Who performed alongside Aerosmith on one of their big hit songs, "Walk This Way"?

Aerosmith on one of their big hit songs, "Walk This Way" teamed up with Run DMC.

In 1986 Rick Rubin, a 22-year-old hip-hop producer and entrepreneur behind Def Jam Records, contacted Tim Collins, the manager of Aerosmith. Rubin wanted to talk to Collins about the idea of remaking his the 1975 single "Walk This Way" with a rap group on his roster, Run DMC.

Collins didn't know much about Rap music. However he learned that at the time, the entire reputation of Rap as a genre was being rescued by Run DMC. Everyone saw that Rap's core components are made up beats and rhymes that can form a type of a poetry. The structure has a simplicity that belies the wide range of sounds that cause the music to be Rap. Instrumentalists, a sampled break beat, or a drum machine can form the backbone of a track of rap music. A song with its arrangement can be spaciously spare or chaotically dense, and a chorus can range from atonal shouting to a sweet melody.

By the time the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collaboration was done and their song had been publicly released and heard by millions, Hip-Hop (Rap) had been brought into music's mainstream worldwide, and a rock band’s career had been revived. This has been the story of "Walk This Way"!