Run‐D.M.C.

Man, I get this is influential and groundbreaking for it's time, but it's just sounds so damn dated. I was terrified the whole album was going to sound like Hard Times, which is an absolutely awful track with some of the worst, stilted rapping flow I have ever heard in my life.

Luckily, the rest of the album is pretty standard old school hip hop in terms of flows, but I still don't really care for it. Rock Box is probably the best track with it's more busy production. But then you have songs like Hollis Crew which is just percussion and DMC/Run rapping, which is the complete opposite of Rock Box. It just does nothing for me.

Overall though, this thing has just aged so poorly that I can't get into it. Feel bad because I want to appreciate it, just can't when stuff like Kendrick, Biggie, Eminem, Mobb Deep, Nas, etc. all exist. It's like trying to go back and play the original Metroid after having played Super Metroid. Just unplayable.

For being a pretty early hip-hop album, Run-D.M.C. does it's job pretty well. This is probably one of the earliest hip-hop albums on this project (I believe it is second only to Malcolm Mclaren's Duck Rock in that regard) so it is a pretty basic album especially in it's first half. There are some pretty good songs here however and some weird ones (I'm looking at you, Wake Up) but the good ones are some pretty solid songs. I guess if there is another issue with this album besides it's overly basic nature, I'd say the weird songs do tend to drag for a bit too long which causes their gimmicks to get a little annoying but other than that, This is actually a pretty good early hip-hop album.
Best Song: Rock Box
Worst Song: Wake Up

KILLER album. Insanely influential on hip-hop as a genre and it's just full of jams. I love the minimalist beats.