Raising Hell is the third studio album by American hip hop group Run-D.M.C., released on May 15, 1986, by Profile Records.

[1] It is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most important albums in the history of hip hop music and culture.

[10] Returning home to Queens in late 1985 after their extensive touring, they soon put themselves on lockdown at Chung King studios in Manhattan for three months.

Even though Rubin's and Russell's names were on the production marquee, the two non-group members oversaw and added to the music on Raising Hell more than created it.

[6] Raising Hell was voted fifth best album of 1986 in the Pazz & Jop poll of American critics nationwide, published by The Village Voice.

"[21] In the Los Angeles Times, Richard Cromelin wrote: "If the same old boasts are wearing thin and the misogyny gets grating, the beats are infectious and varied and the vocal trade-offs can be dazzling.

"[26] Raising Hell was placed at number four on the list, describing it as "the record to move rap from the ghetto to the suburbs.

Q magazine (12/99, p. 162) – 5 stars out of 5 – "... the apex of pre-Public Enemy, beatbox-based hip hop, a monument of massive, crisp beats plus the genre-bending 'Walk This Way'."

Rolling Stone (12/11/03, p. 126) – "[T]he pioneering trio took hip-hop into the upper reaches of the pop charts, introducing mainstream to a new urban thunder: rap rock."

[34] Public Enemy's Chuck D considers Raising Hell to be the greatest hip-hop album of all-time, and the reason he chose to sign with Def Jam Records.

"[36] In Hip Hop Connection, he ranked the album at number one in his top ten (which also included Tougher Than Leather) and said: "It was the first record that made me realise this was an album-oriented genre.