How 'Walk This Way' Opened Up The Airwaves For Rap And Hip-Hop
Aerosmith was one of the biggest stadium bands in the world in the 1970s. But then came the cliché: drug addiction for lead singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry, infighting and, by the 1980s, rock’s bottom. And as Aerosmith fell, rising hip-hop stars Run-D.M.C. passed them in the other direction.
But while Run-D.M.C. had hits, they didn’t have air play — no hip-hop group did.
“It’s very hard to understand today, when hip-hop is a part of every element of our culture … that there was a point where rap was just not in the mainstream, that if you wanted to hear it, you’d listen to a college radio station or you’d have to really seek it out,” says Geoff Edgers, national arts reporter at The Washington Post.
Then in 1986, Run-D.M.C. producer and Aerosmith fan Rick Rubin had a thought: Maybe a mashup could help them both, specifically the Aerosmith monster hit “Walk This Way,” off the 1975 album “Toys in the Attic.” Rubin thought, Run-D.M.C. already used the beats at the beginning. Maybe they could put their spin on the lyrics?
The subsequent joint venture made music history.
Edgers tells the story in his new book “Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song that Changed American Music Forever,” and says one of his goals while writing it was to revisit and revise the prevailing thinking about exactly which group helped which.
“There’s a false idea here that Aerosmith — the rock gods — came in and helped Run-D.M.C. become popular. And what in) tells ‘s Robin Young. “Before this record, they had already sold a couple million of their previous record, and they were young and energetic, and they were rising.
