Rage Against The Machine’s explosive debut album changed everything | Hacker News Reader

Rage Against The Machine’s explosive debut album changed everything

loudersound.com

187 pointsSirLJ169 comments

I've been a huge fan of RATM since the early 90s, but I don't think that "A brand new band mixing metal and hip hop like no one had done before" is quite true. My understanding is that the music scene in LA had a lot of bands like this. I believe the band Downset pre-dates them, and they had a big hit called "Anger".

I only wish they had a bigger impact in politics. For all of their incredible songs, almost nothing came of it, besides the famous protest of the DNC conference in LA. I wish they had more impact especially during the Bush years, when we really needed an anti-government voice, but it never came to be, unfortunately.

Downset was heavily influenced by Zach’s old band Inside Out. I was in an old hardcore band from that era and know Ray and played with shows with Inside Out. Updated for autocorrected error.

anger, hostility toward the opposition!

I'm getting old but I am still straight-edge right now because of bands like Inside Out and Minor Threat.

Also I wish Tom would still write his op-ed on NYTimes, I really enjoyed his history and writing.

He's really articulate. I listen to his show "Comandante" on XM just for the history stuff he brings up. Tonight he was talking about being in a legit spandex, hair metal band WHILE he was still attending classes at Harvard. It was such a funny, yet totally Tom Morello thing to do, right?

If you get a chance, have a listen, he has a lot of fascinating things to talk about - would love to see him get a regular spot in the Times just as a culture writer. Would be really interesting to see what he's write about.

Thanks for the recommendation, I will take a listen. I think he wrote about that in his op-ed about being in a band in Harvard. https://www.nytimes.com/column/tom-morello

Don’t get many opportunities in 2022 to tell the global Internet reading HN to go listen to Burning Fight and No Spiritual Surrender! What was your band?

We were called One Step Ahead.

Very awesome!!

And in turn, much of the diversity in metal and alt-rock of the late 80s and thereafter throughout the 90s owes quite a bit to Mr Bungle.

Don’t forget about Urban Dance Squad. I feel like RwTM stole a lot of their style and packaged it for MTV consumption.

RwTM has always sounded a bit watered-down, appealing to aimless teenage angst and class struggle fantasy. In reality , Zach de La Rocha has activism royalty in his lineage and Morello is a limo liberal.

Inside Out were so good. So cool you got to play with them.

These days they're doing what a lot of those 90s bands ended up doing: raging with the machine.

gotta sell tickets. Don't forget the merch!

Rage long enough and you become the machine.

I mean, they never seemed to be particularly deep thinkers. Like many, it felt like they just adopted whatever positions were popular with those around them at the time, so the way they act now shouldn't come as a surprise.

RATM acting like Mumia Abu-Jamal was some sort of political prisoner was a good example of this. The guy saw his brother in an altercation with a police officer, ran over and shot the police officer dead. Rage praises him by name in at least two songs, calling him a rebel and talking about setting him free. It was a common sentiment in those circles at the time (Democracy Now! were big fans of Mumia, and you would hear "Free Mumia!" chants at marches against the Iraq war), and a lot of people just kind of mindlessly went along with it.

If you've ever watched Community, the character of Britta is similar. These people are "political," but it's mostly an aesthetic. And for all the talk of them being "radical," the positions are usually extremely safe ones to take for the circles they travel in. People put on a lot of bravado when they're going against the nameless "Machine," but most are too terrified to even entertain a stance that might alienate them from their peers.

They had a tremendous effect on many young peoples politics at the time. At least on my politics. That is much more than most political bands by a wide margin. Anyway, I don’t really think music can have a big effect on politics per se, but music can be important for political movements.

I do think music's effects are underappreciated.

You can hear about plenty of artists uniting or representing a movement in the USA esp 60s.

The story of Rodriguez is one of my favorites. He literally had no idea he had been the root of music for social change in Apartheid South Africa.

https://www.npr.org/2012/07/28/157478577/rodriguez-forgotten...

"The first white anti-Apartheid movement derived [inspiration] from a few rock bands," Bendjelloul explains. "Rodriguez was the first artist that actually had political content that was anti-establishment that got heard. ... By remote control, Rodriguez was actually changing a society."

