Overview
During the 1990s and 2000s, rock musicians began mixing and matching genres to create new sounds and styles. In this lesson, we consider several different rock music hybrids. In the first section, we will look at the music of artists who combined rock instrumentation with rapped lyrics. In the second section, we will look at two artists who drew from rock as well as genres including (but not limited to) hip-hop, experimental music, blues, folk, funk, and classical music.
Objectives
- Recall how the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rage Against the Machine, and Kid Rock combined the aesthetics of rap and rock in their music
- Recall the eclectic musical styles of Radiohead and Beck in the context of the many different genres they drew upon in their music
Rap Meets Rock
As we saw in earlier lessons, hip-hop artists were not averse to sampling the sound of and collaborating with rock musicians and rock music. Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith appeared in Run-DMC's single "Walk This Way ♫," and Kerry King, guitarist for Slayer, performed in several singles by the Beastie Boys. During the early 1990s, rock artists began experimenting with the sounds and styles borrowed from hip-hop. The combination of the two genres led to some interesting hybrids.
One of the earliest groups to blend the rapped delivery of hip-hop with rock instrumentation and sounds was a Los Angeles band called the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Founded in the early 1980s, singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea are the only two members who have remained consistent since the band's inception. The Red Hot Chili Peppers blended funk-inspired grooves, heavy metal riffs, and rap-like lyrics in their music. Their early albums such as Mother's Milk (1989) also include punk rock's lack of polish and psychedelic rock-like instrumental jams, notable in singles such as "Knock Me Down ♫." Bassist Flea frequently used slap bass and other techniques borrowed from funk music of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The group also favored heavy amounts of distortion, inspired by psychedelic rock. Kiedis's lyric delivery style ranges from rhythmic and rap-like to a lyrical sung style.
In 1991, the Red Hot Chili Peppers released the studio album Blood Sugar Sex Magik, which was produced by Rick Rubin, the same producer who had worked with the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC during the 1980s. Unlike the group's earlier albums, Blood Sugar Sex Magik did not include many heavy metal-like guitar riffs. The songs were also more melodic and included less distortion. The result was a sound that was crisp, concise, and highly structured, which can be heard in singles such as "Give It Away ♫." The album also featured songs such as "Under the Bridge ♫," which dealt with themes of loneliness and drug addiction; "Under the Bridge ♫" was far more plaintive than many of the band's earlier music, beginning slowly with only the sounds of Kiedis's voice and a guitar and gradually adding instruments and voices and increasing in intensity throughout the song. The Red Hot Chili Peppers have recorded a number of commercially and critically successful albums during the 1990s and into the 2000s, but most critics agree that Blood Sugar Sex Magik remains their strongest work.
“Barriers have been broken: rappers are singing, and singers are rapping. You might catch a rapper on a rock song, a pop artist on a hip-hop song - there are so many different things that are going on today. That is the same way in which we live our lives; we're all over the place. I like to try different things.”
