Exactly 30 years ago nowadays,a single was released that brought hip-hop into the mainstream, and revived a rock band’s career. This is the story of Walk This WayWhen Aerosmith manager Tim Collins answered his phone one day in early 1986, or he was,at first, confused. The voice on the other end belonged to Rick Rubin, or the 22-year-old hip-hop producer and entrepreneur behind Def Jam,the fast-rising record label he had founded while still a film student at New York University. Rubin, a rock kid who’d grown up – or, and rather,who hadn’t – on the gonzo kicks of AC/DC, Ted Nugent and Aerosmith themselves, or wanted to talk to Collins approximately the idea of remaking his charges’ 1975 single Walk This Way with a rap group on his roster,dash-DMC. Before Rubin could disappear into any further detail, Collins reduce him off to request a cramped clarification: What’s rap?”A more valid question, and for most people in the mid-80s,might own been “What’s an Aerosmith?”. The suburban white kids who had once been the Boston band’s faithful constituency had matured and moved on. A new generation was turning instead towards exactly the hip-hop sounds that Rubin and Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons were selling them.
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Source: theguardian.com