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?
Kneecap. If you’re even partly plugged in you know about Kneecap.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/arts/music/kneecap-glastonbury.html
Jesse welles
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.
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.
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?
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.
Bob Vylan.
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…
It’s this super unknown band. Very underground. Nobody seems to know who they are. They’re called Apostrophe.
mackelmore dropped like a couple of bangers when the palestine stuff was gaining traction in the mainstream.
Residente as well
Kneecap
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.
deleted by creator
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.
Well recession pop is back, check out the new Lady Gaga or Kesha albums. So there is that sort of dissonance and syncopated funkier rhythms in pop music which can usually be connected to economic and social downturn.
I know that shit is worlds away from what you’re referring to, I think you’re looking for something more aggressive.
I think the 2022 Every Time I Die record Renegade goes pretty fucking hard, I listen to Planet Shit about once a month and just rage.
Planet B by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard goes pretty hard.
You can always check out whatever Napalm Death is doing, much of their stuff is political and social commentary, in fact I love ND lyrics.
No one has the " popular understanding of ‘transgender’ didn’t really exist for gen x but whatever it’s going to be, these songs are mostly about needing to transition but feeling unable to" that Kurt Cobain had, but Kurt did once say that early Nirvana was an attempt at copping Gang of Four, and Go4 is very political, critical and high energy. esp their first album “Entertainment!” and “Solid Gold”. After that they become kinda disco.
Also consider diving into the incredible wealth of protest music produced before the 60s. The 60s is kind of understood as a high water mark for protest music, but IMO a lot of Dylan and stuff was promoted more because he was actually less political than like Phil Ochs. Woody Guthrie, Victor Jara, The Almanac Singers, Odetta, etc., had much sharper politics than most well known artists who came after.
Finally, last but best, not new but largely undiscovered and forgotten, the Swedish RATM: the 1998 album The Shape of Punk to Come by the Refused. By far, one of my absolute favorite left wing records
My whole thing, that a lot of people are missing,this generation doesn’t have a lot of great music produced from the political time.
Maybe it is a rear mirror view type of thing. Billie Holiday did not shy away due to her believes.
If others don’t know, she was harassed by the federal government. Back then, it was easy for record companies to silence you compared to today
So I’m a socialist, in that I go to meetings voluntarily and get in trouble all the time. I spend a ton of time heavily invested in this political stuff. And one thing that is like desperately missing from our movements is any kind of culture. So that’s something that I’m also thinking about a lot, and I think a lot of people are. Not sure what to do really, still trying to figure that stuff out, but I’m actively trying to figure that out.
Run the Jewels def have some overtly political stuff, a few tracks with Zach de la Rocha even, although Killer Mike is a little disappointing politically, but many artists are. They have newer stuff but I just really like this song
Another group to check out is the Coup. Been making records since before the gangsta rap come up in the 90s even. Their newer stuff is pretty popular with young people too.
Both these songs are over a decade old, fuck me
Yes, that is my point. We aren’t getting this generations stop the killing or down with the president. Nixon, Reagon, and Bush all got called out by name.
Kendrick is goimg after a know groomer while a know rapist watches. We are having families riped apart by a secret police force while a netflix anime is topping the charts.
It blows my mind and confuses me. Especially when I hear younger generations complain about nothing being done, while their peers do nothing.
I guess I should be happy no one recommended country music.
RATM listeners as a group didn’t do anything either.
I don’t think music actually compels people to action, conditions do.
nothing being done
Yeah that’s its own sort of doomer individualism. I wish I could tell you, as someone who teams up with others to do things that the view disappears in practical work, but tbh it seems like it only increases. Idk. There are def lots of young people joining the movement. Hasn’t reached a critical point but it’s growing.
I wish we had more artists since most are like political sickos
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.
