Renegades Of Funk – Rage Against The Machine

There is not a single Rage Against The Machine song on all of SteveForTheDeaf.

No Killing In The Name, no Bullet In The Head, no Bulls On Parade, no Sleep Now In The Fire, no Guerilla Radio. There’s not a sniff of Take The Power Back not a hint of Freedom. There’s no obsucrio B-Side reference to their cover of Fuck The Police and no talk about Wake Up at the end of The Matrix.

Tom Morello shows up a lot. In the descriptions of stuff. in Prophets Of Rage, in Audioslave, playing that axe like a Swiss Army Fuzzbox for Bruce Springsteen. It might seem perverse then to post them here, with a cover version from their swansong release. And yet, here’s the thing.

Renegades Of Funk by Rage Against The Machine IS one of my very favourite records. It’s absolutely brilliant. The heaviest of grooves. The funkiest of Metal. It’s like Faith No More, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Fishbone all stood up and went “Yes! That’s what we meant when we formed our bands! That!”

Renegades the album is a great record but it has some higher points than others. Kick Out The Jams didn’t put any more of a tiger in the tank of that tune than it already had but it was a fun run through. Microphone Fiend is a steriod induced Reanimator of an old rigid hip hop tune turned into a monster howling at it’s own creation.

I’m Housing, The Ghost Of Tom Joad and Could I Just Kill A Man do EPMD, Bruce Springsteen & Public Enemy proud. They show them in a new light and & and play to their strengths. Street Fighting Man… not so much. That song already had all the armour it needed when The Stones laid it down. Is it a fun jam? Sure.

Renegades of Funk though. that’s Afrika Bambaataa! That’s the guys who did Planet Rock. That’s ground zero hip hop and it’s P-Funk and it’s heavy grooves and it’s worthy of it’s own place on the list with or without Zakk, Tom, Brad and Tim bashing the living daylights out of it.

So for time immemorial lets get RATM on the list. Not just for all the songs above. Not just because I was prime rock fan age for their rise, their reign and their return with the Christmas number one and victory show the following summer back in 2009/10. Let’s get them on the list because you HAVE to listen to this. It’s brilliant.

Here it is. Jam Sucka!