60 Songs That Explain the '90s - “Killing In The Name”—Rage Against The Machine

Episode Date: January 19, 2022

Rob explores the history of Los Angeles rock band Rage Against the Machine and their debut single, “Killing in the Name.” By calling out police brutality and political corruption, the furious four-piece became one of the most rebellious bands of the 1990s and brought socialist and revolutionary ideas to the mainstream. This episode was originally produced as a Music and Talk show available exclusively on Spotify. Find the full song on Spotify or wherever you get your music. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Sage Francis  Producer: Justin Sayles Associate Producer: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Quote, this country was founded on the things I talk about. I learned it in school. Paul Revere was running around saying, the redcoats is coming. So he was basically saying, here come the pigs and a fuck up is going down. We had a revolution, or else we would be under the queen,

At this moment, that was a revolutionary thought, and those were very honorable thoughts in those days. The Boston Tea Party, all that shit. We just celebrated July 4th, which is really just National Fuck the Police Day. And the Star-Spangled Banner is a song about a hell of a shootout with the police. You can call them troops, whatever you want, but basically their police from the other side. I bet back during the Revolutionary War there were songs similar to mine. If you want to look at it, I guess the cop killer is the first soldier in the war who decides, hey, it's time to go out there and be aggressive and I'm moving against them.

End quote. He almost sounds like a college football head coach at the end there. Go out there and be aggressive. Let's beat Rutgers, guys. But the point stands. All those points stand. We're going to play this song now. Not an easy song to listen to.

I suppose emotionally, but really, I mean logistically, this song ain't on streaming. It ain't this sort of MP3 you can buy. We try to avoid hyperbole around here, but this is very arguably the single most dangerous song released in the 1990s. If you triangulate its popularity with its malignancy, I'm struggling to find the right word. Malignancy is okay for now, though descriptions of the disease vary. Of course, I'll think about it. it, but it's time, because this is where the history lesson really starts. I got a 12-day song by Ice T's thrash metal band Body Count.

It's called Cop Killer, and we're coming to the chorus now. Ice T was discussing the Revolutionary War with Rolling Stone in August 1992, a lengthy interview with the writer Alan Light, a cover story. Ice T appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a police uniform. form, the nightstick, the badge, the iced tea name tag, the Ice-T glower, of course. As an actor, as an aspiring movie star, he'd already played a detective in 1991's New Jack City. And as a TV star, he'd go on to spend the last 85 years and counting playing a cop on Law and Order SVU. But nonetheless, Ice-T as a cop is one of the best, one of the most startling magazine covers of the 90s while we're

indulging in hyperbole. One of the other cover lines right next to us, Ice-Tee's head is searching for the new Nirvana in utero hadn't even come out yet. I'm afraid to go look up who Rolling Stone thought the new Nirvana was in August 1992. Here's the other half of that chorus. But yeah, great magazine cover. Okay, quick timeline. Chronological order. Late 1990, early 1991.

Ice-T. and body count guitarist Ernie C. write a song called Cop Killer, a character study about an everyday guy who snaps in the face of relentless police brutality. Ice-T is inspired by the talking head song, Psycho Killer. March 1991. Four LAPD officers are caught on videotape, savagely beating Rodney King

after a high-speed chase. Summer 1991. Body count Zoot Around America playing cop-killer as part of the very first Lollapalooza tour. Also featuring Jane's Addiction, 9-inch Nails, Susie and the Banshees, Living Color, Fishbone, the Rollins Band, the Butthole Surfers, and the Violent Fems.

I love the Violent Fems, but if I'm the Violent Fems, I don't leave my trailer backstage at Year 1 Lalapalooza, lest I get atomic wedgied by literally any other band on that bill. Late 1991, Body Count, Record Their debut album, simply titled Body Count, and by the time they're laying down Cop Killer in the studio, Rodney King and Risible LAPD Chief Daryl Gates are both very much on Ice T's mind. March 1992, Body Count released their debut album with Cop Killer at the very end of the track list. Initial sales are disappointing. It's too rock for the rap kids. and to wrap for the Rock Kids, despite the fact that Ice Tea doesn't wrap at all, you know the drill.

