Spotify Playlist: Judgment Night… plus
The use of genres to categorize music, much like the use of taxonomy for the classification of organisms, provides a handy framework but is not without its faults. The shaky scaffolding buckles under the strain of classifying musicians and music that defy or destroy classification with no regard for external constraints.
Those of us coming of age before the commercialization of the internet, in that twilight period when the tape cassette passed into shadow and the CD ascended , movie soundtracks served as a playlist of sorts.
One need look no further than a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack to find some of the best playlists ever created. But where Tarantino movies are both visually and sonically part of my cultural fabric, the movie “Judgement Night” (1993) has all but faded from my visual memory banks. But the soundtrack, that is a different story.
The “Judgement Night” soundtrack was an experimental collaboration between rock and hip hop artist who largely kept to their overarching genre with a few exceptions. It is one of the jewels in the crowing achievements of rap-rock
As stated earlier tracing the lineage of any genre in music is fraught with challenges. But one of the earliest known fusions of rap and rock can be found listening to “Year of the Guru “ (1968) by Eric Burdon & the Animals.
Over a steady bassline, Burdon does not so much sing but speak his lyrics :
Now here I sit in a state-run asylum Limitless, friendless but much more together I decided to do some good book readin’ About the art of people leadin’
The following year The Stooges released their debut single “I wanna be your dog” off of their self-titled debut album. The song features Iggy Pop as he walks the narrow line between traditional singing and the rhythmic speech delivery that defines rap:
And now I’m ready to close my eyes And now I’m ready to close my mind And now I’m ready to feel your hand And lose my heart on the burning sand
The Stooges contribution to the rap-rock hybrid are arguably minimal but they were part of the burgeoning garage-rock/protopunk scene and they along with their peers (The Velvet Underground, The New York Dolls, MC5, The Sonics ) undeniably pushed rock toward more experimentation, smashing rock into its fundamentals components and ushering the eventual emergence of punk.
Punk and early rap shared a common ethos that of being raw, emotional, and honest. Music was the weapon of choice for the masses and it was more accessible then many had realized.
Rap would appear in New Wave with songs like “Crosseyed and Painless” by the Talking Heads and in the Post Punk scene in “Wedding Song” by The Psychedelic Furs. The hard rock band Kiss would use rap in “All hell’s breaking loose.”
Meanwhile hip-hop artist were experimenting with rock in rap. The year 1984 smashed the walls of genre-binding with the release of Run-DMC’s “Rock Box” which utilized rock infused guitar rifts. The Beastie Boys dropped “Rock Hard” sampling AC/DC’s “Back in Black.” LL Cool Jay went heavy, merging hard rock with his lyrics and scratch. That year also saw The Red Hot Chili Peppers release their debut self-titled album, they would go on to push the rap-rock envelope infused with funk in subsequent releases.
The following year, 1985, an Aerosmith and Run-DMC collaboration, “Walk This Way,” essentially a rerelease of an Aerosmith song , exploded into the mainstream. It is considered the first rap-rock song to reach the “top ten” of the Billboards.
From there, Sugar Ray would merge rap-rock with nu-metal on several songs and collaborations. The sound would fuse with thrash-metal in “I’m the man” (1997) by Anthrax.
On the rap-front Public Enemy were dropping anthems of the genre with “Bring the Noise” and “She Watches Channel Zero” On “Bring The Noise” Flavor Flav and the crunch of heavy guitar and driving drums, provided by Anthrax, promise to bring the noise and Chuck D does so with some of the slickest delivery regardless of genre:
Never badder than bad cause the brother is madder than mad At the fact that's corrupt as a senator Soul on a roll, but you treat it like soap on a rope Cause the beats and the lines are so dope Listen for lessons I'm saying inside Music that the critics are blasting me for They'll never care for the brothers and sisters Mow, cause the country has us up for the war
The tag-team battle-royal raged, and the alternative metal band Faith No More (which “paved the way for Nirvana” according to Nirvana’s own bassist Krist Novoselic) pushed the sound even further .
And then Rage Against The Machine dropped their bombshell, their self-titled debut (1992). Fronted by poet and activist Zack de la Rocha, Rage pushed the sound even further but also inherited the raging rebellious spirit opposing oppression from which rap had emerged. rap-rock categorically declared itself as a force to reckon with. And it manifested as sonic energy in songs like “Take The Power Back” by Rage Against the Machine:
Step back, I know who I am Raise up your ear, I’ll drop the style and clear It’s the beats and the lyrics they fear The rage is relentless We need a movement with a quickness You are the witness of change And to counteract We gotta take the power back
And so we have come full circle and back to “Judgment Night.” Rage collaborated with the metal band Tool for the soundtrack and produced “Can’t Kill the Revolution.” Unfortunately, the song fell short of the expectations from both bands and was never officially released.
But what we did get was an album of historical significance in rap-rock, rock and rap. The album itself broke through the top 20 on the Billboard 200 and four singles were released . And at the heart of the genre (rap-rock), at the heart of the album “Judgment Night” and at the heart of the song “Judgment Night” by Biohazard and Onyx. Perfect summation:
Onyx! Watch me wreck shit as they exit But yo I keep em hollerin', screamin' out for mercy Minds of a lowest of enemies, ghetto mentality So blast it as I hit your head you're dead not disbelievin' Got the toxic rock, to bring a nigga biohazard!
As warned this is an incomplete history but we cannot close without acknowledging the contributions of the genius producer Rick Rubin, not only to this genre but modern music production in general.
You can hear many of the songs and albums discussed below:
Spotify Playlist: Judgment Night… plus
Beastie Boys – Rock Hard (Youtube)
Tool & Rage Against The Machine – Revolution (2014 Remastered) (Youtube)
“Judgment Night” tracks:
| No. | Title | Artist / Performer | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | “Just Another Victim“ | Helmet and House of Pain | 4:23 |
| 2. | “Fallin’“ | Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul | 4:28 |
| 3. | “Me, Myself & My Microphone” | Living Colourand Run DMC | 3:10 |
| 4. | “Judgement Night” | Biohazardand Onyx | 4:35 |
| 5. | “Disorder” (Medley of 3 Exploited songs: “War”, “UK ’82”, and “Disorder”) | Slayer and Ice-T | 4:58 |
| 6. | “Another Body Murdered“ | Faith No Moreand Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. | 4:24 |
| 7. | “I Love You Mary Jane” | Sonic Youthand Cypress Hill | 3:52 |
| 8. | “Freak Momma” | Mudhoneyand Sir Mix-A-Lot | 4:00 |
| 9. | “Missing Link” | Dinosaur Jr.and Del the Funky Homosapien | 3:59 |
| 10. | “Come and Die” | Therapy? and Fatal | 4:27 |
| 11. | “Real Thing” | Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill | 3:33 |