A Walk Down Memory Lane | Linkin Park, Warrant, Public Enemy, and Abercrombie

We get it, Linkin Park may be one of the best selling bands of our generation but they will forever be linked to the 00s rap rock clowns like Limp Bizkit (even though Rollin with Method Man was a dope track), Pappa Roach, Insane Clown Posse, Korn (who we actually like as well), POD, Kid Rock, Crazy Town, and many other bands that we love to laugh about in retrospect.

However, I can be remember the exact moment that I heard Hybrid Theory and I thought it sounded like little angels scream - and rapping - in my ears. I was working at Abercrombie, folding clothes after we closed and some dude threw on the CD, I thought my life had changed. 

To put this in perspective you must understand that, like many white kids that came of age in the late 80s/ early 90s, I had been listening to Metallica, Public Enemy, Warrant, Too Short, The Ghetto Boys, Poison, Megadeth, and 2 Live Crew. I loved all sorts of music but, at that time, if white kids listened to rap music they were labeled as wiggers or wannabes - there was no middle ground between white and black music. We would sit around and hypothesize about how a white kid could do rap music without sounding like Vanilla Ice. Of course there was no Eminem, Mac Miller, Asher Roth, LMNO, or Atmosphere at this time. We had talked about what it would sound like if we did rap music but as rock music but thought that would sound cheesy, in fact most of it did. 

But Linkin Park was different. Mike Shinoda was an art school kid in Pasadena, California connected to the west coast underground hip hop scene. He and Mr. Hahn were authentic hip hop heads and Chester's voice screamed with an eery elegance that made even metal heads blush. This was something different, something creative, something that encapsulated the post modern ethos of generation... well what ever the fuck our generation should be called. After the release of Reanimation, I decided that this was the best group of our era then they released Meteora, then the Jay-Z mashup (which was Shinoda's brainchild) and thus solidified themselves as the shiznizzle.

To this day I get hyped every time I read that LP is working on a new project. They have refused to stay within a box or work within a formula and you know that when you unwrap that vinyl, every track will be invigorating. As I streamed Living Things on Itunes last week, I had the same sense of satisfaction. Here is to progress and creativity. Enjoy!

Hybrid, Living, and Meteoric Blogging,
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