I feel global political oppression or global wars usually produce great music but Macklemore might be the peak.
Nothing against him, some of his songs are good, but I expected real rage inducing stuff with everything going on. Or is this just the state of music as a whole?
Limp Bizkit does not deserve to be anywhere near this list. They are a piss stain on the seat of the limo Kurt Kobain’s brother rented for Prom.
How on god’s green earth did limp bizkit make it on this list?
Kneecap. If you’re even partly plugged in you know about Kneecap.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/arts/music/kneecap-glastonbury.html
Kneecap has 3 cds and the first one seems like a throwaway. They could use the Glastonbury controversy to leap into that brand but only time will show.
They need to clean up the gay phobia/slurs.
Nirvana, Limp Bizkit and Tupac, all famous for not using slurs
You understand that things change over a period of time? It’s not the 90s anymore.
Before those, in the 60’s there was CSNY, CCR, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Buffalo Springfield writing protest bangers.
Can’t really think of much for this generation unfortunately. Instead we have, uh… Ye. :(
Ye definitly pulled for someone 🫳
I don’t know what that slang means.
They don’t have hitler symbols
I still don’t get it. Who doesn’t have hitler symbols? Why is that relevant?
Ye spoke for a generation while praising hitler and Trump. Not sure if you knew that.
Well that’s why I said “instead we have, uh…” and a frowny face. It was sarcasm, but I guess it didn’t come through.
Get into the punk/folk scene.
Wingnut Dishwashers Union Pat the Bunny Daze N Days The Orphans
Really anything in this genre. You’d be surprised at the observations made by people living on the streets or just generally down on their luck.
I’m talking mainstream not underground or festival groups. Nothing aginst them but 50k streams vs 130mil is a big gap.
You’re missing the forest for the trees.
Mainstream appeal requires certain sacrifices, and message is one of the first things on the block. Representation on that scale requires backroom assurances that do not allow the system to be rebuked in the way you are looking to see. Sure, you can have outspoken individuals like Dave grohl or Tom Morello making their opinions known, but the Foo Fighters will still play in Israel if the paycheck is big enough. Doesn’t matter how much blood is under the stage, money talks.
Fontaines D.C. comes to mind.
I’m surprised someone finally brought them up. I feel kneecap and Bob Vylan is brought up to the recent news postings.
My point is mainstream is not speaking out, not lesser know groups. Think Farm Aid, Live Aid, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stone, NAS, Boogie down productions, etc… at their peak speaking out.
Some got blacklisted, some got arrested, some had the U.S. federal government come after them, and some died (Bob Marley) bc they dared to challenge the system. I haven’t seen that since the 90s. 2000-to now, feels like money stops the current generations from taking those steps.
Fuck, Taylor Swift makes sure ever word is so starile before say she would vote for a democrat. Instead of ripping apart a child molester. Killer Mike goes from destroying Reagen and Bush to Obama. One of those are not the same.
Jesse welles
Sorry, but his music is pretty bad. Sounds like the guy that brings guitar to a party and clears out the place.
His most popular song by the charts is “Horses” which is a change to most of his other stuff. If he continues down this path he could be a voice for a generation but we will see.
Maybe you don’t like his music, but there’s plenty of us that do. “United Health”, for example, was the best piece of art on that subject, bar none.
Don’t know who us is. Only heard of him through my post.
Plenty of bands take time to get going.
Zeal & Andor, Manuel Gagneux has been through a lot of wide changes.
Wunderhorse, Jacob Slater seems unrecognizable from past work.
Durry, Austin Durry was in coyote kid for 12 years which was a nothing band by comparison.
Jesse Welles aka Welles aka dead indian aka Cosmic-American… seems like he is trying to find his sound. A few more adjustments, I can really see him blowing up and still having a message.
Edit: Rock N Roll is a very good song and he kills it on the guitar.
Bob Vylan.
Love those guys
They don’t exist, at least not in Western mainstream music. Record labels have learned from those artists and will now drop anyone who doesn’t toe the capitalist/imperialist line. Like the singers being cancelled for supporting BLM or Palestine.
And it’s very specifically just for leftist messages. Kanye straight up calls himself a Nazi and sold shirts with swastikas on it and didn’t get canceled for antisemitism, but tons of pro-Palestine artists did. If an artist straight up calls themselves a socialist like Tupac did it would be career suicide.
