10 Current-Day Music Artists You Should Definitely Be Listening To

"Light side's got a dark side to it / Daytime flows into the night like fluid / The yin and the yang with a curved line through it / And none of it's illuminating why I do it."

Mike Shinoda is a hip-hop/alternative artist based out of Agoura Hills, California. Shinoda has enjoyed massive success as the guitarist and emcee of the popular rock band Linkin Park, but his musical ventures go far beyond 'In The End' and 'Burn It Down'. Shinoda has two projects apart from Linkin Park: Fort Minor and his solo career. While Fort Minor, a rap group led by Shinoda, never quite made it to Linkin Park success, their 2005 album The Rising Tied received platinum certification from the RIAA and was reviewed very favorably by critics.

Most recently, however, Shinoda has released his first solo album, 2018's Post Traumatic, to rave reviews and a peak charting of #16 on the Billboard 200. When Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington died by suicide in 2017, the musician was faced with a choice: either fade away or come back swinging. Thankfully, he went with the latter and created Post Traumatic, an 18 track journey of recovery that exposes Mike's feelings of isolation, hopelessness, and depression while also hosting a hopeful undertone throughout. The album spawned numerous hits for Shinoda, including Make It Up As I Go, Over Again, and Running From My Shadow.

Overall, with the wicked rhymes, riveting wordplay and raw emotion Mike puts into the eighteen tracks of Post Traumatic, it is almost a no-brainer that Shinoda is an artist to keep an eye on in the coming months. Shinoda is available on Spotify, YouTube, iTunes, and all other music platforms.

Above is one of the aforementioned singles, Make It Up As I Go, featuring another rising star named K.Flay.