April 1992, the L.A. riots, following the near total acquittal of the four LAPD officers charged with a savage beating of Rodney King. June 1992, the 14-year-old daughter of a patrol officer in Dallas, Texas, alerts her father to the existence of cop killer. And within 10 seconds, you got police organizations calling for a boycott of Body Count's parent company, Time Warner. You got President George Herbert Walker Bush calling the song Sick. You got Vice President Dan Cueo calling the song Obscene. And you got NRA celebrity spokesman Charlton Heston out here disgustedly reciting lyrics during his speeches. I got my 12-gauge sawed off. I got my headlights turned off.

I'm about to bust some shots off. I'm about to dust some cops off. Did I mention 1992 was a presidential election year? You got near future President Bill Clinton out here having his fabled sister soldier moment. As I speak these words, and also again, as you hear these words, whenever you're hearing them, someone somewhere is writing yet another savvy political column, imploring current President Joe Biden to have his own sister soldier moment. I'm not the most politically savvy guy, but I'm pretty sure a sister soldier moment is when a white politician yells at a random black person to soothe white people anyway, July 1992. Amid widespread pressure, more threatening to rank and file Time Warner employees than to him personally, Ice Tea Poles cop killer from the Body Count album, never to return.

He replaces it on all future pressings of Body Count with a thrash metal remake of his song Freedom of Speech. August 1992, the Body Count records well on its way to going gold anyway, and iced tea is on the cover of Rolling Stone. And certainly, that's the end of all that. Yeah, about that. In June 2020, amid nationwide protests following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, Billboard magazine interviewed Body Count guitarist Ernie C about cop killer, about what appears to be the permanent memory-holing,

in polite society, at least, of cop killer, which is not Ernie C's call. Ernie C wants cop killer back on the record and up on streaming, quote, it should be there. It absolutely should be there. Some of these kids that are out there, the protesters, he means, they're 30, 31. They were newborns when this was going on. What we talked about 30 years ago, we're still talking about. For his part, talking to the British metal outlet Karang, Earlier in 2020, Ice-T reflected on the cop-killer controversy by saying,

I never expected the outrage. I mean, there's a group called Millions of Dead Cops, and Black Flag was talking shit about the cops. They've got a T-shirt with a gun in a cop's mouth. So I thought it was fair game. But I hit that threshold where they snap back. And they were mad because people love that song. That's what scared the shit out of them.

If I made a record called Kid Killer, no one would like it and I'd be an asshole. But when I played cop killer in Brazil, I could have run for fucking president because cops out there were killing the kids. End quote. I realize that basically none of this is funny, but the notion of an iced tea song called Kid Killer

is very amusing to me. And everybody's listening to Kid Killer like, this guy's an asshole. This is a dark time. I don't know what to tell you. I was 14 years old. In 1992, amid the initial cop-killer cluster fuck, and in my obliviousness and naivetee and privilege, I primarily understood cop-killer as one of those songs that terrified adults and was therefore

extremely cool. This was not a well-informed or especially nuanced point of view. The songs that fell into the extremely cool songs that terrify parents category had very little to do with one another. Madonna's Justify My Love for the video, pretty much the full ghetto boys catalog. for various reasons. I grew up Catholic, and around this time I went to confirmation classes, after school, religious classes, and I still remember the day in 1990 or so when our teacher turned her

back for like 20 seconds, and immediately a roomful of eager young Catholics started eagerly discussing, you guessed it, two live crews, me so horny. Not a protest song, Me So Horny per se, banned in the USA by Two Live Crew from 1990 after me so horny and the rest of their as nasty as they want to be album got them legally declared obscene banned in the USA as a protest song of course and even a teenage knucklehead like me could halfway wrap my mind around it in real time cop killer from one perspective is absolutely a protest song though that term feels feeble and ineffectual to me cop killer is not protesting we're beyond that now cop killer is a battering ram it's a guided missile it's a weapon of mass

