"Walk This Way" is released

Why it matters

"Walk This Way" came out as a single July 4, 1986. The song is a duet between Run-DMC and Aerosmith, on a song Aerosmith had first put out in 1975. Rick Rubin produced. The 1975 Aerosmith record had been a Top 10 hit. The 1986 Run-DMC version went to #4. The video, which has DMC and Joe Perry literally knocking a wall down between their two rehearsal spaces, was on MTV every other hour for most of the summer. Here is the thing nobody tells you about "Walk This Way." Run and DMC did not want to do the song. They thought the Aerosmith original was corny. They thought rock and roll was, broadly, corny. They had been sampling the drum break from "Walk This Way" for years (it is a great drum break) but they did not know what the song was, who Aerosmith was, or why they should care. Rubin made them do it anyway. Rubin was right. The record reanimated Aerosmith's entire career and put rap on Top 40 radio in a way that no record before it had. Sometimes the producer wins the argument. Sometimes the producer should.