Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Album!, July 8, 1999
This album is great. It's one of my favorite CD's. There is plenty of jazz sampling, rock sampling, and scratching. There are hardcore rap songs such as Ooh, Watcha Gonna Do and Can I Get It, Yo. There are some pure hip hop songs such as Hit 'Em Hard and Down With the King. I lilke the bass lines on this CD because they're so unique. You even have a reggae/rap fusion, What's Next. What could I say, another masterpiece by the Kings of Rap. Their new CD is set to come out in September. Don't miss it. It'll be a classic!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great album from the greatest ever, May 15, 1999
By A Customer
This album is by far one of the better hip-hop albums to come out in the past 10 years. Run DMC commands respect on this one, and lets hope they do the same with their new one, "Crown Royal" coming out later this summer.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Solid latter-day work from the hip-hop legends, May 9, 2007
By 1993, a lot of people had counted Run-DMC out. Their last album, Back from Hell, failed to have much commercial impact. It seemed like the rappers they helped to inspire had bypassed them, just as they had bypassed genre-birthing rap acts like Kurtis Blow and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five. Fortunately, the `Kings from Queens' still carried respect among those who followed in their wake; under the auspices of Profile Records, they set about recording a comeback album.
For Down with the King, Run-DMC made use of a then-unprecedented laundry list of then-contemporary beatmakers in hip-hop production. Since the release of this album, it has become a common (and some would say, tedious) trend to make use of several "star" producers on hip-hop albums. Here, at least, the tactic works.
Among the big names here are Pete Rock, who collaborated on several album cuts, including the gold-selling title track. Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest gets behind the boards on "Come on Everybody", and EPMD pump up the bass on "Can I Get it, Yo!"
Naughty By Nature's Kay Gee threw in his group's trademark piano-riffs for "Hit `em Hard", and Public Enemy's Bomb Squad contributed "3 in the Head" and "Ooh, Whatcha Gonna Do". Fresh of the success of Kriss Kross, Jermaine Dupri helmed "Can I Get a Witness". A then-unknown Tom Morello (Audioslave, R.A.T.M.) added guitar work to "Big Willie", the only nod to rock-rap fusion here.
The album sold over 500,000 copies, enough to go gold, and the group toured with Naughty By Nature and several acts from Death Row Records (for a time, they were briefly courted by the label). This would be Run-DMC's last studio album before the release of Crown Royal in 2001.
Arista Records bought the Profile catalog in the late 90's and re-released the standard versions of Run DMC's studio LPs. However, Down with the King was not included in the 2004 expanded versions of the group's albums. Period interviews confirmed that there were sessions with Bay Area-rappers N2Deep, but they didn't make the final cut. That makes for at least one potential bonus cut that could be included for a proper re-release.
Down with the king
Come on everybody
Can I get it, yo
Hit `em hard
To the maker
3 in the head
ooh, whatcha gonna do
big willie
three little Indians
in the house
can I get a witness
get open
what's next
wreck shop
for 10 years
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