Run-DMC rapper slams NYPD head for ‘thugs’ comment

Rapper Darryl McDaniels of the legendary group Run-DMC is demanding an apology from New York City Police Commissioner Williams Bratton, who labeled rappers as “thugs” following a shooting at a hip-hop concert.

{mosads}”He needs to apologize to all the rappers who have come from [the] streets but have never put out anything negative [and] disrespectful to break down … and destroy their community,” McDaniels, 51, best known as DMC, told the Associated Press on Friday.

McDaniels said the shooting isn’t a “hip-hop problem” and that Bratton’s statement is unfair to rappers who don’t “portray, promote or produce products that celebrate or legitimizes any forms of negativity.”

Bratton’s comments came Thursday after four people were shot at a concert in Manhattan.

The NYPD head blamed the shootings on “the crazy world of the so-called rap artists who are basically thugs that basically celebrate the violence that they live all their lives.”

Bratton later said his comments about the shootings were “misread as a reference to all of rap and hip hop, which it was not.”

He said he’s concerned about the “subset that not only glamorize violence but some who employ violence like a prop for ‘street cred.’ “