Richmond Times-Dispatch (20th of June 1986)
Crispin Sartwell:
If listening to people talk for three hours is not your idea of a hot night on the town, it’s a cinch you weren’t at the Coliseum last night.
Of course, these were no ordinary talkers; they were masters of rap, and their discussion was guaranteed to make you shake what you brought with you.
Let’s get the format straight. These guys brought no musicians with them, just deejays who controlled the gargantuan rhythm and all the instrumental sounds by manipulating twin turntables. The deejays are as much stars as the rappers themselves.
The Beastie Boys, a white trio, opened with two heavy metal raps that got the sellout crowd simmering.
Then L.L. Cool Jay, a 17-year-old burner, boiled them over. Starting with his hit song “I Can’t Live Without My Radio,” he danced and talked up the temperature to his deejay Cut Creator’s extremely hot tracks.
Whodini was up next and, as Ecstasy and Jalil would put it, they were def. Moreover, they were patently chill.
Whodini is the sweetest rap act in the business, and everything the duo did was based around a nifty melodic and lyric hook. Their man on the “wheels of steel” (turntables, for the uninitiated), was certainly the night’s outstanding scratcher. He proved once and for all that the hand — not to mention the sneaker — is quicker than the eye.
There was nothing sweet about the show’s headliners, Run DMC. They did their mean, delicious thing over a rhythm so big it sounded like a series of airline disasters.
Run DMC’s best songs are already classics of the form, and they pounded out most of them, including “It’s Like That,” “Rock Box” and “You Be Illin’.”
Dressed in their trademark jeans, denim jackets, porkpie hats and Adidas, they tried to intimidate all 12,500 people in the arena. They cursed, threatened, neared the edge of physical violence at odds of 6,250 to 1. The crowd enjoyed every minute of it.
One of the great things about rap shows is the call-and-response audience participation. Everyone left last night’s show feeling as though he or she had performed it.