destruction. It's not a Trojan horse. It's all four horses of the apocalypse. Cop Killer scandalized, but also to some extent radicalized a generation. But the song was a suicide mission. The song sacrificed itself to get its message across. The song that got so famous, so infamous, that until the internet at least, you basically couldn't listen to it. But there are other more insidious. And yeah, okay, subtler ways to change amid controversy craving young people the conversation about the police. Not much subtler. Half a percentage point. Subtler. A song just subtler enough to stay, if not on the radio or on MTV, at least to stay on the CD. How do you push further and hit harder, but not quite hit that threshold where they snap back,

where the machine rages back? How do you write a furious and profane and police excoriating protest song that even a future Republican vice presidential candidate could claim to love. Some of those that workforces are the same that bar crosses. Some of those that workforces are the same at bar crosses. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is 60 songs that explain the 90s. And this week we're talking about killing in the name by Rage Against the Machine. From their self-titled debut album,

or released in November 9. 1992. A half a percentage point subtler cop killer for a post cop killer world. Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses. Not subtle. Not one bit. Even an oblivious 14 year old can understand it. But this song was just subtle enough to be allowed to continue to exist. Let's not waste too much time here. Rage Against the Machine formed in Los Angeles in 1991. You got rapper Zach Dela Roka on lead vocals. You got 90s guitar god Tom Morello on guitars. You got Tim Comerford, Tim Bob on bass, and you got Brad Wilk on drums.

They put out three monster albums, Rage Against the Machine in 92, Evil Empire in 96, and the Battle of Los Angeles in 99. And then they broke up, imploded, dissolved, whatever, after an odd and not entirely satisfying covers album called Renegades, released in 2000. Rage Against the Machine's best cover song is The Ghost of Tom Jode by Bruce Springsteen, but not the version on Renegades. The best version of Rage Against the Machine's version of the Ghost of Tom Jod is on a compilation called No Boundaries, a benefit for the Kosovovier refugees.

I wouldn't tell you this if it weren't important. Anyway, then they broke up in a weird vague huff. Though they grit their teeth and hit the reunion tour every so often, they were all set to headline Coichella 2020, for all the good that did anybody. You know who else did that? Three full-length albums, one covers album, then collapsed and eventual grudging reformation. Guns and Roses. If you ignore GNR lies in Chinese democracy.

Close enough. All right. It's actually quite challenging even now to articulate the appeal of rage against the machine. No, it isn't. Look out. Top five greatest air bass moments in the rage against the machine catalog. Air bass is like air guitar except your planned bass. Number five, down rodeo from Evil, M.

It ain't necessarily about how many notes Tim Comerford's playing. Yeah. It's about how rad you feel flacking your thumb in the air and leaning into the boom, boom, boom. Bonus points if you're wearing that Che Guevara T-shirt, or I suppose bonus points if you're not. Number four, no shelter from the Godzilla soundtrack. Yes, the 1998 Godzilla soundtrack that starts with the wallflowers covering David Bowie's heroes. could have gone worse all things considered. But yeah, other than Rage,

the only truly great moment on this record is the Godzilla remix of Green Day's Brain Stew, which is a remix in the sense that they basically just added arbitrary Godzilla roars. Just absolutely fantastic. There is no song from the 90s,

or for that matter from any other decade, that cannot be improved by the addition of arbitrary Godzilla roars. And yes, that includes number three, freedom. Freedom is the last song on the first rage against the machine record. Its video, ubiquitous on MTV for a time, is an explicit plea for the release of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of aiding and abetting the murder of two FBI agents during a shootout at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Peltier has been in prison since 1975. Peltier has been in prison since

