Stick & Move with Eric Kelly Ep. 4: The Legend Darryl “DMC” McDaniels

I had the honor today to sit down with a true legend, not just in music and hip-hop, but in entertainment and fashion, 1/3 of Run DMC, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels.

DMC was at the NBA Store in NYC to launch a new RUN DMC “RUN CTY” Fan Gear line.

The “RUN-CTY” collection will include tee-shirts, hoodies and snapback hats (hats exclusively available at the NYC NBA Store) across men’s, women’s and youth sizes and will “showcase the enduring popularity of the globally recognized RUN-DMC logo and typeface.”

We hit on the group’s influence in pop culture across pop culture genres.

He gave his thoughts marriage of fashion and hip-hop both in the late seventies and early eighties, through the nineties and today. The group paved the the way for the likes of Puffy, Jay Z, Master P, and 50 Cent both in the studio and in the fashion world.

He was candid about him and his contemporaries use of brands in lyrics, “Hip Hop always was a advertisement or promotional vehicle for merchandise.”

Unlike some artists who want to control every element of their likeness, DMC embraces the many uses of the group’s iconic logo, “Somebody asked me yesterday, ‘are you upset that so many people utilize or bootleg your logo?’ No, because it’s actually free promotion.”

He added, “We’re not gonna let nobody start a whole company using the logo, but it’s good promotion and it keeps the things alive…It represents something cool.”

Darryl “DMC” McDaniels and TJ Mizell, son of the late Jam Master Jay, attend the launch of the new RUN-DMC x Fanatics “RUN-CTY” apparel line at the NBA Store in NYC. Credit: Fanatics

On how the modern hip-hop style came into play with them being pioneers, he noted that his predecessors didn’t have much to go on, “The first people in hip hop they had no people in hip hop to look up to.

He noted that acts like Melle Mel, the Furious Five, and the Zulu Nation – whose on-stage get ups were very much costume-like – were influenced by performed like Parliament Funkadelic, The Rolling Stones and Rick James. “When Run DMC came out, and didn’t have costumes, people saw something relatable. Our look, our sound, our style, our feel, our presentation and representation was contagious.”

As for their different sound (in comparision to a lot of today’s music that all sounds alike), in hip hop back then, everyone had their own feel. “While everyone was using funk, R&B and jazz, we just did were were using rock. We were just black dudes putting a rock guitar with our song.”

Finally, he talked about the content of the music today.

"“You can make a record about being in a gang; you can make a record about being a drug dealer; but at the end of that song, you’re supposed to tell the young folk ‘you don’t have to do this.’ The thing going on with hip-hop right now is the corporations, the companies that are putting the music out, they don’t care about the audience They care about the dollar.Hip-Hop today is cool…but it’s a problem when you play the same 7 records every 20 minutes.”"

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Follow on DMC on IG at @KingDMC and Twitter at @TheKingDMC.

Get the new collaboration at fansedge.com/runfanatics or NBAStore.com.