Before Run–D.M.C., Simmons was the lead vocalist in the hip-hop group named "The Force". He founded Run-D.M.C. as a lead vocalist along with friend
Darryl "D.M.C." McDaniels and the late
DJ Jason "Jam-Master Jay" Mizell. Run began using the stage name of "Rev. Run" after he was ordained as a
Pentecostal minister by
E. Bernard Jordan, Simmons's spiritual mentor. Jordan also named him "Protege of the Year Award" in 2004. The same day, symbolic of his "Prosperity Ministry", there was a "
Rolls-Royce parade outside the
Plaza Hotel in
New York City, "featuring Jordan's Phantom Rolls-Royce. The new $325,000 Phantom had been a gift from Reverend Run as a "thank you" for Jordan's mentoring support. His first work as Rev. Run was a feature in the single "Song 4 Lovers" by
UK pop band
Liberty X in September 2005. The music video for that song was directed by Bill Schacht for Aestheticom and reached broadcast airplay chart positions of No. 2 Box UK and No. 4 MTV UK with heavy rotation on 5 other music channels in the UK. "Song 4 Lovers" also reached No. 5 on the Official Charts Company's UK Top 40 Singles Chart, becoming the band's seventh top ten hit. It was followed by his first solo album,
Distortion. The first single from the album, "Mind on the Road", is featured in the
EA Sports's
Madden NFL 06 video game. "Mind on the Road" uses samples from the song "
I Love Rock 'n' Roll", in the tradition of Run–D.M.C.'s 1980s hits which use samples like Aerosmith's hit "
Walk This Way". In 2002, he appeared on a special "Rap Stars" edition of
The Weakest Link, and was the third one voted off. Rev Run appeared on the
MTV series ''
Run's House'', a reality show revolving around his everyday life with his family, from 2005 to 2009. In 2007, he appeared with his son
Diggy Simmons on
My Super Sweet 16 while attending a 16th birthday party for
Diddy's son, Quincy.
Diddy is also the producer of ''Run's House''. In 2008, Simmons and his wife Justine teamed up with
Kool-Aid and a non-profit organization called KaBOOM! On August 5, 2008, Gotham Press published Simmons' book, ''Take Back Your Family: A Challenge to America's Parents'', co-authored by his wife, Justine Simmons, and Chris Morrow. On September 8, 2007, Rev Run was honored as a
BMI Icon at the annual BMI Urban Awards. The weekend of September 17 and 18 of 2011, Rev Run made a special guest appearance at Bay Area Fellowship with Pastor Bil Cornelius in Corpus Christi, Texas Bay Area Fellowship Church. In October 2011, Rev Run was a special guest of
Fellowship Church based out of
Grapevine, Texas. Simmons has also created three other cable series, two premiered in 2014; ''
Rev Run's Renovation which runs on both the DIY Network and HGTV, and Rev Run's Sunday Suppers'' for
Cooking Channel, the other
Rev Runs Around the World premiered on the
Travel Channel in 2016. ==Personal life==