177, despite widespread outcry that he is innocent, that key evidence was withheld at the trial, and that the eyewitnesses who testified at the trial were coerced by the FBI. Leonard Peltier is still in prison. The Freedom video ends with the statement. We demand and support the request that Leonard Peltier be granted, executive clemency, and be released. Justice has not been done. spoken up a few words at a time in giant white letters on screen while the band thrashes through the loudest and screamiest and raddest part of the song. The eternal rage against the machine

conundrum being, if you consider their fans, often stereotyped at least as primarily white and suburban and oblivious, what percentage of rage against the machine's fans got this message? And what percentage ignore the message entirely and just dug all the thrashing and screaming? reject that false binary. Number two, roll right. Okay, but so this intrigues me. This song is also from Evil Empire. That baseline kicks ass.

But in fact, that baseline kicks so much ass that I had no idea what the lyrics to this song were until basically just now. Shocky like Ellison, Gaza, Tien Anman, the basement I'm dwelling in, cockback the sling to stone a settler, call me the upsetter. There's a lot going on here.

Quite the multimedia travelogue. Does the rad baseline enhance or obscure whatever you regard as Zach De LaRouca's message here? Ooh, I'm intrigued. And finally, the all-time greatest airbase moment in the Rage Against the Machine catalog. Know your enemy. One of my most embarrassing moments in college, and I think you have some idea of what a crowded field that is, that competition, is when my freshman year roommate Gene caught me playing airbase. nobody looks cool playing airbase.

I know this for a fact. I don't remember what I was playing airbase along to in that moment. It very well could have been raging against the machine. Or maybe it was Caius. Gene was big into Caius and got me big into Caius, Caius, the stoner metal band featuring dudes would go on to form Queens of the Stone Age. For your reference here, the all-time greatest Caius Airbase moment. It's a song Space Cadet from 1994's Welcome to Sky Valley.

Scott Reader on bass, everybody. So yeah, I'm sitting. in my dorm room contorting my hands in this super agro and humiliating way and Gene's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, uh, nothing. And Gene's like, you look ridiculous. And that's when he became my enemy. That's pretty much all

I got in terms of personal rage against the machine anecdotes because if you've listened to this show before, you may recall that I did an episode on pavement, on the pavement song, gold sounds. And inexplicably, I spent like half that episode telling every rage against the machine story. I could think of. Why did I do that? Does anyone know why I did that? Who's in charge here? Right now, it would have been a way better time to tell you about the time I tried a toilet paper or mailbox after a rage against the machine concert in Akron, Ohio, but nope, I already talked about that. I will not repeat myself. It's a little something called integrity. Suffice it to say there is a photo of me and Gene on the very day we moved into our freshman year college dorm room and I am wearing jean shorts. Any backwards hat that I believe advertised the Charlotte Hornets?

I grew up in Ohio. I guess I really like Rex Chapman. I don't know. And I'm also wearing a mustard yellow rage against the machine t-shirt from the Evil Empire Tour. The one with fear is your only God. Scrawled on the back. And I look like a herb, I believe, is the term.

Would a herb realize that he looked like a herb, though? Also intriguing. Last thing about Air Base. There is actually video footage on YouTube of Vice. and body count performing cop killer live during Lalaplusa 1991. And Ice Tea plays Air Base along to the cop killer riff on stage. You know what? Ice Tea looks cool as hell playing Airbase.

I stand corrected. Enough frivolity. Rage against the machine did not do frivolity. They did not write frivolous songs, party songs, love songs, or love songs in any conventional sense. Rage made the cover of Rolling Stone. in November 1999, the cover of Spin Magazine in March 2000, both to promote the Battle of Los Angeles. The Rolling Stone story ends with Zach De La Roca stating the following.

Quote, a lot of people who are cynics, the writer David Frick, notes that Zach spits out the word cynics. A lot of people who are cynics have completely abandoned the idea that music can affect political change. Abandoned it entirely as a product of cultural cynicism. That's completely defeatist. Music will always be able to engage people. KRS1, public enemy, they had as much of an effect on me in the way I saw the world as viewing my father's art or growing up poor in a white suburb. You know, I think every revolutionary act is an act of love. Every song that I've written, it is because of my desire to use music as a way to empower and rehumanize people who are living in a dehumanizing setting. The song is in order to better the human condition.

