*In his memoir, “Ten Ways Not to Commit Suicide,” Darryl McDaniels, better known as DMC from the legendary Run DMC, gets candid about the wrenching despair of depression. He reveals that he once considered killing himself and he indulged in alcohol and drugs to cope. He also explains how he came across the music of Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan, and it saved his life.
Run DMC, the highly influential hip-hop trio who were the first to have a gold album, a platinum record, and appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. They are also the second to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Darryl’s new book serves as a guide on how to escape the suffocating hand of depression.
McDaniels writes: “My introduction to hip-hop – the very thing that would one day make me rich and famous – came as a result of me giving up something I loved for someone else’s desires.”
“I didn’t know it at the time. It was easy for me to create, but something deep down inside me silently was looking for other people’s approval and acceptance. Hip-hop made me feel accepted with the down crowd and with the in crowd. It made me feel legitimate,” said Darryl.
Before becoming a Hop-Hop pioneer, Darryl was a catholic school comic book geek from Queens, New York. In his book, he notes that, “comics were an escape, a way to make myself feel strong and invincible rather than like the quiet little four-eyed nerd I essentially was.”
“Hip-hop [became] my new haven, another alternative reality that I could slip into and pretend to be somebody, anybody, other than the quiet kid who got straight A’s at Saint Pascal’s,” Darryl said in his book.
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In his first on stage performance as part of Run-DMC, Darryl remembered being so drunk to the point where he didn’t recall performing at all.
“That [rhyming] was my private, make-believe play thing. Like I don’t do that in front of people. Hip-hop to me was play time. So, when he [Run] put me in his first show, I knew I needed some courage and the alcohol would give me some courage,” said Darryl.
Darryl, together with Joseph Simmons [Run] and Jason William Mizell [Jam Master Jay], dropped their groundbreaking self-titled debut album Run-DMC in 1984. The LP was the first rap album to sell more than half a million copies.
But Darryl’s success on the charts didn’t translate over to his personal happiness. He turned to alcohol to hide his emotions.
“Many of my years in Run-DMC were spent feeling like an unneeded third wheel. After our first album, my role in the group steadily diminished. I still recorded, but Run and Jay had little use for any of my creative ideas,” wrote Darryl in his memoir.
When Jam Master Jay was murdered in 2002, Darryl hit the bottle hard. He writes in his book, “Jay loved life and was murdered, while, ironically, I was the one consumed with trying to kill myself. Suffering through the loss changed my views on what it means to be alive.”
Darryl says he learned to love himself through his wife Zuri, and that love and patience made him a better man.
“Finding Zuri expanded my ability to love. After I met her, it grew deeper. My self-love grew through my love of her. By that I mean, I learned that I had to take better care of myself, [and] to fully love her the way that she deserves,” he said.
Darryl has been sober for twelve years now.
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