According to online dictionaries, take to the streets and take it to the street are idiomatic. As defined in the Free Dictionary, Take it to the street:
to tell everyone about your problems.
Strangely enough, the Free Dictionary doesn't have an entry for take to the streets, because I find this phrase more commonly used. To borrow Wiktionary's definition, take to the streets means
(of a crowd of people) To gather together in the public streets of a town or city to show communal solidarity in either celebration or opposition.
Their meanings seem to differ. But I am curious how much do they overlap in everyday writing, if at all? Namely, do people use one when they intend for the other and have their writing considered acceptable?
Take (takin') it to the streets, on the other hand, is the title of several different songs/albums by a number of musicians (The Doobie Brothers, Curtis Mayfield, and Rampage, among others.)
What was this phrase intended to mean by those musicians, take to the streets, or take it to the street, or something totally different?