8/15/2023 0 Comments Hype machine popularImage Credit: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images In 2020, Morello joked, “I would say that we are karmically entirely responsible, and my apologies.” -K.G. “The party blessed me with its future,” he sings, playing the role of a Washington bigwig, “and I protect it with fire.” When the chorus comes with its elastic Morello riff, de la Rocha sarcastically encourages the oppressed peoples he’s singing about to “sleep now in the fire.” Later, he ominously catalogs the legacy of imperialism, slavery, and deadly force underlying the American myth, vowing, “I am the Niña, the Pinta, the Santa Maria/The noose and the rapist, the fields’ overseer/The agents of orange, the priests of Hiroshima.” In 2000, the band shot the song’s video on the steps of the New York Stock Exchange (without permission) and in one portentous moment, the camera captured someone in the crowd holding a “Donald J. One of Professor de la Rocha’s greatest social-studies dissertations, “Sleep Now in the Fire” traces how American avarice has decimated Third World countries, as well as marginalized people at home. Image Credit: Frank Micelotta/Getty Images The idea of Morello playing in the E Street Band would have seemed pretty far-fetched circa 1997, but time can make strange things happen. Morello even became a temporary E Street–er in 2014, when Steve Van Zandt had to miss a tour to film his show Lillyhammer. And in 2008, Morello guested with Springsteen and the E Street Band to play a more traditional version of the song. It also appeared on their 2000 covers collection, Renegades. The version worked so well that Rage kept it in their live set until they split three years later, making it the most-played cover song in their live repertoire by a huge margin. Rage Against the Machine were opening up for U2 on 1997’s PopMart stadium tour when they first played Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” The original recording is a somber tale of urban poverty that Springsteen delivers in a hushed, resigned tone, but Rage present it like a lost song from the Evil Empire sessions - complete with a crushing Morello riff that bears little resemblance to the folky source material, yet still fits perfectly. Rage might not have killed a man, but they definitely laid a few speakers to rest with their rendition. “The first Cypress Hill record and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back were two of the biggest hip-hop influences on Rage Against the Machine,” tim.com later told Rolling Stone. Their funky tableaus of terror built to the sort of wanton observation that would make any mother shudder: “Here is something you can’t understand - how I could just kill a man.” When Rage Against the Machine covered the track for Renegades, de la Rocha took all the verses for himself while Morello and bassist Tim Commerford (or “tim.com,” as he billed himself on the record) ratcheted up the noise to deafening levels on the chorus. On “How I Could Just Kill a Man,” Cypress Hill’s first single and first hit, rappers B-Real and Sen Dog traded verses about “takin’ out some putos” with a Magnum and making young punks pay. Here, we count down their 25 greatest songs. They somehow created the soundtrack for our time a quarter-century ago. There’s no hint that they’ve recorded any new music, but they really have no need to. And when they announced a reunion tour, which finally kicks off July 7 after several pandemic-related delays, tickets sold out with remarkable speed. ![]() Rage broke up in 2000 and left behind just three albums of original material, but those songs aged remarkably well during the chaos and tumult of the past two decades. ![]() The fucking tables were turned over and rafters pulled down. I had never seen a place destroyed sweat and blood on the walls. “I saw them in concert, and what I remember most is how wiped-out the crowd was afterwards. “It was one of those rare instances when the planets just lined up right and the alchemy of musical magic and history just poured out,” Chuck D recalled of Rage in 2016. This was a time when most bands were looking inward toward their own pain, not outward to the struggles of minorities in America and people living under oppressive regimes across the globe. ![]() They not only fused rock with rap at a time when there was a stark divide between the two genres, but their radical lyrics called for a political revolution during the supposedly peaceful decade after the Cold War and before 9/11. When Rage Against the Machine emerged in the early Nineties, there was no other band even remotely like them.
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