The Singles Jukebox

Protest music for the people, workout music for the powerful.

[Video][Website]
[3.83]

Josh Langhoff: If you can imagine the Speaker of the House jamming out to it during his P90X routine, it ain’t protest music. But it might still be rad in a lurchy sort of way, especially if you imagine Rage going the Royal Philharmonic route, playing with any rapper willing to pony up for the Judgment Night-style career retrospective treatment. Paris, where you at?
[6]

Alfred Soto: Had this been a session recorded in 1993 and shelved, I wouldn’t have given it a thought. But inequality is worse than ever. Smarter, faster, and nimbler than Rage Against the Machine’s good intentions, Chuck D spits the dumbest lines of his career.
[4]

Ryo Miyauchi: Strictly taking them as a pop act, Prophets of Rage gets by. Not counting the nostalgia factor of Chuck D and B-Real’s voice, they excite through timelessly reliable protest slogans, their brand of what would be hooks for pop songwriters, and sheer energy. This is like Jurassic 5 but more a nod back to “The Message” than Funky 4+1. But if these guys think this is the way to knock some sense to America, they’ve got another thing coming. With their words lacking personal involvement, I can’t take their political rallying beyond an aesthetic, like a Shepherd Fairley art piece as music. If that’s what they were going for, sure, this is fun and fine, but I doubt they would ever say that.
[5]

Edward Okulicz: I don’t give two craps about Rage Against The Machine (beyond “Bulls on Parade” which is awesome) but “Guerrilla Radio” is obviously their worst ever single and this sounds like that. Chuck D sounds old and bored, like a wind-up toy with dying batteries who can’t wheeze out a polemic.
[2]

Jonathan Bradley: The only explanation I can think of for this rap-metal trash vortex is that someone somewhere wanted to argue that Zack de la Rocha is a better rapper than Chuck D. He’s certainly the only person who’s ever been able to make his Rage Against the Machine cohorts sound combustible; in retrospect, we should have realized that it wasn’t because Chris Cornell couldn’t front a decent tune that Audioslave sucked. Chuck D has always been a more interesting rapper for how he says the things he does than for any dexterity on the mic: not quick-witted or poetic, his booming declarations attain power through the conviction and authority with which he invests them. The chaotic cacophony of the Bomb Squad suited him; on a Public Enemy track, he — and by association, his revolutionary politics — was the only thing that made sense. Over the totalizing pound of modern rock though, he becomes yet another iterative force amid abundant variations of the same. B-Real, ever so slightly more oblique, as well as more experienced with the frattier end of rap, ends up sounding more inspired. If nothing else, “Prophets of Rage” fails in its own requirement of political vitality: in 2016, we’ve got “Fuck Donald Trump.”
[2]

David Sheffieck: This wasn’t a great idea when Chuck D redid “Bring the Noise” with Anthrax, and letting it age for 25 years hasn’t made it sound any better. Did we learn nothing from the Travelling Wilburys?
[4]