> artists uniting or representing a movement in the USA esp 60s.

They sold music to the huge boomer population when they were young, by the 1980s those same Boomers voted for Reagan in considerable numbers and were buying Debbie Gibson and Rod Stewart albums. RATM sold music to pissed off GenXers when they were young, by 2020 they were voting for Biden. It’s not revolution, it’s youthful angst that gives way to responsibility and lower testosterone levels.

I really don't think gen-xers voting for Biden is in any way analysis to boomers voting for Reagan. I think this is the dominant sentiment on Biden: https://youtu.be/KGmXGkIr7w0 He's a stop gap against fascism.

If ever there was a song that truly captured political sentiment, it's that one. I fully support the stop gap against fascism, but it would be nice to have had better options available.

In the spaces I inhabit, people have pretty much given up on national politics as a theory-of-change and focused on state level politics. Hold your nose and vote the D to avoid fascist takeover, and then work on getting important changes where you can actually make a difference. The national level government is pretty broken, due to poor design which has given us gridlock and tyranny of the minority.

> He's a stop gap against fascism

The point is that those pissed off teenage GenXers would be horrified to vote for any Dem candidate for the last 20 years. All of them were/are part of “the machine” but time has had its opportunity to form basically all of them into conventional adults.

I'm sorry, should they have voted for Trump instead? Those where the only real pragmatic choices. I'm not sure if the boomers listening to music with messages about political change are the same boomers who voted for Reagan. Those who want real change are always dwarfed by "moderate" status quo types, who are largely apolitical and uninformed and therefore easily swayed by fascist messages such is the fundamental nature of the average person throughout time. It takes effort and thought to remain progressive.

I remember being in high school and my soccer teammate was having people over for a party. He put on RATM and told me, "This band, you're not going to believe it, they don't sound like anything out there right now. Plus, listen the lyrics dude, they're super heavy!"

That first track Bombtrack and then Killing In The Name and that was it, I was hooked.

Rage Against the Machine is like the Kanye of the left.

> I only wish they had a bigger impact in politics.

Gushing cliches like '_____ has changed everything' often unintentionally dissipate the very energy that seeks to bring about change by reducing everything to bathos. When the language of drama is applied to soap opera plots it's ceased to have any utility. Gil Scott Heron rapped about this in his famous record 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised', which of course was quickly repurposed into a meaningless cliche and printed on t-shirts that could be sold at Hot Topic.

Edit: this is a hyperbolic dig at marketing and commodification. I don't think GSH himself ever tried to make money from merchandise, but the original language is unclear.

NOFX had their politically awakening during the Bush years and produced their best work with War on Errrorism during this time.

One of the sharpest punk records ever cut. This album was a wake-up call.

I still know the lyrics to Franco-Unamerican song. There was a huge Rock against Bush movement back then from concerts to album compilations.

I prefer their earlier stuff but “The Separation of Church and Skate” is such a banger.

In a way that means it hasn't dated much at all when you listen to the lyrics.

Body Count was ahead of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_Count_(band)

When that first Body Count album came out, it was like a nuke going off across the country and huge wake up call for anybody who didn't know what was going on routinely in South Central and surrounding areas with the LAPD and the black community.

Weirder still was when Rodney King happened you had a whole bunch of suburban white parents who were shocked at what happened. I remember myself and all my friends were like, "Welcome to the party, Ice T, NWA and other groups have been talking about this for years!" We already knew about police brutality as teenagers well before our parents did. It was an odd juxtaposition.

Body Count really was and is something special. I discovered them far later than I discovered Rage, but they really are putting out gems even now with “No Lives Matters” [1] in 2017 and their take on Ice-T’s “Colors” in 2020 [2]. Apparently there is a new album in the works and I certainly hope they will continue putting out excellent music and social commentary of a kind you otherwise would only see coming out of hip hop.

[1]: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=ww3VAh-aPds

[2]: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Mlj-I7Ak-YM

I discovered rage because they gave out tapes at a body count concert and a friend picked one up. Rage was the opening band.

