If any tune on Judgement Night can lay claim to a notion of “classic” rap-metal it’s the inspired pairing of hip-hop godfathers Run DMC and guitar slinging heroes Living Colour. “I’m never alone / I’m in a zone and stoned / I never leave home / without my microphone” We may never know the truth but “Fallin'” stands tall (see what I did there?) as a heavenly high point in the rap-rock library. Did the creative freedom offered by the sublime and unexpected team-up spur them on to produce their power-pop masterpiece? Such a romantic vision of musical legacy is the stuff of journalistic dreams, a plot point on a Hollywood movie. Little is written about how significant this track for the Fannies was but it sits in their discography between the critical and commercial disaster of Thirteen and the resurgent Grand Prix. It’s all blissed out reminiscing of past glories detailing a “washed up rapper” who’s “outta here” and the first surprise on an album billed as a murderous collaboration between rap and metal, taking Daisy Age mentality and wedding it beautifully to majestic Scottish jangle. …see what I mean? The plaintive Tom Petty sampling “Fallin'” from Teenage Fanclub and Del La Soul is where the album really begins. “Can’t believe I used to be Mr Steve Austin on the mic / 6 million ways I used to run it” Don’t backtrack now though kids, what follows is pure gold…promise. It’s the standout moment on what is essentially quite a lacklustre opener tacked on rather clumsily to a crunching slice of detuned alt metal from New York’s Helmet. ![]() Taxi Driver was (and still is) one of my favourite movies and for a cultural reference to fit so wonderfully into verse sent shivers down my spine (see also the Beastie Boys’ “flame on / I’m gone” from “Body Movin'”). With Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel / looks like I’m walking through a living hell”Īs a (much) younger man I was obsessed with this rhyme from House Of Pain’s Everlast…absolutely obsessed. “Holy diver / I’m a survivor / feeling like de Niro in Taxi Driver / How the flying fuck did that happen?! Random raffle? Chance meetings in the pub? Or, if the Devil really does have all the best tunes, was he in attendance at the concept meeting, eagerly thinking up collaborations beyond the normal realms of possibility whilst God looked on ashen faced with the realization that he was never going to get beyond a stale old bag of pop pick’n’mix in the form of Justin Bieber and Usher? Teenage Fanclub groove with Del La Soul, Faith No More menace with Boo Ya Tribe, Mudhoney cause chaos with Sir Mix-A-Lot. Look at the line-up assembled here, more diverse than a Green Party discussion on equality. Had any soundtrack every surpassed its own movie before? Certainly Help!, A Hard Day’s Night, Easy Rider, Pulp Fiction, The Crow, Natural Born Killers, and Trainspotting have offered equal visual and aural thrills but with Judgement Night what punctures our ear drums is so far removed from the celluloid monstrosity you have to wonder whether the plethora of artists associated ever even watched it. ![]() (And before any smart aleck pipes up with Korn’s debut….sit down and be quiet….it’s nonsense…)įor my money, only one album comes close to delivering on rap-rock’s early promise – the soundtrack to obscure (and truly awful despite the presence of Bill Hicks-lite Denis Leary as a vicious gang leader….yeah, you read that right) 90s rich-boys-in-ghetto-peril thriller Judgement Night. A fledgling movement once bristling with exciting possibilities, a precursor to the mash-up and the spawner of nu-metal but apart from the aforementioned RATM, was the sound bed to 90s teenage angst ever really any good? Could any album lay claim to classic status? ![]() When Rage Against the Machine bassist Tim Commerford apologized for the “bullshit” that is Limp Bizkit in September, I began contemplating the legacy of rap-rock, the genre that inspired a million white boys to turn their baseball caps to the side, wear their jeans slung low and swap suburban enunciation for ghetto drawl.
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