The Singles Jukebox

Want to feel old? Linkin Park… premiered their single on Shazam.

[Video][Website]
[3.09]

Anthony Easton: I no longer miss the 1990s. 
[2]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Phew, a lot going on here: “Guilty” shifts from garage-metal to Eurometal glory to commercial thrash to industrial flourishes to goth-drama. It’s not unusual for Linkin Park to run through as many attempts at eclecticism, seeing as they came from a hacky mash-up scene in the first place and have settled into making weird art-metal since the start of this decade. “Guilty” is a welcome crunch, sure to work best in the context of the upcoming Hunting Party album, but it’s almost comically overstuffed. Example: Rakim is here, guys! Remember the last time he was this close to the sphere of commercial music and was signed to Aftermath Records? Is this what could have happened with the God in the nu-metal wild early-noughties? Is this the darkest timeline?
[6]

Mallory O’Donnell: Killer riff, pity it’s stuck in this song from 1998. It would be interesting to see what some musicians that are living today would have done with it.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: This collaboration would have made sense, and would have made someone really rich, in 2002, when Linkin Park were at the peak of their Toonami-fueled, no-you-shut-up-dad hybridization of rock, rap and electronic music. There is plenty to dislike about Linkin Park — especially when one has shed all traces of goofy angry-teenager-dom — but back then they did what they did perfectly: every guitar stab and record scratch had its place, and even if Chester Bennington’s words were wince-worthy, it was never awkward. That Jay-Z/Linkin Park mashup EP didn’t fail because the rap sounded out of place over Linkin Park’s music. So in theory, Rakim should slide into these dude’s music — except Linkin Park realized a Transformers soundtrack appearance won’t build an extra floor on their homes, so they aim for the festival stages of the world by… sounding like Muse. And “Guilty All the Same” is too all-over-the-place and interested in being complex to find adequate space for Rakim, his inclusion as forced as it can get.
[2]

David Turner: The joke of the name “nu-metal” was that it wasn’t ever very metal, but “Guilty All the Same” is a step too metal. I haven’t kept up with the band since 2007, but doubling down and just becoming an angsty metal band is not the path I’d have chosen. But Rakim appears here, so who knows where your career will take you. 
[3]

Andy Hutchins: I have precisely zero valuable or interesting thoughts on Linkin Park getting “harder” or whatever in their 18th year of existence — cool, dudes, you are playing your guitars more vigorously than you previously did — but Rakim being on a No. 1 song (and likely being the oldest rapper ever to appear on a No. 1 song) in 2014, 27 years after Paid in Full, is endlessly fascinating to me, because a) Mike Shinoda’s enough of a traditionalist dweeb (I say this out of personal recognition and love) to idolize and reach out to Rakim, something anyone who bought the Fort Minor album knew well and b) because he’s still leagues better than many, many rappers from a technical standpoint. He’s locked in here, latticing his old-head-talks-about-the-game verse over a bridge of stabbing riffery, the sort of tricky stuff that 90 percent of the up-and-coming generation of rap has eschewed to the point of that style’s growing endangerment. When Kendrick Lamar is hailed as a savior of rap, as Jay Electronica or J. Cole or any number of meticulous, traditionalist rappers were before, it is often by either old heads who remember Rakim and the revolution that followed him, or kids ensnared by imagined nostalgia, and both of those groups are more pernicious to the growth and progression of rap as a genre and a style. But they do have a point, if they choose to make a granular one: Few rappers have ever crafted verses as expertly as Rakim, and they really don’t make ’em like Rakim did — and does — anymore.
[5]

Alfred Soto: Guilty of changing nary a note nor approach since the Clinton years. Same goes for Linkin Park.
[2]

Thomas Inskeep: I expected this to be bad, but I didn’t expect it to sound like the worst mid-’80s Teutonic metal. It’s like Linkin Park featuring Yngwie Malmsteen. Actually, I take that back; that’s an insult to Yngwie Malmsteen.
[0]

Katherine St Asaph: One truth, one lie: Mike Shinoda was inspired to write this while “listening to a lot of indie music“; he tweaked the riff from a Donkey Kong remix. And one basic miscalculation: At this point in Linkin Park’s career and skills, the prospect of a new Shinoda — even if it’s temporary Rakim — is far less enticing than that of a new Chester. Particularly when the TRVV MVTVL just strands him like this.
[4]

Megan Harrington: At best, this sounds like a cheap Danger Mouse rehash for Rakim to go soft over. At worst, this is a flailing dirge over which grown men pout like teenagers. There is maybe a one-point difference between the two outcomes, which I split. 
[3]

Brad Shoup: Please feel for Linkin Park, who had access to all these entry points o’ rage, but still had to justify an investment. They nod to hardcore, black metal and NWOBHM, but the takeaway gesture is nu-EDM. Oddly, depressingly, Rakim — THE GOD — conjures the klassic sound with a dead-on Shinoda impression. Thank God this lasts so long; the embarrassment diffuses.
[4]