Raising Hell is released

Why it matters

Raising Hell came out May 15, 1986, on Profile. It is Run-DMC's third LP and it is the one with "Walk This Way" on it. "Walk This Way" is the Aerosmith cover that Run-DMC re-cut as a duet with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry themselves, with Rick Rubin producing. The song hit #4 on the Billboard Hot 100, which is the highest a rap song had ever charted at that point. Aerosmith were a near-dead 70s rock band before this song. The song brought them back. They have credited it publicly, many times. That is the famous part of Raising Hell. The less-famous part is that the entire rest of the album is great: "My Adidas" (which got the group a million-dollar Adidas endorsement, the first major-brand deal in rap), "It's Tricky," "Peter Piper," "You Be Illin'." Raising Hell was the first rap album to go triple platinum. It cracked the Billboard 200 Top 10. If you wanted one record to point at and call the moment rap stopped being a niche format and became a popular-music format, it is this one. May 1986.