I have the original body count cd, I got on release day. They had one and they had to go looking for it in the back. I believe it was the same day as Bruce Springsteens double album.

We saw Rage at UMass student Union ballroom and Body Count later that year at a club in Amherst. Those 90s had some good shows.

>> Those 90s had some good shows.

Oh man you are so right.

Saw this at a small venue in North Dakota:

Danzig

With opening bands:

Marilyn Manson (and yes, he did drop trow about 3 min into their set. Hilariously my best friend called it before the show)

Korn

In Minneapolis at First Ave:

Fear Factory

With opening bands Hed(Pe)

Static X

System Of A Down

I listened to Body Count in the 90s and then rediscovered them a few years ago when their remake of Institutionalized was recommended to me by Spotify. The lyrics on that one are hilarious.

How prophetic is this Trump sign in the Sleep Now in the Fire music video from 1999[1]. I had tickets to the ill-fated Beasties/RATM tour, so bummed that never happened. They've had an impact though, their music is immortal.

1. https://youtu.be/kl4wkIPiTcY?t=64

ha, wow. I was there then and completely forgot that he even bothered running then

I'm sure that the band's impact was underreported in the US, where the debut album only charted at #45 (much higher in the UK and AU). 2nd album 'Evil Empire' debuted at US#1,, and did equally well internationally.

Its song 'Tire Me', sez Wikipedia, "never had a music video, was never released on any media formats, and had no radio airplay" (odd, no?), yet it won a Grammy in 1997. (This was 1996 ... little internet ... and yet word got around.)

I don't expect music to have much widespread political impact ... the impact is in deeper regions less open to media manipulation.

> I only wish they had a bigger impact in politics.

They have--just not the impact I suspect you are thinking of.

The political impact of RATM and similar bands is to make "protesting against the system" into a brand. That means that people who feel that they should be protesting against the system don't think they have to do the hard work of figuring out what is actually wrong with the system and how to fix it. They just think, oh, if I want to protest against the system, all I need to do is listen to this band! And buy their T-shirts, promote them on social media, etc., etc. In other words, it satisfies people's felt need to "protest against the system" without actually leading to any meaningful change.

> They just think, oh, if I want to protest against the system, all I need to do is listen to this band!

I am not sure if people who this would protest under any circumstances.

> don't think they have to do the hard work of figuring out what is actually wrong with the system

Yes, I know my enemies! They're the teachers who taught me to fight me! Compromise! Conformity! Assimilation! Submission! Ignorance! Hypocrisy! Brutality! The elite!

> how to fix it.

All of which are American dreams! All of which are American dreams!

If you’re interested in Tom Morello’s version of how it all started for him, I recommend this nearly 2 hr show hosted by Tom. He tells stories of his upbringing and beliefs and plays a couple of songs for a live audience.

https://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B08DVCMY4Y&source_code=ASSOR...

Have you ever seen the music video for Testify? The gist is that Bush and Gore were identical candidates with essentially the same positions and it ends with a tacit endorsement of Nader. In hindsight Bush and Gore were not the same and the candidacy of Nader was harmful.

Their politics would have been more effective had they urged young people to rage within the system, but the rebellious message is clearly more appealing.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3dvbM6Pias

> Bush and Gore were not the same

It's funny how, after those people come to power, you don't see any difference. At least from abroad.

Gore wouldn’t have invaded Iraq and would have made a much bigger push towards reducing carbon emissions.

You truly cannot prove that with any level of certainty.

Harmful how? Are we still blaming people who voted for Nader for the fact that Bush won?

I remember when Bush vs Kerry, they did a comparison between their policies and there was about a 3% difference between them.

The Democrats and the Republicans force a false dichotomy. In reality they are the same side of the coin, and we are all on the other side.

Yes, Bush had a military hard-on for Iraq that killed a million and ruined the Middle East. Fuck that war criminal. Yes, Gore probably wouldn't have invaded Iraq, but then again Trump wouldn't have fought the proxy war against Russia right now. Obama authorized the incursions in Honduras that have caused the humanitarian crisis at our borders these days. All US presidents love feeding the military industrial complex.

