Raising Hell

Janet Perr, who designed Raising Hell, has been candid about how simple the brief was. "I hate to admit it but there wasn't a 'concept' concept for that album," she said. Profile Records wanted the three members on the front, the group arrived in their own clothes, and Perr brought in photographer Caroline Greyshock, whose soft black-and-white pictures she admired for the way they caught motion.

Greyshock photographed Run, DMC and Jam Master Jay in her Lower Manhattan studio with a strobe and a large window behind them, tilting some frames to a Dutch angle for a contemporary feel. Perr then printed the black-and-white images in flat colour, a purple photograph with green type on the front, and ran the album title vertically against the horizontal group name. She described the period as her "Russian Constructivist phase."

The deliberate outlaw street look came straight from the way Jam Master Jay already dressed every day. The stacked RUN over DMC lettering, boxed between parallel lines, went on to become the group's best-known logo. Raising Hell was released on 15 May 1986.