Larry Smith obit

Larry Smith, Renowned Run-D.M.C. Producer, Has Died

 

He was not on the list.

Pioneering hip-hop producer Larry Smith has died at the age of 63. Radio host Combat Jack broke the news via Twitter, reporting that Smith died on Thursday night.

Just spoke to his family. RIP Larry Smith, the original King of Beats who passed away last night.

— Reggie Ossé (@Combat_Jack) December 19, 2014

Born in 1951 in St. Albans, Queens, Smith was best known for his bass work on Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin'” and “The Breaks,” and for co-producing Run-D.M.C.’s seminal first two albums, Run-D.M.C. and Kings of Rock, with Def Jam founder Russell Simmons. Later, he solo produced two platinum-selling Whodini albums: 1984’s Escape and 1986’s Back in Black.

Tweeting his condolences, Rev Run wrote:

Rip to the greatest hip hop producer of all times…. Larry Smith. Produced my biggest and most significant hits..

— Rev Run (@RevRunWisdom) December 19, 2014

Smith had reportedly been in ill health since suffering a stroke in 2007 that left him unable to speak.

Although Smith was a trained musician, he chose not to employ live studio musicians to provide the music for Run-DMC. Aiming to reproduce on record the spare sound of hip hop music as it was then being made in the city's parks and clubs, he relied instead on drum machines. The result—embodied in Run-DMC's first single, "It's Like That" b/w "Sucker MCs"—was little more than beats and rhymes, a formula that critic Jesse Serwer has described as "the template for most [hip hop] records from '83 until '86–'87".

When Run-DMC's eponymous first album was released in the spring of 1984, it was hailed by Robert Christgau as "easily the canniest and most formally sustained [hip hop] album ever." One of the album's standout tracks was "Rock Box", a pioneering hybrid of hip hop and rock. According to Bill Adler in Tougher Than Leather: The Rise of Run-D.M.C., the record came together when the group overheard the band Riot recording in New York's Greene Street Studios. "They saw these loud guitars," remembers Russell Simmons, "and they started screaming, 'We can do that! What the we're going to make loud noise too!'" Steve Loeb, the owner of Greene Street, was skeptical of the viability of a rock–hip hop crossover, but Smith overruled him and recruited Eddie Martinez—a personal friend of his—to supply the guitar part for "Rock Box".

Run-D.M.C. was named by The Source magazine in 1998 as one of the 100 Best Rap Albums Ever and by Rolling Stone as one of the 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s. In 2005, critic Tom Breihan described the album as "the LP that forever tore rap away from disco and made it its own thing".

Smith and Simmons's second album for Run-DMC was King of Rock. The title track, which again featured Eddie Martinez on guitar, let the group "crunch and pop like some sort of hip-hop Black Sabbath," in the words of Rolling Stone's J.D. Considine. In recent years, it was featured on the soundtrack of the video games Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Thrasher: Skate and Destroy. The album also featured the track "Roots, Rap, Reggae", which has been credited by critic Jay Quan as "the first time that a major reggae artist (Yellowman) collaborated with a rap act". King of Rock was certified Platinum in 1987.