Funny how fame changes people.

Started out as a gang of activists, rapping about social justice and all the equality stuff - ended up throwing tantrums for not receiving special treatment for being rock stars:

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/tom_...

I always thought Zach was the one who believed in activism the most.

Despite the restaurant rant I think Tom Morello is the better activist. Zach was certainly the more committed and extreme activist. Tom’s show on SirusXM is awesome and I highly recommend it.

There are a couple good article if you google Tom Morello activism, I’d link but some plate behind paywalls.

Yeah they turned into “I will do what you tell me” sort of thing. They became the machine. Sad.

Rage For The Machine

"f u, you'll do what I tell you"

It was surreal watching them tell people to obey the government.

Up there with pro war / Ukraine invasion Roger Waters

Wow, publicly calling out the restaurant right out of the gate and then asking for a private conversation when public opinion turned against him? And from his description, they were turned away because they kept harassing the doorman after initially being told (legitimately from the sounds of it) that the place was full. I dunno what it's like in Seattle but where I'm from, if you start arguing with security before you're even inside the door, you aren't getting in no matter how quiet the place is. What a dick.

I know this is a joke, but this is really what it was like hearing RATM for the first time: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TTXPvD5iYxs

For anyone that can't stand not being able to scan, replace "shorts" with "v" to get a regular video: https://www.youtube.com/v/TTXPvD5iYxs

That's super helpful, thank you! It's like holding my breath not knowing where I am in the video.

At 0:45 it perfectly represents how that song takes my emotions up to the point I can hardly hold them. I barely ever get overstimulated like that.

Caught them live a couple months ago at Madison Square Garden. I couldn't believe how good they sounded or how energetic they were. Zach had to sit down throughout the whole performance due to an injury, but it didn't bring down the intensity at all. And you'd have absolutely no idea Tom Morello was 58 years old. I found myself wondering how much better their shows could have been 30 years ago -- it didn't seem like they'd lost a single step.

Needless to say, it was well worth the price.

I flew from Melbourne, Australia to Buffalo, NY to see them. Worth the 27 hour flight each way.

Saw them at Lollapalooza in New Orleans in 1993. None of my group of friends had ever heard of them. We were there for Tool, Primus and Alice in Chains. The crisp guitar and overall energy of Rage was jaw-dropping. The next day all of us bought their CD and blasted it while driving around for the next year.

Saw them as well in Canada this summer, same thing Zach was sitting but it quite literally the best show I've ever been to.

I saw them in 1999 at Nassau Coliseum. Still to this day one of the best and most energetic shows I’ve ever been to.

This about sun up the evening: “groups of teenage boys took their own kind of mass action, rushing the barriers between the bleacher seats and the coliseum floor to overwhelm the outnumbered security guards. Half a dozen mosh pits held colliding bodies riding surges of adrenaline and testosterone during the set.”

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/07/arts/rock-review-rock-reb...

Tried to see them twice in the UK, which they have cancelled.

Hopefully, they will one day make it.

I’ve never been able to see them live, but did see Prophets of Rage at a small local venue a few years ago. That was pretty sick.

And then Rage Against the Machine's sound in the GTA San Andreas soundtrack changed everything again.

Combining an open world game and a flight-simulator together with baked-in FM radio stations was literally the best thing to ever happen to gaming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLGuDj2oGLU

>And then Rage Against the Machine's sound in the GTA San Andreas soundtrack changed everything again.

GTA had radio stations even in the first isometric one and the three (or more?) after that, before San Andreas

> literally the best thing to ever happen to gaming.

its a nice gimmick but I think it isn't LITERALLY the best thing ever in gaming. lots of games have music, literally.

GTA SA has literally the best soundtrack ever made in any game at that point in time. Period.

It utilizes a complex system to keep repeat plays from ever becoming repetitive. No other game had anything like that then and very few, if any, non Rockstar games have anything like that now.

I disagree, Also Midnight Run Club series had similar system before, and had better music, also why do reddit people keep writing 'literally' all the time?

