Rock (on the) Box

The year was 1985, ya host was eight & 1/2 years old, and Run-D.M.C's performance of King Of Rock at Live Aid on TV was one of the pivotal moments where Rap music went from being something which was vaguely within my orbit via Roland Rat and Herbie Hancock to being the centre of my cultural universe alongside BMX bikes, amusement arcades, and Cadbury's cream eggs. Run-D.M.C & Jam Master Jay were a leather tracksuited star-shaped peg in Live Aid's hexagonal hole of stone-washed earnestness: they sounded like nothing the kid Marty had ever heard before and they were even cooler than the hoodlums in Michael Jackson's Beat It video. That was the night everything changed...


Thirty six years later and I still give Run-D.M.C half the credit that I've always preferred Adidas to Nike. The other half is down to Adidas Superstar tracksuits being the G.O.A.T #Athleisurewear. Wearing a slim-fit Adidas Superstar trackie to the pub on a Tuesday night to watch some Champions League football is an #AthleisurewearEra power move which makes you feel like King Cosy Boy (ask Valee!) Wearing a Nike Jordan trackie to the same pub on the same night to watch the same football, however, makes you look like you've just been to sign on the dole and makes you feel like you should be slobbing out at home on the sofa instead.

Related 80's: pour out a lil' Kraken for Ed "Duke Bootee" Fletcher. Who got the props? Alas, not Duke even though he was the Pumpkin of Sugar Hill Records, the genius behind The Message who then had his name scrubbed from the song's credits and his verses rapped by Furious Five members in the video, and the producer behind such tuff drum-machine era classix as Z-3 MC's Triple Threat and Word Of Mouth & DJ Cheese's King Kut and Coast To Coast. Credit is due.