The members of Run-DMC were skeptical about collaborating with Aerosmith on their now iconic track "Walk This Way."
"We thought it was going to ruin our careers," Darryl "DMC" McDaniels told People. "It was at a time when nobody was branching out of their lane."
'It was at a time when nobody was branching out of their lane,' Daryl 'DMC' McDaniels said.
But the track ended up being the rap group's first and most successful mainstream hit. "Walk This Way" peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.
DMC explained how the collaboration's revolutionary nature was hard to understand when it was first pitched by producer Rick Rubin.
"When we first did 'Walk This Way,' the perception was everybody in hip-hop is going to hate this because people are scared to do something new," the rapper said.
"Our thing was, 'Ain't nobody going to like this. All the people that like hip-hop is going to be mad at us.' We had no idea that everybody from Red Alert to Grandmaster Flash would say, 'Yo, that's the coolest thing.' … We didn't know that the Black people was going to love it."
DMC noted that a lot of people get nervous about taking bold creative risks.
"People are scared to get uncomfortable," he said. "People are scared to work and think outside of the box because they're comfortable in that position."
That's why the musician tries to instill a sense of creative courage in younger generations.
"When I speak to young kids, I tell them this, 'Always be open to try something different because not only will it change your life, it could change the world,'" he said. "That's exactly what the 'Walk This Way' record did… The very thing that we thought was going to ruin us turned out to be something that improved us."
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The track ended up making it to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The collaboration revitalized Aerosmith's career as it helped to launch Run-DMC's.
The hard rock group was widely seen as past its prime before the track came out in 1986. But in 1988 their power ballad "Angel" made it to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. A decade later, their single "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" spent a full month at the top of the chart. It's since been certified platinum five times over.
"Walk This Way" also kicked off a new era of cross-pollination between rap and rock.
'Walk This Way' kicked off a new era of cross-pollination between rock and metal.
Although hip-hop artists had been sampling rock records since the genre's earliest days, their fan bases were largely distinct through the 1980s.
But that wasn't always the case. The members of the thrash metal band Anthrax were big rap fans, which is how they ended up collaborating with Public Enemy on the track "Bring the Noise" in 1991.
Rage Against the Machine formed the same year. Their 1992 self-titled studio debut helped turn rap metal into a full-fledged genre.
Later on in the decade, groups like Korn, Deftones and Limp Bizkit built on that sound by pioneering the nu metal subgenre.
Rap-rock hybrids fell out of favor in the early 2000s, but didn't die out completely. Crunkcore groups like 3OH!3, the Millionaires and Brokencyde fused elements of emo, hardcore and 2000s radio rap.
Their music preceded 2010s cloud rap artists like Lil Peep, Wicca Phase Springs Eternal and XXXTentacion, who were also heavily influenced by emo and other alternative rock subgenres.
The surviving members of Run-DMC reunited for their final show last year. Jam Master Jay was murdered in 2002.
