
Darryl McDaniels, Jam Master Jay and the Reverend Run wore black leather suits, gold chains and Adidas with no laces. They looked like drug dealers, and plenty of people thought they were. In reality, they were middle class kids from Queens desperate to become rock stars, and Raising Hell was their defining statement. They opened with “Peter Piper” (“Now Peter Piper picked peppers, but Run rapped rhymes/ Humpty Dumpty fell down, that’s his hard time”) to show off their spitting speed, followed it with “It’s Tricky” to prove their ferocity, “My Adidas” to test their promotional skills and “Walk This Way”, the first rock-rap collaboration to hit the Top 10, to show off their catholic tastes. And those are just the first four tracks. Raising Hell is rap’s first masterpiece, and it’s just as audacious now as it was two decades ago.