It's Like That

The group's first single, released on Profile in 1983 with Sucker M.C.'s on the other side. The lyric is about life where the group lived, covering unemployment, prices and death, and it turns toward a hopeful message about believing in yourself. A booklet note for the 2004 reissue of the album, by Angus Batey, says Smith had made one particularly stark backing track and had once paid Run $100 for a set of lyrics meant for Kurtis Blow. Run and DMC persuaded Smith and Russell Simmons to let them make a demo, and Russell split Run's rap and DMC's extra lines between the two voices line by line. Kurtis Blow and Elai Tubo mixed it. The 12-inch single runs 7:25 and the album version 4:50.

Christgau wrote that the competitive fatalism of the spare, brutal single was unforced and dead on. In 1997 Jason Nevins remixed the song, and his version topped the singles charts in 12 countries, spending six weeks at number one in the UK. VH1 ranked the song 40 on its 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs in 2008. Run-D.M.C. also performed it in the film Krush Groove.