Run-DMC packs a rap Lunch, then hip hop comes to SXSW
Run-DMC packs a rap Lunch, then hip hop comes to SXSW
"I think it was the first time they saw what kind of impact their music was having.”
The first rap concert in Austin was a package show featuring Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Funky Four Plus One and the bands Kano and Skyy at Municipal Auditorium (which would be renamed Palmer the next month) on April 1, 1981. A capacity crowd of 3,000 showed up on a Wednesday night and went nuts to “seven guys and two turntables” as Flash described his set with the Furious Five. “We’re not a band.” Since that was just 18 months after the first hip hop record “Rapper’s Delight,” Austin was in on the underground sensation early on.
But four years later, Madonna’s crowd hated her opening act, booing the Beastie Boys off the Erwin Center stage on May 5, 1985. The new golden era of hip-hop introduced itself to Austin audiences six weeks later when Run-DMC played a delirious Juneteenth show at Liberty Lunch. This was a year before Raising Hell and its Aerosmith collab on “Walk This Way” drew down the bridge between rock and rap, but Run-DMC had already become the first hip hop act to record a million-seller with King of Rock. Joseph “Run” Simmons, Darryl McDaniel and Jam Master Jay played Austin on a day off from the Fresh Festival package tour, which they headlined. They were hottern hell!
So it must’ve seemed strange when Harold McMillan of the sponsoring Black Arts Alliance picked up the trio at Robert Mueller Airport with his beat-up Datsun B-210 and took them to the seedy Stars Inn Motel on I-35 near 32nd Street. “They were saying ‘Hey, man, this ain’t in our rider,’ but I had to tell them we were just a broke black arts organization,” McMillan recalled. The BAA paid Run-DMC $5,000 and ended up making a profit of $6,000 on the $10 show.
McMillan’s Datsun with the holes in the floorboard wasn’t the only low ride the rap icons took during their 24 hours in Austin. When they showed up at Liberty Lunch before the show, they realized that they’d left their records on the Fresh Fest tour and enlisted co-promoter Louis Meyers to take them to the record store, pronto. Meyers drove them to Sound Warehouse on Burnet Road so they could buy vinyl to rap over. “They just climbed in the back of the pickup and we were off,” said Meyers.
The sold-out crowd of 1,200 was about 50/50 black and white- unheard of in Austin at the time- and they were united in ecstasy when Run-DMC charged out onto the stage. Only problem was that the plywood Liberty Lunch stage had some play in it and every time one of the rappers jumped or even stepped hard, the record would skip. Jay was doing his best to keep the beat going, but it soon became apparent that the only way to save the show was for Run and DMC to be as stationary as possible. They did a lot of that folding arm pose.
It was a thrown-together benefit for an arts organization, but the Run-DMC show is significant for validating hip hop as a live music event to the rock crowd. This wasn’t held at some dance club on Sixth Street, but the proving grounds of Liberty Lunch. Back in 1985, people still didn’t know if rap was more than a fad. When you felt the power of Run-DMC live, you knew it was here to stay.
HISTORY OF HIP HOP AT SXSW
South by Southwest has become a Hip Hop Mecca in recent years, with seemingly everyone from big names to rising artists coming to Austin every year for the pub and the party. But that wasn’t always the case. “We’d hear the same thing every time we called New York,” says former SXSW booker Matt Sonzala. “’Why should I send my act to your hippie music festival down in Texas?’” But things changed in a hurry.
With the likes of Eminem, Jay Z, Kanye West, M.I.A., Public Enemy, Wiz Khalifa, Lil’ Wayne, Nas and on and on, perfoming at SXSW in pre-pandemic years, Austin has become THE place to be in mid-March.
You have to credit Kool Keith’s Ultramagnetic MC’s, who came down from the Bronx in 1990 to play Raven’s (a country music club that would evolve into punk haven Emo’s), with paving the way. Then, Homer Hill’s Catfish Station on Sixth Street fostered an adventurous breed of hip hop artists, such as Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Atmosphere and Hieroglyphics, who played SXSW at the beginning of their careers. The Fugees were the first platinum-selling hip hop act to play SXSW in 1996, the year Stubb’s opened, when their album The Score was #3 in the country..
Sonzala recalls one SXSW 1995 show at Catfish Station as an especially vivid turning point. “We all know her as Erykah Badu, but back then she went by Erykah Free,” he says. “She got up and did a couple songs with (Dallas collective) Heads-N-Dreads that caused people to just lose their shit!” Kwasar from the Heads did a duet with Erykah on “Stay Away,” then yielded center stage to the then-unsigned singer, who performed “On and On,” which would turn the music biz on its ear two years later.
By 2000, rap had arrived with showcases (presented in conjunction with Hip Hop Mecca) featuring such rhymesmiths as Chuck D, Doug E. Fresh, Blackalicious, South Park Mexican, Dead Prez, Big Daddy Kane and Jungle Brothers.
If you’re looking for one entire show that started the rapfire, Sonzala says it was the 2004 showcase at Aussie’s featuring Bun B, Dizzie Rascal, Paul Wall, Chamillionaire, Michael 5000 Watts and more. “I pitched SXSW on a Murder Dog (magazine) showcase, with all the big Southern rappers,” recalls Sonzala, and I got back a email from Craig Stewart (of SXSW) that included only the subject line, ‘Do you really think you could do this?’” Although “Dirty South” hip hop, with its “screwed and chopped” remixes had exploded all over the world, there was no live tradition of the form. “These guys from Houston never played on a real stage before,” says Sonzala. “They might do a set at a car show or some shitty disco, but a music festival? What’s that?” The crowd at Aussie’s was about 50% white and about 20% badges- and the response was emphatic.
Sonzala says the late addition of London “grime” pioneer Dizzee Rascal to the bill added a lot of heat and solidified hip hop’s international status. “Dizzee’s people didn’t want him on a showcase with rock bands, so when they saw that there was a bill with Southern rappers, especially Bun B of UGK, that’s where he wanted to be.” Rascal met Bun B at a party Houston label owner Randall Jamail threw for Slim Thug that afternoon and the pair became instant brothers. “Imagine” was the name of the two-minute spitfire recital that ended Rascal’s set that night and ended up on the B-side of his next single “Dream.”
The show at Aussie’s spiked Houston hip hop’s imagination. “It was, basically, on a beach volleyball court at a bar way off the beaten track,” says Sonzala, “but Bun B has said that show opened up the whole world for him. I think it was the first time they saw what kind of impact their music was having.”