and Escape were certified gold by the RIAA, as was the Fat Boys' eponymous debut album, on which Smith played bass and helped to compose the hit single "Jail House Rap.

Eventually, Smith did all kinds of session work, played punk-rock, jazz, and blues, then logged stints in the house band of more than one musical.

[7] In 1979, Smith was recruited by his old friend Robert "Rocky" Ford, then an aspiring record producer, to play bass on Kurtis Blow's "Christmas Rappin'.

[1] By 1982, the pair was producing records together, starting with a couple of singles for the rapper Jimmy Spicer: "The Bubble Bunch" (1982) and "Money (Dollar Bill, Y'all)" (1983).

[1] Aiming to reproduce on record the spare sound of hip hop music as it was then being made in the city's parks and clubs, he relied instead on drum machines.

The result—embodied in Run-DMC's first single, "It's Like That" b/w "Sucker MCs"—was little more than beats and rhymes, a formula that critic Jesse Serwer has described as "the template for most [hip hop] records from '83 until '86–'87".

Steve Loeb, the owner of Greene Street, was skeptical of the viability of a rock–hip hop crossover, but Smith overruled him and recruited Eddie Martinez—a personal friend of his—to supply the guitar part for "Rock Box".

The title track, which again featured Eddie Martinez on guitar, let the group "crunch and pop like some sort of hip-hop Black Sabbath," in the words of Rolling Stone's J.D.

[20] In a 2009 interview with Jesse Serwer, Whodini's Jalil Hutchins recalled being introduced to Smith at Disco Fever in the Bronx: "Me and Larry became friends, and when we was going to record, we said, 'Lar, what you got?'

"[9] Escape's other notable single was "Freaks Come out at Night," about which the critic Greg Tate wrote: "[The track's] sybaritic verses would be just so much more overbaked hip hop toasting without Smith's sizzling contrapuntal eruptions arcing and looping in and out of the vocals.

Smith and Whodini have laid the groundwork for a genus of hip hop as capable of personal revelation as the blues of Robert Johnson and as worldly wise as the melodic muse of Wayne Shorter.

[22] The critic Vince Aletti, writing for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine in April 1986, summed up the impact of Smith's work for Whodini: "A funky but melodic mix that gives the material the appeal of songs rather than bare-boned rap attacks, these songs have gone on to become hits that helped open ears and airwaves to [hip hop]."