>complex system

very simple system to prevent repeats and inject slugs, and all the sequels(and GTA 3 + vice, had that system.. Did you play all those games?

Did you play Midnight Club Series? by rockstar also?

Taste wise I prefer the music in GTA4 and Vice City to San Andreas

The San Andreas FM station wasn't baked in, unlike its predecessors.

It featured dynamic playlists, randomized commercials, news and interview segments which reflected the progression of the game's arching plot and more.

https://www.soundonsound.com/people/allan-walker-craig-conno...

> In all the previous titles, each radio station was a loop of about an hour and a half with the adverts and the DJs all mixed in, so I could just EQ the whole thing the way I wanted. This time the tracks are selected randomly from each station's playlist and there are three different DJ intros and outros for each track. Most of the ads appear on several different stations too. We wanted people to be able to play the game for a long time before hearing anything repeated.

To me, baked in means it is on the DVD and new content isn’t pulled from the internet. Dynamic selection of tracks and ads doesn’t seem to disqualify them from all being baked in.

Bingo. Offline gameplay that feels live and connected to the world inside the game.

to me, baked in means it's a purposeful feature of the software and part of the package you get, baked in during development just like baking a cake.

"in the new version, downloading radio from the internet was baked in, just as the jukebox music had been baked in to the previous version"

Zack: "...we’re dealing with this huge, monstrous pop culture that has a tendency to suck everything that is culturally resistant to it into it in order to pacify it and make it non-threatening."

I'm convinced that's not an organic natural phenomenon, but rather a feature of the corporate-state partnership between movie and music producers, the corporations and shareholders that largely control them, and the bureaucrats and politicians who don't like to be criticized by popular artists. It's pretty clear that new acts with such political messages no longer get record deals; that's why rap and hip-hop turned into a celebration of ostentatious consumption in the USA - although acts similar to Rage Against the Machine are more common in Europe, they're mostly industrial/metal acts, such as, for example, Arch Enemy, The World is Yours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk2-bgwA0Ro

Who was absolutely amazed when started the final song of The Matrix?

One of the most brilliant moment of [my] cinema history.

The movie was already great and Wake Up was the perfect song to end it (both soncially and the context of it)

Great band but these articles always need to talk up the originality or uniqueness of a given band when they just don't need to. Rage against the machine came at the right time, had/have great energy, technical skill, an important message etc. all of which make for a great piece. But mixing metal and hip hop in some new way? There were a dozen big name acts at the time doing exactly that.

In 1991? Who?

Staying entirely in the '80s, early rap-rock would be the Clash, Time Zone and Tom Tom Club. Mid period would be RUN-DMC/Aerosmith and the Beastie Boys. Later would be Age of Chance, Pop Will Eat Itself, and World Domination Enterprises. You could probably give Big Audio Dynamite an honorable mention.

Anthrax?

FNM

Urban Dance Squad.

Mr. Bungle, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Faith No More.

I’ll never forget this YouTube video of one of their early performances. It was in I think a record store. Just imagine being some kids in a band, playing to a small crowd in some store. And yet, they brought so much fucking energy they may as well have been playing in Madison Square Garden. Truly amazing to watch:

https://youtu.be/bQ8YAv2rcQU

Never understand how the Beastie Boys don't get more acknowledgement for contributing to the sound that RATM used.

The Beastie Boys were never out to change things. They wanted to have fun and gave us the best live performance of a one chord song ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ5yKJlhbiA

>> The Beastie Boys were never out to change things

Musically there is pre-Paul's Boutique and post-Paul's Boutique.

They changed things. If you haven't listened to it for some reason, listen to it.

Gettin' old like Ali Boomba Yay So fed up with racism today It's time to speak up and not turn away Make the sun shine when it's cloudy and gray

Dip dip dive, so-so-socialize Open up your ears and clean out your eyes If you learn to love, you're in for a surprise It could be nice to be alive

I want to say a little something that's long overdue The disrespect to women has got to be through To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends I want to offer my love and respect to the end

The Beastie Boys? Not out to change things? I do believe that they asked their listeners to fight, for their rights (to party)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBShN8qT4lk

What do you see as the main similarities? I don't really feel like the Beasties' early rock sounds were that much closer to RATM than, say, Run-DMC or even Schoolly D's "Signifying Rapper". The Anthrax collaboration version of "Bring The Noise" might be even closer, but it was released after RATM's debut was recorded.

