The Wall That Changed Music: RUN DMC and Aerosmith’s "Walk This Way"

In 1986, the music world was strictly segregated by genre. Rock stayed on one side of the radio dial, and the emerging sound of hip-hop stayed on the other. That division ended the moment Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith stepped into a studio with RUN DMC to remake the 1975 classic, "Walk This Way."

Two Worlds, Zero Context

The most fascinating aspect of this collaboration is how little the artists knew about one another. Producer Rick Rubin, the visionary behind the pairing, famously had to convince both sides that the crossover would work.

Steven Tyler has since admitted that at the time, he had never really heard of RUN DMC and wasn't familiar with rap music as a genre. Similarly, Joseph "Run" Simmons and Darryl "DMC" McDaniels initially hated the idea. They referred to the lyrics of the original song as "hillbilly gibberish" and struggled to see how their rhythmic delivery would mesh with Joe Perry’s bluesy guitar riffs.

The Visual Metaphor

The music video remains one of the most significant pieces of media in music history because it turned a studio session into a literal battle for dominance.

The video opens with the two groups in separate rehearsal rooms, pounding on the walls and shouting for the other to "turn that noise down." When Tyler uses his mic stand to punch a hole through the drywall, it wasn't just a scripted stunt—it was a visual representation of the barriers between Black and white audiences being demolished in real-time.

A Cultural Turning Point

By the time the groups joined forces on stage for the final chorus, the landscape of the music industry had shifted. "Walk This Way" became the first rap-leaning song to break the Top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, effectively forcing MTV and mainstream radio to take hip-hop seriously.

It didn't just save Aerosmith’s career; it paved the way for every genre-bending collaboration that followed, from Linkin Park and Jay-Z to the pop-rap crossovers of today.