Let It Ride - In Defense of a Genre

There's an influx of bands from my junior high and high school years reuniting and making me remember how awesome music used to be. But there's a small section of Christian music that has gone unappreciated and probably rightfully so. That genre is Rapcore. There aren't many people who would give a lot of props to rapcore and most credible music critics have complete disdain for rapcore as a genre and the christian market of the genre was so small and seemed so gimmicky at the time (and some of it was). But there was a lot of talent in the scene and honestly a lot of the ground Christian metal and hardcore has made the couple of years is due in large part to rapcore.

So why defend a genre that is dead? Why defend bands that doesn't exist or don't play rapcore anymore? Mostly because I've been nostalgic and my freshman skater days were spent rocking to rapcore. P.O.D., Every Day Life, Spoken, and .rod Laver were bands I loved and to an extent still really like.

P.O.D. paved the way for Christian bands in the mainstream. They were the first band to achieve real success on a large mainstream level. Back in 1994 when their debut album Snuff the Punk was released P.O.D. was a hybrid of rapping and punk. Listening to Snuff the Punk you can hear the Bad Brains influence. The record is a rough shell of what P.O.D. would become. Draw the Line was song that showcased how solid a band they could be. Snuff the Punk is full of hardcore/punk influence and in 94 rapcore wasn't a blemish on the music world yet. Brown was released in 1996 and was the album that set P.O.D. into motion. As Brown reached listeners P.O.D. became one of the biggest acts in the Christian heavy music scene. Brown helped P.O.D. catch the attention of Atlantic records. The Fundamental Elements of Southtown shot the band in superstardom. Rock the Party became the first rock video to be number 1 on MTV's Total Request Live. The band's second record on Atlantic records, Satellite, continued to gain P.O.D. success.

P.O.D.'s subsequent albums have had less fanfare and less success then Southtown and Satellite but that doesn't make them bad records. By the time Payable on Death hit stores, the genre of rapcore was wearing thin on the music community and the mainstream market was moving away from rock music in general. P.O.D. were moving in a more melodic direction. Payable On Death and Testify never really found a strong place. Both albums have great songs but it wasn't the P.O.D. of old and as albums they never seemed to take off like Satellite. A review of Testify in the Washington Post said P.O.D. hadn't moved far enough away from their rapcore roots and been able to establish a new sound enough to keep them relevant. When Angels and Serpents Dance saw the return of Marcos to the band but not a return of success. The album had more of what made P.O.D. a great band, great guitar hooks, catchy and memorable choruses but it also saw P.O.D. taking more musical chances. WHen Angels and Serpents Dance is a great mix of heavy songs and quality rock songs. It might be P.O.D.'s record of ballads but it was done well.

Every Day Life (EDL) was a band surrounded my controversy their entire career. REX record went defunct before they could release an album and by the time Alarma signed them, EDL had decided to make the angriest christian record ever. Frontman Cookerly reported that "when I got into the studio, I got upset and angry and yelled my way through it ... My goal was to write the most upset record the Christian market had ever seen, to completely alienate everybody.” Disgruntled had found itself band by christian bookstores for the cover of Whitey on the Moon, which contains the word nigga. Their second record, American Standard, picked up where Disgruntled left off. EDL was a politically charged band. Both Disgruntled and American Standard are heavy records. Carl Weaver had created a ton off great riffs. EDL was always compared to Rage Against the Machine but the first two EDL records are super heavy.

Moment of Clarity wasn't as heavy as American Standard and had more groove in the riffs but it was still EDL at the core. The album's opening song, Let It Ride, has one of the best screams to kick off a song I've ever heard. Moment of Clarity was more rock oriented but non the less interesting. Their swan song self-titled record was a cross between their early sounds the rock sound of Moment of Clarity. Cookerly was was screaming less but the riffs were heavy and moving. It might have been a more mainstream rapcore sound but by the time Every Day Life came out rapcore had run it's course and so had the trials of EDL's musical career.

Rod Laver was my favorite rapcore band. Their debut album Essence of the Game was heavy. There was no groove, nothing that really tied them to the rapcore scene musically. Essence of the Game was a metal album with rapped vocals. Essence is aggressive, angry, and just super heavy. It was really one of the records that got me into hardcore. I saw Rod Laver like 5 times live in support of Essence of the Game. Their sophomore record, Trying Not to Try, was a complete shift in sound. Rod Laver went from being a metal band that rapped, to a Rap ground with live instruments. Rudy Nielson had strong rhymes, Joey Marchiano was a solid backbone on drums, Ryan Farris was a great balance on guitar, giving interesting riffs to compliment each song, and Chris Butler on bass was creative and had bass riffs that I can only describe as Flea esque.

No Toque El Toro wasn't as tight as Trying Not to Try. Marchiano wasn't on drums and that solid time keeping wasn't there anymore. Half the songs on No Toque El Toro are really solid songs but you can hear Rod Laver trying to break free of that rapcore stereotype. There are moments where they sound like a bad parody of themselves. Signing to BEC helped Rod Laver start fresh. In A Perfect World has what worked and sounded best on No Toque El Toro. It's more groove and rock focused. The last album Rod Laver released was more of a Rudy Nielson solo record. Although Butler and Farris played on the record, The Dialogue is a strict hip-hop record with some DC go-go influence. It came across as a little bitter, with Nielson airing words of negativity towards Screaming Giants records and Essence of the Game. It was a mostly strong record but it took fans off guard and then Rod Laver disappeared forever.

Like all christian music, rapcore became over saturated in 2000. We needed more bands that sounded like P.O.D. and christian bands to keep the teens from listening to Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. Bands like Spoken and Thousand Foot Krutch changed their sound. Project 86 and Blindside were mislabeled. Pax 217 was known only as a christian alternative to 311 and could never shake that. Rapcore became an intolerable label push and like all markets that become over saturated, it crashed. There was a lot of crap that came out of the Rapcore genre but there were a handful of bands and albums that really made a difference and were quality.