Sometimes two seemingly unrelated things can make the perfect pairing. Take chocolate and peanut butter — or perhaps the heavy union of rap and rock. On paper it doesn’t seem to make too much sense, but in perfect practice it elevates both ingredients to a whole other level.
Whether you’re thinkin’ about Aerosmith rockin’ their adidas with Run-DMC, or even contemplating how Blondie got caught up in the “Rapture,” the roots of rap rock stretch back decades. The Nineties, in particular, was a boom period for this kind of crossover, with countless mainstream hits mixing hip-hop rhyming patterns with chunky guitars and headbanging rhythms.
It seemed to fall out of favor for a few years, but as everything old becomes new again, both legacy artists and a younger generation of music-makers have been reviving the aesthetic.
With all of that in mind, what is the ultimate rap-rock wrecker? We asked our readers, and they voted these bangers into the top five, accordingly.
Helmet and House of Pain – “Just Another Victim”
While some would argue that this whole list could be filled with songs from the rap-and-rock-merging juggernaut that was 1993’s Judgment Night soundtrack, its opening collaboration between noise-rock aggressors Helmet and jumped-up rap crew House of Pain is crossover godhead.
Up front, Helmet hammer hard with percussively brutal riffage and Page Hamilton’s rage-heavy barks. The sound of industrial drills and requiem bells loom ominous in the din. Then they flip the beat, sample the guitars and head into a dank boom-bap backend where HOP’s Everlast jumps on the mic.
It’s not just another rap-rock song — this one is about as iconic as it comes.
Limp Bizkit – “Break Stuff”
Everyone has had one of those days where everything goes wrong and everyone around you seems annoying as hell. Fred Durst knows it. That’s why he and the rest of Limp Bizkit channeled the frustration of a g-g-generation into the band’s legacy-cementing fuck-you anthem “Break Stuff.”
Equal measures dumb and profound, the track is an exercise in simple catharsis: lean on chords, heavy on groove, big on attitude. While goofball in a lot of ways, Durst’s backwards-capped braggadocio on the track suggests he’s not one to be messed with. He’s a pitbull on the edge, just daring you to poke him one more time.
You’ll be lucky if you’re leaving with just a fat lip.
Linkin Park – “Papercut”
Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda told Revolver earlier this year that he considered “Papercut” to be the then-fledgling band’s “calling card” more so than their smash debut single “One Step Closer.” The former is, after all, the first song on Hybrid Theory, and it presents Linkin Park as a rhythmic, rap-and-rock-inspired force to be reckoned with.
The melodic groove-bomb is full of percussively chunky and infectious rhythms, while Shinoda goes hard in the verses with fast-rapped bravado. Co-vocalist Chester Bennington punctuates the end of the chorus like the perfect hypeman. The total package is a whirlwind forever spinning inside our heads.
Rage Against the Machine – “Killing in the Name”
Where do you even begin to weigh in on Rage Against the Machine’s impact on the broader rap-rock phenomenon? Arguably more so than any other band of the Nineties — perhaps of all time — the California quartet have become the de facto face of the genre. And likewise, they’re one of its most unique.
All of the band’s albums expertly stitched together the influence of Sabbathian heaviness, innovative mock-record-scratch guitar work from Tom Morello, and the political lyrical grit of hardcore kid-turned-rhymer Zack de la Rocha.
While many of you voted for Rage’s catalog as a whole, early anti-police-brutality anthem “Killing in the Name” may well be their defining moment (and was a major vote-getter). It’s damn near perfect.
Anthrax and Public Enemy – “Bring the Noise”
It may not have been the first rap-rock hit — hell, it wasn’t even Anthrax’s first stab at such a musical merger — but few metal and hip-hop crossovers remain as massively entertaining as the Big 4 band’s monumental reworking of Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise.”
The New York rap group initially shouted-out Anthrax on the OG It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back track, which eventually led the two factions to hitting the studio for a chunked-up, rock-style reimagining.
The thrashers’ live drums and riffs made for a different vibe than the sample-heavy original, yet they were as explosive as a Bomb Squad beat. Chuck D mans the mic for two verses before Anthrax’s Scott Ian flips the script with a faithful recitation of the final verse.
While power-belter Joey Belladonna hit the bricks for the redux, its otherwise a total meeting of the minds.