Beastie Boys was a hardcore band before all the songs you mentioned, the fourth member is the drummer of Luscious Jackson. Or before they became a rap group.

Edit: Beastie Boys as a hardcore band pre-dates RATM's or Zach's Inside Out. I think the GP is correct.

Huh, haven't heard the name "Luscious Jackson" in a long long time. I really liked a few of their songs.

Anthrax released “I’m The Man” in 1987, which could be considered rap metal.

In full agreement, i feel like they already explored that sound before rage took it to a new and more commercially successful/influential level.

Or Run DMC and Aerosmith with "Walk this way" produced by none other than Rick Rubin which role in the emergence of hip hop is extremely underated, as he one of the founder of most famous hip hop label, Def Jam.

Rick Rubin is pretty well known to anyone with even a basic history of hip hop I think? Like dude is referenced in 99 problems, one of the most popular hip hop songs of all time. I only sort of follow hip hop and I immediately knew who you were talking about, I have to hope people that care deeply about the topic know dude matters?

I can guarantee you a lot of younger hiphop listeners have never heard of Rick Rubin. Russel Simmons? sure.

The vocals have somewhat similar timbre and delivery, but that's about it. What else do you hear?

I always felt like they borrowed heavily from Public Enemy. PE had the rap/rock fusion down in 1986/7. Listen to songs like Sophisticated Bitch or She Watch Channel Zero with Vernon Reid (of Living Color) on guitar, or the Bring The Noise track with Anthrax, all of which predates RATM by a mile.

Public Enemy had a unique sound never really rivalled by anybody and they lived and breathed fighting the power.

I think the Beastie Boys have had more than enough acknowledgement. They must be the most overrated band in history. Nobody is brave enough to speak up about this matter.

For those who love Rage Against the Machine and can't seem to find modern revolution music, give Idles a try. It's a bit more on the punk side but equally angry and inspired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idles

Idles is like Radiohead but if they all grew up in the gutter (in a good way)

RATM's first public show in 91: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMq-qAn3otE

The video from Zed's Record store in 1992 is also interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lvzk6-2cyQ

And now, you WILL do what they tell you.

Here's: "Killing In The Name" performed by The North Korean Military Chorus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAcYS-_8L2s

I thought “surely this will be parody” but no, there it is.

It's (extremely well-)edited

Here's the performance where the sound is taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7KxKG7pmL4

It is a parody.

Thank you. I can now say with confidence that I have seen it all.

Not quite yet, the video is not real.

My feelings are jumbled about this. They are playing it straight. And that audience.

This… kinda… (ok hear me out) makes sense in terms of NK criticising American society.

This cover by Denzel Curry is also worth checking out.

https://yewtu.be/ZY4ywyFXdik

That was incredible, thanks for sharing

There’s more than a few gems in the Triple J Like A Version catalogue. Check out the cover of “Blood” by Gang of Youths. Stunning cover.

it's a cleverly created parody. This did not actually happen.

Tom Morello’s ability to make an electric guitar sound like a completely new instrument is absolutely incredible, and is more than enough to earn him the title of hacker.

The format of a lot of Rage and Audioslave music was great for showcasing the “…and now for something completely different” Morello guitar solo, where you pretty much get to hear something unique every time.

The Python reference feels pretty apt given how much Terry Gilliam was both part-of- as well as completely-different-to- the rest of the troupe.

If you like RATM then it's worth watching this early video of theirs from 1992. So many hits on their debut album and about 10 people in the crowd in the middle of a record store. This video is a definite gem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ8YAv2rcQU

Slight tangent, but Upchuck from ATL gives me some RATM-adjacent vibes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woFOlhweGbs

For an awesome parody of RATM's corporate, bowdlerized brand of rebellion, you can't go past Ben Folds "Rockin' the Suburbs".

