DMC consumed by records -- of his roots

RAP fans worldwide know Run-DMC.

But Run DLL?

In 2000, Darryl McDaniels, a.k.a. DMC of the pioneering, Adidas-wearing hip-hop trio, made a shocking discovery that cast a shadow across his very existence (to say nothing about his hip-hop moniker): He had been adopted when he was barely a month old. The future rapper’s name at birth: Darryl Lovelace.

That midlife revelation subverted everything McDaniels knew about himself and prompted deep soul-searching -- as well as thoughts of suicide.

“I know the DMC story, millions of people know it,” McDaniels, 41, says. “A kid grows up in Hollis, Queens, forms this band with Run [Joseph Simmons] and [Jam Master] Jay, does the first rock-rap thing, sells millions.

“But I needed to find out the Darryl story. That was a mystery to me. And I said, ‘I’m gonna be a crazy man and bring cameras on my journey.’ ”

That resulted in a VH1 documentary, “DMC: My Adoption Journey,” premiering Saturday as the first of a planned six-film franchise called “VH1 Rock Docs.”

The film follows McDaniels combing through library records to find his birth certificate and battling New York City bureaucracy in an effort to locate his birth parents. He hires a private detective to find the hospital where he was born. The MC even invites cameras into sessions with his therapist.

“What we found out going in, adoptees have a lot going against them,” says Brad Abramson, VH1’s vice president of production and programming. “It was very real. Much more real than ‘reality TV.’ ”

“It’s an emotional thing,” McDaniels says “My biological parents might not have wanted anything to do with me and my real family might have said, ‘What’s going on? Are we not good enough for you?’ ”

Although Simmons was the subject of a successful unscripted drama, “Run’s House,” that aired last year on MTV, McDaniels denies he was inspired by his partner’s TV success. But he concedes that “Adoption Journey” is part of an effort to recast himself as an adult hip-hop artist, dealing with substantive issues seldom broached in pop chart hits. His solo debut CD, “Checks Thugs and Rock ‘N’ Roll” (due in March), deals with similarly mature themes: He raps about going through rehabilitation for alcoholism, contemplating suicide and his reaction to the war in Iraq. “You Be Illin’ ” indeed.

Ultimately, however, McDaniels hopes his documentary will help adoptees making similar efforts to reclaim their pasts.

“I don’t just have a family,” he says. “Hip-hop adopted me. And that means I have a big responsibility. Thank God I lived long enough to figure that out.”

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Air-guitar quality alert

The thrill of victory. The agony of defeat. Never mind the winter Olympics -- regional heats for the 2006 U.S. Air Guitar Championships kick off in New York on March 2. The competition branches out to Los Angeles and nine other cities across the country, through June.

A word of caution to fast-fingered power chord pretenders: Better bring your A game. After American champion Fatima “Rockness Monster” Hoang’s humiliating defeat at the Air Guitar World Championships in Oulu, Finland, last August (the U.S. team’s highest-ranking finisher there placed seventh), event organizers are making strenuous efforts to bring the gold back home.

“If there’s anything in the world the U.S. deserves to dominate, it’s air guitar,” says Kriston Rucker, co-founder of U.S. Air Guitar. “We’d been dominating things since 2003, but last year we got destroyed. Our people just didn’t bring it.”

Leading up to the competition, USAG mounted a 20-city college tour looking for untapped talent. “We put the word out: We got embarrassed last year,” Rucker says. “We gotta do something about this.”

The search for America’s greatest invisible ax man (or woman) comes to Los Angeles in early May. Information: www.airguitarusa.com.