The Return of Rock-Rap?

Boots Riley, local hero, and Tom Morello are co-fronting The Street Sweepers Social Club, a well-rehearsed, if slightly pedestrian iteration of the venerable genre. Born when Aerosmith capitalized on Run-DMC's 1986 cover of "Walk This Way", originally recorded in 1975. The musical innovation was due entirely to Jam Master Jay, who snipped a beat from the prosaic drum and gitar line of 'Smiths, over which Run and DMC laced some seriously dirty lyrics. Aerosmith's sole innovation was to notice that younger fans might start paying attention to them if they appeared in Run-DMC's video. This formalized a relationship that was already in play between DJ's and their MC's and the late-70's rock cannon, much of which was perfectly succinct and overly-produced for sampling.

So why, in 2009, is the genre appearing again. The last significant airing it got was 2002's Bad Boy for Life, a mediocre P. Diddy joint with Dave Navarro as window dressing. The only interest in the track was the video that blithely portrayed P. Diddy as the talk of a suburban community, commenting no doubt on Rap-Rock, and consequnetly hip-hop's utter and complete domination of suburban youth culture for almost a decade. Before that, there was the soundtrack to 1993's Judegment Night, which featured some inspired and some insipid collaborations (Helmet and House of Pain on the track 'Just Another Victim' stands out in memory). To be completely discounted in this analysis is any further mention of rapcore or nu-metal, which are utterly appropriative subgenres. The necessary formula, MC+established rock artist must be adhered to.

The question is- why again in 2009. Let's look at the years in question to find a pattern: 1986. Height of Reagan Era insanity, unprecedented disparity between urban and rural poor and suburban rich incomes. 1993. Beginning of Clinton-era chickanery, first obvious signs that health care reform was going to be railroaded out of town, as well as the pulling off of the mask of Bubba's administration. 2002. The massive wave of jingo-oistic populism begins to give way to questions like: "Anybody heard from Bin Laden lately?" "Why are we supposed to go out and buy new cars to fuel our addiction to Middle Eastern oil imports?". 2009. AKA "the shortest honeymoon ever".

Disillusionment. Necessary irony. Somehow the genre of Rock-Rap serves these important purposes. I don't know: you be the judge.