It has always intrigued me how close the riff in 'Killing in the name' is to the one in 'Man of constant sorrow'.

I find it fascinating how bands that used to promote fighting the system have become the biggest proponents of the current system.

When Trump was elected there were some protests for a few days near a local college. I went to check them out and noticed the students struggling to find political music to play over loudspeakers. They had nothing in their playlists for it. RATM got played over and over because that's all they could find. Songs from 28 years earlier.

A similar experience happened near the same area after George Floyd. They couldn't find any hip hop or trap that had current political themes. So, they played NWA F** da Police over and over. A song from 32 years earlier.

I sincerely believed both of those events would spawn a new generation of protest/political music. Didn't happen. Or, if it did I can't find it. I look sometimes in Reddit forums.

Good band and album. Evil Empire set me off on a rock tangent in my youth. As much as I hate their braindead commie politics try and not groove to "Vietnow".

Rage Against The Machine... the group that said "f*** you I won't do what they tell you", but then played shows that required you to show a government mandated vaccine passport to go to their shows.

Hard to take them seriously afterwards.

So, I’m sitting here in a small town in Uruguay on the coast. I’m American and I’m thinking about this third world country (please, this is how they refer to themselves - not as a developing nation, so just hard stop right there) and I’m thinking about where we are as humans, are heading. Well, as my father said tonight, history doesn’t repeat, it rhymes…here we are. What is going on??? I try and try as someone who grew up as the only white kid in my area in Chicago, dirt poor, to understand how, in my opinion, we as the United States, and therefore the world, are going backwards. (Sorry I’m using the US as a bell weather for the world because through my travels I’ve found this true.) why why why is there not improvement everywhere? Can we not do that as a human race? Do we not have enough resources. Now, some will write, but medicine has extended our lifespans, etc etc. Ok, but are we closer as humans? Have we implemented solutions that some say we are able to solve like world hunger? Na…anyway, rage came on the scenes when I was in middle school-ish. It was the mainstream radical that had existed during the 60s, but just one band made it mainstream - there were of course others that didn’t blow up. A group that came on the scene when it was comfortable in this country, as we were exporting our manufacturing jobs abroad. Rage spoke up about what was going on and it was strange. People were comfortable in the US and they banged their heads to the music but what did they absorb - what actions were taken? Things need to get shaken up to preserve democracy, challenge it. But this wasn’t necessarily the result from the band. We don’t see stuff like this mainstream. We are at a crossroads currently. I’m not sure the “best” outcome is going to show its face. If it did we would have more groups like this now that were mainstream. But instead we have Taylor swift filling the top ten - family member of JP Morgan Chase (disclosure, I bank w them but don’t listen to her music). I’m ranting, but all I have to say is that their music was inspiring and helped inspire me to pursue “sustainable business”. I hope to live in a world one day that instead of operating at .05% of its potential (quotation needed), it operates at just 25%. The mixture of music genres and messaging that rage created moved along the path of informing us of the struggles through a medium in which we could all connect…if you liked grunge and hip hop and all that.

If some of y’all want to throw some lyrics from their songs up on this post, it would definitely exemplify what I’m saying. Rage, thanks for keeping us apprised…

“Check it, since 1516, minds attacked and overseen Now crawl amidst the ruins of this empty dream With their borders and boots, on top of us Pullin' knobs on the floor, of their toxic metropolis But how you gonna get what you need to get? The gut eaters, blood drenched get offensive like Tet The fifth sun sets get back reclaim The spirit of Cuauhtémoc, alive and untamed Now face the funk now blastin' out your speaker On the one - Maya, Mexica That vulture came to try and steal your name but now you got a gun Yeah, this is for the people of the sun!”

> I’m American and I’m thinking about this third world country (please, this is how they refer to themselves - not as a developing nation, so just hard stop right there)

ps no lo basurees asi gringo, da?

