“He played a solo that I thought was not great. I said, ‘I feel like you could do better!’”: What Rick Rubin told legendary guitarist Joe Perry during the recording of Run-DMC and Aerosmith’s mega-hit collaboration Walk This Way

It was the first hip-hop single to reach the top five on the US chart, and it kickstarted a whole wave of rock/rap crossover music in the 80s. But as producer Rick Rubin says in an interview with Rick Beato, the creation of Run-DMC and Aerosmith’s 1986 hit Walk This Way was no easy task.

Rubin says it was his idea for the hip-hop trio to remake a song that had originally featured on Aerosmith’s 1975 album Toys In The Attic. Rubin and Russell Simmons, the co-founders of Def Jam Recordings, were finishing up the production of Run-DMC’s third album Raising Hell when Rubin suggested they needed another track.