They're mean, they're moody, their album Raising Hell is the biggest selling hip hop record ever... Garfield took his life in his hands and bandied words with the baddest beat boys, RUN DMC

Hip Hop has really come of age. It's no longer the subculture that caught the imagination of dancers everywhere in the early eighties. Today these young fresh rappers and scratchers have grown up and old even. There's a split between the new guys and the older guys, who were the first generation of rappers. People like The Sugar Hill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, and Love Bug Starski have split from the new generation — Whodini, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Doug E Fresh, Lisa lisa and Full Force and RUN DMC.

To find out about their fresh new style, while the boys from RUN DMC were passing through London at the end of their European tour, I checked them out. RUN DMC comprises two rappers — RUN (real name Joe Simmons) DMC (Darrel Mcdaniels) and on the turntables Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell). All three were born in the same neighbourhood in Queens Village NYC. It would be fair to say that RUN DMC have now reached that crowded pinnacle at the top of rapdom.

With a chart topping single — Walk This Way — and tracks like My Adidas and Peter Piper that both have massive street cred, it seems like a long time since they were jamming on the block. I put this to lead vocalist RUN.

"The Electro/Hip Hop scene is full of a lot of guys with a lot of talent. But their sounds are all very similar. What we do is to try our own original style and luckily we've had success."

Do you think this is what keeps you a cut above the rest?

"Well, some call us innovators, and some say our sound is commercialised. All that we try to do is what comes naturally to us and that is to keep our sound DEF and FRESH."

DMC, both you and RUN write the lyrics for your raps, how do you go about it?

"What inspires our sound and lyrics is our day-to-day life. We might be out on the block hangin' out and any situation that may happen can give me an idea for a new rhyme. Take the tune My Adidas; that tune came about cos we all wear Adidas sneakers, cos they are DEF and FRESH, so we made a fun rhyme about them, laid a beat to it, cut the record and it sold and made money."

Jay, I heard DMC mention laying down a beat for his rhyme. What does this involve? and is that always the order that you cut each track?

"The way we work is that RUN or DMC will have a rhyme and I will lay a beat to it using either a beat box (Emulator SP12 sampling drum computer) or scratching a bass-line from a record on the turntables (two Technics MK1200). We play with rhymes and beats just generally jamming until it sounds right to us."

We all took time out for beer and nosh, after which RUN told us:

"Jay is the real backbone of the band. He is like the orchestra and I the conductor. If I want a trumpet sound he can cut a trumpet sound from a record and scratch it into a beat. If I say I want a deep bass sound he can lay that down from a beat box or a record."

"Having said all that, what is different about us is our approach to all this", says DMC convincingly. "See we are not on any star trip, at least not yet. I've seen too many 'stars' fall out of the sky cos they thought they were the only rappers at the top. If it doesn't last for us, although I know it will, it won't kill us. We'll just move on to other things. Myself I'd like to do more writing."

DMC's confidence is contagious, according to Jay.

"He's the one who's been out here for a longer time than me and RUN. We kinda look up to him. But he is not our leader. See we all have equal say as to what we are doing or where we are going."

With their album Raising Hell racing up the charts and another hit track from the album imminent, I think the boys from RUN DMC have good reason to be confident.