Jam Master Jay was shot and killed in his recording studio in Jamaica, Queens. His murder shook the hip-hop world and left an irreplaceable void. The case remained unsolved for nearly twenty years before two men were finally indicted in 2020.
Run DMC was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009, the first hip-hop act to receive that honor. The recognition was long overdue, but it acknowledged that the music they made in the early 1980s had not aged into nostalgia. It had become the foundation.
Hip-hop is now the most consumed music genre in America. The artists at its helm — whether they acknowledge it or not — are standing on ground that Run DMC broke. They came out of Hollis with a beat, a message, and an unshakeable sense of themselves. That was enough to change the world.
Today In Black History
In 1794, Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was founded in Philadelphia.
In 1854, James Augustine Healy, who later became the first Black American Roman Catholic Bishop, was ordained a priest at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.
In 1897, the Hotel Robinson became one of the first businesses in San /diego, California, to be owned and operated by an African American, and the oldest continuously operated hotel in Southern California.
In 1899, the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was founded in Cincinnati, OH.
In 1981, hockey goalie Grant Fuhr was drafted by the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League, becoming the first Black professional hockey player.
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