As someone in Gen Z, I have never heard a mainstream song released in my lifetime that actually attacks capitalism beyond useless lip service or calls for any kind of anticapitalist action by the general public. They definitely exist but only by indie artists who will either never get signed onto a label or will be forced to capitulate to the capitalist propaganda machine if they do.
Childish Gambino? Yasiin Bey? Kendrick? Killer Mike? Hip hop alone has never stopped being critical of the machine… You must be living with your head under a rock or in headphones that only play top 40 or something. There is an absolute wealth of music that takes on the various hierarchies that dominate our world…
one of those is not like the others
OP was born in 1991 and was too young to have lived through the proper grunge revolution, but was just the right age to experience the corporate grunge poser revolution.
Off topic, why would you put Limp Bizkit with the classics?
OP wasn’t asking about classics, was asking about protest music
Fred Durst is and has always been a boot sucking poser. He has never protested anything beyond a groupie telling him “no.”
In all fairness, back in the day it was limp Bizkit that got me into rock and the much better stuff. Not listening to them anymore (maybe every now and then something from their very first album) but still, without LB I would never gotten into rock the way I’m today
OP could have used Rise Against instead of Limp Biskit
didn’t realize until just this moment that Rise Against ≠ Rage Against The Machine
Maybe they did it all for the nookie
Come on
They are one of the classics lol
Wes Borland is one of the most underrated guitar players easily
Woodstock 99’ explains it all. Play “break stuff” or “my way”, shit gets you going.
Limp Bizkit isn’t anywhere close to the others on the list, might as well listed Papa Roach.
I love that people hate on them and try to hold them down. They were a massive band. Look at their collaboration, everyone wanted to be on there. They were pure rage.
Just because they were big for a couple years doesn’t mean they produced anything of value. Angsty music for middle class white boys is nothing special.
You should really look up woodstock 99 and see the lineup. They headlined the whole show. Doing music with Emenim, Wu-Tang, and Korn, all 90s and 00s icons. Fred Durst help out staind and puddle of mudd. You might not like them but you can’t ignore what theu brought to music.
I was in highschool when they came on the scene. I’m well aware of Woodstock 99. Nothing you said counters my point. Looking back they didn’t belong in the same breath as the other bands you listed except puddle of mudd.
- 24 mil. With 10 mil highest sold over 4 cds
- 28 mil. With 14 mil highest sold over 4 cds
- 11 mil. With 6 mil highest sold over 4 cds
- 9 mil. With 6 mil highest sold over 5 cds.
- 27 mil. With 14 mil highest sold over 4 cds.
- 29 mil. With 13 mil highest sold over 4 cds.
Tell me which one of these bands had the most influence. Also what does race have to do with it?
nirvana, tupac, and rage against the machine all had something meaningful to be raging about
limp bizkit was just misogynistic bro music
I feel limp bizkit was the end off a period of rage. All the pent up anger that was put into just fuck shit up.
Side note. People really hate Limp Bizkit.
I wouldn’t say pure rage… They were certainly high energy but not super focused on being angry. This may in part be due to Fred Durst adding major frat boy vibes.
I have no idea what they’re like these days.
Funny since Durst was a tattoo artist before starting the band. Kinda the opposite of frat boys.
Keep in mind that music lost a lot of its cultural cache since your benchmark decade of the 90’s. Mass culture isn’t really the same as it was then. I remember Weird Al talking about doing a lot fewer parody songs just because fewer people recognize any given song.
Yeah there’s still music out there, but if you don’t know it that’s not really your fault.
This is my whole point. Is streaming and music apps killing the massive songs like “Luke’s Wall / War Pigs” , “Ohio”, or “My Generation”?
It’s just the internet making all media available, and streaming is the lowest friction way of giving people that access.
I saw a report talking about if there’s a “song of the summer” this year. A lot of people said there isn’t because more than ever we’re siloed to our own music library/playlists.
Personally, I spend a few hours a week actually looking for new artists to listen to. There’s so much music out there just waiting to be discovered.
I do the same thing and have discovered some great music. However, over the months or years I seem to return to classics to rage out or have a statement song. Go to a protest and you will hear " This is America" or “Sympathy for the Devil”.
