My main man Dan, the sexiest of all L.A. Record contributors, got to interview Chuck D last week! And the interview is in the print version of the magazine.
But one of his questions that didn’t make the cut was about Public Enemy and Anthrax collaborating on a version of “Bring the Noise!” I know that for a lot of head-banging punkers, it was this tune that finally helped them cross over into fandom for their beat-driven brethren. Run DMC and Aerosmith made the first incision, but this song pulled the gash wide open, and a bunch of bloody things like the Judgment Night soundtrack and Body Count spilled out of the wound. Unfortunately, we then got awful, terrible sounding bands like Rage Against the Machine and Limp Bizkit combining hip-hop with rock in terrrible, terrible ways. But when the rap-rock hybrid was first getting going, it was a match made in heaven: