Walk This Way Analysis

It may be surprising to learn that the first rap song to bring the genre to a wide mainstream audience wasn’t even originally a rap song. By every definition, “Walk This Way”, written in 1975 by Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, was your classic rock song. With air-guitar-worthy guitar riffs and cocky, brash vocal delivery of thinly veiled, extremely sexual lyrics, it was the track that set Aerosmith on the road to the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame (Run-DMC and Aerosmith, 2007). A decade later, Def Jam Recordings co-founder and producer Rick Rubin, a 22-year-old white kid from New York University, came calling with hip-hop stars Run-DMC, asking if Tyler and Perry would be interested in collaborating on a rap-infused remake of the Aerosmith classic. On its release in 1986, “Walk This Way” by Run-DMC, became the original rap/rock crossover
Public Enemy’s Chuck D credits Run-DMC, not only for opening the door for rap-rock collaborations but for getting rappers celebrity recognition, he explained, “Run-DMC made it possible for all the majors to see that rap/hip-hop music was album-oriented music and rap artists were rock stars, really” (Wiederhorn, 2016). In the years that followed “Walk This Way,” other prominent rock – rap collaborations surfaced, Anthrax with Public Enemy, Pearl Jam with Cypress Hill, and Mudhoney with Sir Mix-A-Lot. In addition, rock and metal bands like Rage Against the Machine, Limp Bizkit, and Linkin Park, merged the two styles to create rap-rock and nu-metal. Steven Tyler said, “I’m honored beyond belief [that it started bands fusing rap and rock]. If that wasn’t the case, then we wouldn’t be here today” (Cashmore, 2013). To this day, their collaborated song is held as the gold standard of experiments in