Rick Rubin on How Walk This Way Brought Hip-Hop Into the Mainstream

I can remember being in, once Def Jam happened and we started having a lot of success putting out music, and I'm still probably at NYU, labels would come around and want to be involved in one way or another, and one label asked, like, what do you attribute the success of this to? After all, it's not music. Those are people in the music business who are wooing us, wanting to work with us, and they're telling us they don't hear it as music. That doesn't even make sense today, right? No, no, no. Now, the world has changed. The world has changed. Wow. But it was a completely alien underground form of music, and because people were rapping instead of singing, that was one piece that didn't, wasn't understandable. And then because the music was like, it's yours, where it's a drum machine, there's no melody, there's no... It was too foreign at that point in time for people to understand it as songs. Wow. It's hard to... It's shocking. It's ridiculous. And in some ways, like, there's a song I produced with... Run DMC and Aerosmith, Walk This Way. And the whole purpose of doing that was to demonstrate this is music. This is music, and this is... Not only is it music, it's familiar music. You're just not... You're not seeing it. You're somehow removed from what's happening, but it's easy to see if you... So again, if you create a demonstration. So that's what Walk This Way was, was I looked for a song that was familiar, and that the way it was written in the original version, the Aerosmith version, the phrasing of it was essentially a rap record. The verses are... It's not melodic, it's all about the phrasing. That's how rap works. And the beat, the intro, that, boom, boom, boom, that was already a known breakbeat in the hip hop world. They had never heard... In hip hop club, no one had heard of Aerosmith. No one had heard of Walk This Way, but they knew the toys in the attic break, which was just that beat, not the song. Wow. Yeah. Let's listen to that. We played the intro to Aerosmith's Walk This Way. I remember when you did that. I remember that being a very polarizing song. Absolutely. Because people didn't know what to think. It's like some people thought you were ruining Walk This Way by adding Run DMC, and some people were like, why do you have Run DMC with rock and roll? It doesn't make any sense. Stop the run. Just that long. That piece is the toys in the attic break, because it says toys in the attic on the record. Just that. Wow. So that was... And so if you went to a hip hop club, you might hear that. Wow. But I grew up on Aerosmith, and I grew up on ACDC, and I grew up on Ted Nugent. I grew up on rock and roll music. And when I saw this disconnect, this was the way to bridge the gap, just to explain what was happening. Wow. How was it received in the music business when you did that? I guess the first thing was radio. I remember, I guess it was WBCN in Boston. Yeah. Played it once. Mark Parento? I can't remember if it was Mark Parento, or who else was there? Charles LaCuedera? No. Tell me another name. God, that's hard to remember. Like DJs. The Morning Mattress was Charles LaCuedera, and Afternoons was Mark Parento. Yeah, I don't know that it was either of them, but it might have been. Again, I just remember that BCN played the song, and it was a big deal, also because it was a rock station playing a hip hop record. And I remember that there was this outrage from the audience, you know, take that garbage off. And then within a few days, it was the most requested song on the station. Wow. So it was like it definitely divided the audience, but the best things do. That's what's really exciting. When you hear something new and you don't have a reference for it, your first reaction might be to push it away. I remember the first time I heard the Ramones when I was in probably junior high school, and I heard the Ramones, and that was the first really punk rock fast music I ever heard. I don't think there was any before the Ramones. So if you're used to hearing normal tempo rock and roll, and then you hear the Ramones, I just laughed. It just seemed like a joke. You know, it just seemed ridiculous. And then eventually it became my favorite thing. How did Aerosmith react? Did you come to Aerosmith and try to bring it to them? Did the label come to them? I just had the idea of doing the song and recording the song with Run DMC, and then the label said, why don't we reach out to Aerosmith and ask if they would participate? And it was like, that sounds crazy to me, but if they'll do it, obviously I'd love it. I loved that band growing up. They were one of my favorite bands growing up. So that seemed like a dream. And then they came and we did it. Wow. That was a groundbreaking moment in music. It really was. If you really stop and think about all the ripples that came out of that particular song, that song introduced so many people to hip hop, and I'm sure so many hip hop fans to rock and roll and Run DMC. Absolutely. You know, combining with Aerosmith is like the perfect combination. Two iconic bands. But also at that point in time, Aerosmith had fallen on hard times. I remember I saw Aerosmith play at Nassau Coliseum's sold out incredible show, and then six months later Aerosmith were playing at a club on Long Island called Speaks, which was like where the cover bands would play. Six months? Six months. What happened? I don't know. I don't really know. I think maybe Joe Perry left the band, which was part of it. But I don't know how you can go from that popular to in this new condition that quickly, but it happened. That's wild. Yeah. I wasn't aware that that had happened. That doesn't even make sense that something like that can happen in six months. Nassau Coliseum, which is like- Sold out. 15,000, 20,000. 20,000 something. Jesus Christ, to a club. Yeah. 600 person club, like a big club, but still a club. A big fall. A big fall. Wow. In six months. Yeah, really quick. Was it a scandal when Joe Perry left? Was that what it was? Was it like everyone was upset? I don't know. I really don't know. They did that, and then did that song bring them back? That song brought them back. Wow. Holy shit. They put out an album called Done With Mirrors, which was like their comeback album before Walk This Way, and that was not well received. Then Walk This Way came out, and then it both broke Ren DMC in a mainstream way and re-broke Aerosmith as a mainstream group.