Rap Rock Music: A Look at Rap Rock’s History and Notable Acts

Rap rock is a music genre that fuses hip-hop and rock music elements. Rap-rock songs typically feature heavy guitar riffs and thunderous beats behind a frontperson who either raps or sings the lyrics. The songs may also feature aspects of hip-hop production, including scratching or samples.

Rap rock has several subgenres, primarily defined by the intensity of their respective rock elements. For example, rap metal features heavy metal subgenres like thrash metal or alternative metal mixed with funk and hip-hop elements. Alternatively, rapcore folds hardcore punk rock into a hip-hop song structure.

Rap rock reached a zenith of popularity in the 1990s thanks to nu-metal bands like Limp Bizkit, Incubus, and Rage Against the Machine. However, a new version, dubbed “glock rock,” surfaced in the early 2010s through songs by Lil Uzi Vert, Post Malone, and Machine Gun Kelly.

The history of rap rock begins in the early 1980s, when hip-hop artists first explored rock and roll music:

• Roots: Rap rock emerged in 1984, when New York rap artists Run-DMC released their song “Rock Box,” which featured hard-rock guitar from veteran session musician Eddie Martinez. The Beastie Boys and LL Cool J also released rap-rock singles that year— “Rock Hard” and “Rock the Bells,” respectively—though the former featured a sample by AC/DC and was not an original performance. The pioneering rap-rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers also released their self-titled debut album in 1984, which featured vocalist Anthony Kiedis rapping over the band’s mix of funk and punk rock.
• First hit: Run-DMC continued to lead the rap-rock movement in 1985 with their single “King of Rock,” anchored by Eddie Martinez’s blistering guitar work. The following year, Run-DMC brought rap rock to the mainstream charts with their cover of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” The track, featuring Aerosmith vocalist Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry, cracked the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, Dance Club Play, and R&B/Hip-Hop Singles charts.
• Further fusion: Most rap-rock songs after “Walk This Way” featured rappers over samples from hard rock bands, like Tone-Loc’s “Wild Thing,” which built upon Van Halen’s “Jamie’s Cryin.’” The veteran thrash group Anthrax—which professed its love for hip-hop on 1987’s “I’m the Man”—united with hip-hop heavyweights Public Enemy for 1991’s “Bring the Noise.” The song featured Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian trading lyrics with Public Enemy’s Chuck D. Two years later, the soundtrack to the 1993 thriller Judgment Night featured many metal, alt-rock, and hip-hop collaborations, including songs by Biohazard and Onyx, Cypress Hill and Sonic Youth, and Slayer and Ice-T. The latter further explored rap rock with his metal group Body Count.
• Mainstream: Rap rock fully entered the mainstream in the 1990s as part of the nu-metal movement. Faith No More was the first act of the decade to score a major rap-rock hit with the Top 10 hit “Epic,” but the indie-rock act abandoned the sound for more experimental waters in subsequent releases. Nu-metal acts like Kid Rock, Rage Against the Machine, and Limp Bizkit happily took their place; all three netted platinum and chart-topping albums during the ‘90s. Their rap-rock sound served as a template for many other bands, including POD, Hed PE, and Papa Roach.
• Peak: By the end of the decade, many of hip-hop music’s biggest names had embraced rap rock. Eminem won an Oscar and Grammy for 2000’s “Lose Yourself,” while Jay-Z and Linkin Park scored a No. 1 album in 2004 with Collision Course.
• Decline and rebirth: An oversaturation of rap-rock bands led to the genre’s decline in the mid-2000s, though rap rock resurfaced on several occasions with varying degrees of success. Lil Wayne’s foray into rap rock with 2010’s Rebirth reached No. 2 on the Billboard 200 but received a mixed critical response. Linkin Park and POD continued to mine success from the genre. A host of new hip-hop artists experimented with rock music, including Lil Yachty and Post Malone, who live-streamed a full set of Nirvana covers to benefit COVID-19 relief in 2020.

Several characteristics define the sound of rap rock, including:

1. 1. Lyrics: Rap-rock lyrics hew closely to the template established by heavy metal and its subgenres. Songs explore party-hearty subject matter, as in the case of Limp Bizkit, or introspective personal matters, like Linkin Park. Some bands, like Rage Against the Machine, address politics and offer social commentary in their music.
2. 2. Music: Hard, heavy guitar riffs help to define the rap-rock sound. A metal-funk hybrid is frequently heard, especially by the nu-metal groups, though Kid Rock’s brand of rap rock embraced the R&B-flavored vibe of Southern rock. Hardcore punk and alt-rock riffs filter through many other rap-rock bands’ sounds.
3. 3. Vocals: Frontpeople for rap-rock bands shout or rap their lyrics or offer a rough-hewn combination of both approaches. A few rap-rock vocalists, like Rage Against the Machine’s Zack de la Rocha, displayed a natural flow with their delivery, but most wielded words with blunt but effective power.

There are many notable rap-rock artists in the genre’s history. Among them are:

1. 1. Bloodhound Gang: Pennsylvania’s Bloodhound Gang’s gleefully scatological brand of rap rock helped them sell more than six million albums throughout their two-decade career. The band broke into the mainstream with their 1997 single “Fire Water Burn,” which reached No. 18 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts. They enjoyed modest success for several years before a combination of stage antics and controversial lyrics upended their progress. The band issued their final album to date, Hard-Off, in 2015.
2. 2. Hollywood Undead: Los Angeles’ Hollywood Undead built a modest but devoted following with a rap-rock sound that pulled from diverse influences like industrial, pop-punk, and EDM. The band’s affinity for macabre masks and horror-tinged lyrical content also set them apart from the rap-rock scene, but they delivered songs as hard and heavy as the genre’s biggest acts. The band remains dedicated to expanding its musical horizons, as evidenced by the djent and post-hardcore sounds on its 2019 album, New Empire.
3. 3. Linkin Park: Los Angeles’s Linkin Park fused metal and hip-hop for a string of albums in the 2000s that netted them multiple Grammys and worldwide sales exceeding 100 million albums. Their 2000 release, Hybrid Theory, fueled their rise to the mainstream, and they remained one of rock’s most popular acts for much of the 2000s. The death of co-vocalist Chester Bennington in 2017 halted their output, though the band regrouped to release new music in 2019.
4. 4. Rage Against the Machine: Politics put the fuel in Rage Against the Machine’s engine, which carried the Los Angeles quartet to the heights of fame in the 2000s. Sharply worded and socially conscious tracks like “Sleep Now in the Fire” and “Bulls on Parade” proved that rap rock had potential beyond its party-hearty vibe, but the band pulled apart in 2000 due to internal struggles. Guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford, and drummer Brad Wilk went on to form Audioslave with Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell before reuniting with frontman Zack de la Rocha for live performances in 2008. The group has played numerous shows while releasing no new recorded material. Morello, Wilk, and Commerford also formed a second supergroup, Prophets of Rage, with Public Enemy’s Chuck D and B-Real of Cypress Hill.

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