Run-D.M.C. Celebrates 40 Years of Seminal ‘Raising Hell’ Album: ‘It’s the Sgt. Pepper’s of Hip-Hop’

Run-D.M.C. has been Raising Hell for over four decades. With the Queens-bred crew’s Raising Hell album celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, Run-D.M.C.’s Darryl “D.M.C.” McDaniels and Joseph “Run” Simmons sat down with Billboard on Thursday (July 9) to reflect on the seminal LP’s impact on hip-hop.

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“Raising Hell was special because we wasn’t trying to make a music industry album; we was trying to make a hip-hop album,” D.M.C. explained.

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Raising Hell served as Run-D.M.C.’s third album, which arrived on May 15, 1986. The project debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and was powered by singles like their cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way,” “My Adidas” and “It’s Tricky.”

“Raising Hell is the prototype, the blueprint. It’s the Sgt. Peppers of hip-hop. It made everybody after us, if you want to do an album, you got to do it on that level,” D.M.C. continued.

“Walk This Way” notched the first-ever top five hit for a hip-hop single on the Billboard Hot 100, as it reached No. 4.

Run-D.M.C. knocked down plenty of doors in their journey. They were the first hip-hop group to receive a Grammy nomination and Raising Hell was the first rap album to go platinum.

“40 years, I pray it lives up to how me and D felt in ’87 going on tour,” Run added. “[Producer] Jam Master Jay was everything to Raising Hell… He was like the one-man-band making Raising Hell.“

Watch the full video of Run-D.M.C. reliving Raising Hell below.