I’m just wondering if this generation will have their song or is there to many bands? Can a band cut through it all and still make something like those songs?
Maybe I’m the old man screaming at the clouds.
mackelmore dropped like a couple of bangers when the palestine stuff was gaining traction in the mainstream.
Residente as well
Most punk like Bad Religion, Dead Kennedys, Anti Flag, Black Flag, The Clash, Dropkick Murphys has been very political from the start.
I know they are older now but Dead Prez, Foo Fighters, Rise Against and System of a Down are still active. Then there is the much older Roger Waters who has been very political throughout his career. And let’s not forget the legendary Los Tigres Del Norte.
But coming back to younger artists
- Killer Mike
- Kendrik Lamar
- Childish Gambino
- Anderson.Paak
- Bambu
- Andrew Jackson Jihad
- Feminazgul
- Lowkey (British rapper)
whoa Lowkey mentioned! yeah, that’s the kind of politically conscious hip-hop I meant. Immortal Technique was even moreso, but he’s been inactive for a long time and the extreme homophobia makes it hard for me to listen to, which is a shame.
Yes. I would like to think he was a product of the toxic masculinity culture, especially due to his time in the prison. It is a shame that while he was being radical on one front, he managed to dehumanize people who should have been his allies.
Bad Religion are working on a new album too
I’m not saying there isn’t political songs, I’m saying this generation doesn’t have those as much.
I also love that you said younger artists then named killer mike. Makes me feel like a teen.lol
Haha. I tend to mix time in my head sometimes. My age is showing!
Bob Vylan and Kneecap seem to be pulling their weight.
“With the instant availability of information, and content so easily obtainable, is the culture now a product that’s disposable?“
This quote goes back to 2007. 18 years later it’s not even a question anymore, music and the culture around it has become disposable.
There’s always going to be great bands and artists who have something to say! I’ve heard some of my favourite bands just in the last 10 years. But society is never going to look at music the same, it’s just something people tap on their screen and give a quick listen, or worse; just watching some idiotic lip sync to a 20 second excerpt of it on tik tok.
This is America was produced in 2018. Say the word Mustard around a lot of people and they know what you are talking about. That is my whole point. We still have massive hits but no rage against the governments or wars.
I also feel that the design of current music ecosystem is doing this as well. They can stop music being released or throw money at it.
We don’t have the bands kicking, for the most, against capitalism.
How many indie punk bands do you listen to? In the 80s and 90s counter culture and anti-establishment is what sold music, and that’s why bands like Rage were able to go mainstream. Producers and promoters don’t support bands like that anymore because they know they won’t make as much profit.
My counter point is music is way easier to consume now. You can find no name bands everywhere. Durry is a great example of a band born out of the pandemic. Older group that is anti “normal” life. Seen them in concert amd have really hit a groove in their music. Indie bands have a way as before you heard them on some AM station.
It feels like less and less big artist are less vocal against what is happening. They will speak or make a post but their music is still the same ol same ol.
It feels like less and less big artist are less vocal against what is happening. They will speak or make a post but their music is still the same ol same ol.
My point is that artists who are vocal don’t make as much profit for the record labels as they used to, so they’re not being promoted as much as they used to. RAtM only became as big as they are because they were profitable for Sony. Ironic, isn’t it?
Most people are anti-war or anti-genocide. It seems like an easy payout for artist right now. Kneecap and Vylan showed that. Most people never heard of them until the BBC stuff recently.
There’s also the wider political angle to consider. The 90s was very safe for media companies to push revolutionary talk, there was no chance it’d actually turn into revolution. Now, shit’s starting to go down, and media companies don’t want the government to think they’re encouraging revolution.
Please remember that Parental Advisory and TV Parental Guidelines started in the 90s. 2 Live Crew was taken to court and declared legally obscene by a federal judge in 1990. Every generation has been through this.
I’m sad about how right you are.
And there’s no real coming back from this. If it were me I’d raise taxes on art, particularly the big players, to reduce the monetary incentives and drive the big corporations out. That’d be a start, politically unpopular and visciously opposed by Disney but a start.
I think policing art is bad, but if all the art in the world was just made as a hobby project that would probably be a better world. Less art, more valued, more honest.
