10 Rap Albums That Every Rock Fan Should Listen To

There have been many complaints nowadays about musicians not being able to get off the soapbox every now and again. As much as you might want to spread some sort of message with your music, there's no shame in having some sort of party song to take us out of the action every now and again. When the message hits this close to home though, there's no getting around talking about it.

While Run the Jewels have always been known for their balance of smart and care free lyrics, their 4th outing is the most genuinely angry that they have ever felt. Coming right in the middle of the George Floyd protests in 2020, these songs almost seemed like they were timed a little too perfectly, with Killer Mike mentioning the line "I Can't Breathe" in Walking in the Snow.

What brings this one into the rock category though has to be El-P's production, from flipping a Gang of Four sample to making good use of rock musicians in the field like Joshua Homme on Pulling the Pin or bringing in Zack de LA Rocha to add a few lines to the song JU$T. If anything, this feels like the most pertinent kind of rap rock record that we could have hoped for at this stage. Here was a duo that were never snobs about what they liked, and they ended up making the successor to Rage Against the Machine that we all wanted but never got.