> I try and try as someone who grew up as the only white kid in my area in Chicago, dirt poor, to understand how, in my opinion, we as the United States, and therefore the world, are going backwards.

puro cringe

Well, I employ people from here and pay them double what they’d make and give them opportunities where there are none. Like one of my ML guys - thanks me everyday - he knows it - he was working security at a hospital before I hire him. So not sure where you’re from or your story, but to say my story is cringe…I assume you had a pretty easy life then and didn’t go through the struggle myself or others I’m describing went through. When everyone I talk to here has issues paying the bills for their energy every month, at least I can relate. What do you do for work and what have you achieved / overcome? Seriously asking out of curiosity so I understand the context behind your comment.

All my employees hate to hear the term developing nation and prefer third world…

Wait, wait. Small coast town in Uruguay, you employ people there, and you've got at least one ML guy. Do you have a Rodrigo working with you? If yes, tell him I said hi!

the cringe is the manic style clump paragraphs and unnecessary emotional overshare.. Also you work with a handful of tech employees, im sure the other 3 and a half million people in the country would love you calling them a 3rd world country, which doesn even make sense and not what that term means anyway, esp cringe when gringos are saying it

We've made lots of progress on problems like hunger. Despite there being far more people now than 30 years ago, a smaller number have less food than they need (not a smaller percentage, fewer people). To cast that as decline or things going in the wrong direction is bizarre.

And we have probably made net progress on people being closer. Bigotry has likely declined (even if there are still many noisy bigots out there).

Bigotry declined? I don’t think so at all - not sure where you are living. From the post about the Indians and their cast system the other day on HN, to the lack of opportunity for those who illegally crossed borders and left their families to come ti the US who experience hatred and racism each day - telling me about it all the time. To us for some reason reporting in the news how important it is to not hate on gays and transgender (which is obviously wrong) but seeing nothing as loud in the news about the racism about blacks…racism is very alive and strong especially in the US. Religion and the white Christians that have ruled for so long and are now so fearful of the tides changing are pulling out ever last stop to maintain power. Not sure how so many are blind to this, but dig into history and the light shines bright.

Pretty sure things are better now than they were in 2000.

Like you talk about a bunch of things that are in the news that weren't in the news in 2000 because bigotry kept them from even being an issue to discuss. That they are now openly an issue of contention is progress!

Elected leaders in Italy, Hungry, the USA, and many more don’t seem to be headed towards progress on bigotry…and the “news” has changed in the last two decades. It’s all about getting clicks now for ad dollars. The independent reporting that once was has changed. You think the race riots in Chicago in the 60s weren’t in the news? I’d actually say I don’t read very often about bigotry in the news except for Kanye west getting cancelled for talking about Jews. Where else do you see mainstream articles that dive deep into this issue? Bring it to the forefront again today and you might see a lot of angry people come out of the woodwork to take the chance to standup for themselves.

This isn't a very good rebuttal.

Most of the metrics mentioned are essentially unknowable or even subjective.

The overall point was that there are a lot of problems but we are not fundamentally changing the structure of society to address them.

I guess bigotry is subjective (for one thing you can always disagree whether a particular attitude is bigoted).

Hunger measures tend to not be particularly subjective, and progress reducing them is good whether it is structural or not.

Are you saying that it's coming back around again?

Yes, 100%…big time paradigm shift. All has changed. And by the way for context, I ran a top ten data provider for global commodity prices and traveled the world meeting major decision makers from tons of countries. My current company focuses on the labor market and I work internationally. It’s not just what I read, it’s what I see and also, what I hear about when talking to laypeople on the street in these countries.

I think with regard to bands like RATM and other anti-capital counter-culture theres a very big question about what is true over the long term:

1) Capitalism will sell its opponents the tools necessary to destroy itself

2) Capitalism will subsume and monetize any movement which threatens itself

I'm pretty sure RATM's choices assumes 1 while the record label etc assume 2. Theres a lot of interesting historical analysis to be done arguing which interpretation is actually true in this case.

Right on…

My thoughts and some of the people in the financial times argue that we are moving towards a more fragmented and local method of society. One where regions are more self sustaining and less reliant on global trade. I think overall, capitalism as a system can work, it’s just that the rules / laws must change to better accomplish a balance. The lobbying in the interests of corporations is one thing in history to go back and reconsider…

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