Every song that I've ever written is a love song. End quote. So let's go back to one of the first love songs he ever wrote. That is Bomb Track, Track 1 on Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut album from 1992. band actually made a freedom style video for bomb track as well, touting the Peruvian Communist Party organization known as the Shining Path, a far less sympathetic cause than Leonard Peltier. Let's put it that way.

I don't think MTV played the bomb track video much, and that's for the best. These guys were not fucking around from the jump. The cover of Rage Against the Machine's debut album features the famous photograph of a Vietnamese monk burning himself to death in protest on the street in Saigon in 1916. protesting the government's treatment of Buddhists. Consequently, if you're of a certain age, like half the dudes on your high school football team owned a copy of that photograph. Picture them all in the wait room pumping iron to bullet in your head. A yellow ribbon instead of a swastika is an awfully incendiary line for a song about how you should watch less TV.

Nothing proper about your propaganda is a pretty good line no matter what your song's about. Zach Dela Roker's mother got a Ph.D. in anthropology at the Irvine campus of the University of California. His father was an influential activist and visual artist in mid-70s, L.A., part of a group of Chicano painters called Los Four, who got famous after exhibiting their work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1974. But his father grew disillusioned with the compromises that came with commercial fame, and he refused to sell his work. He divorced his wife and he burned a bunch of his work in front of his son, Zach, and only returned to the art scene in the mid-90s after his son, Zach's band, got super famous. The way Zach summarized all this to Charles Aaron and Spin Magazine was, I admired my father's twisted resilience in a way.

He struggled to break down the barriers between politics and art, which we struggle with. All the things he did with farm workers, with the anti-Vietnam War movement in East L.A., desegregating the art world, not letting his work be touched by commercialism, but at a certain point you have to face the gun of reality that's pointing at you. End quote. Any joke, any insult, anybody's ever flung at rage against the machine for advocating for communism via albums released by Sony Records. Just keep in mind that Zach's given that paradox more thought than anybody.

Going back to this first record now, I'm gravitating for the first time toward the quietest moments. The song Settle for Nothing is a very slow, very grim character study about a jailed gang member. The chorus ends with Zach screaming the word suicide. But I don't think I ever gave the first line enough attention. A jail cell is freedom from the pain in my home. I should have listened a little harder earlier. Same deal with the last three lines and the verses before he starts screaming. screaming.

Oh, to be an oblivious, 14-year-old suburban, and not fully grasp the import of all that, distracted in part, perhaps, by the mild discordance of Tom Morello's guitar solo. Tom Morello was born in Harlem. His father was born in Kenya and fought in the 50s. in the Mao Mao uprising against British rule, and after Kenya won its independence, he served as the country's first ambassador to the United Nations in 1963. Tom Morella's mother was a school teacher and a civil rights activist, who after getting divorced when Tom was young, moved with Tom to the small town of

the Libertyville, Illinois, where she founded an anti-sensorship organization called Parents for Rock and Rap. Per, that's a good acronym. She also took young Tom to see Alice Cooper live in concerts, twice. Tom went to Harvard. Tom learned to play guitar. Tom wound up in LA. Tom wound up in rage against the machine. The liner notes to the first rage album include the statement, no samples, keyboards, or synthesizers used in the making of this recording. A little humble brag about all the wacky and violent sounds Tom manages to make with his guitar and his pedals and so forth. On the albums to come, as the band's music progresses, Tom's guitar soul.

will get righteously wackier. Consider evil empire's first single Bulls on Parade. Rage played Bulls on Parade on Saturday Night Live in 1996. Republican presidential primary candidate Steve Forbes was the host. He was the flat tax guy. Whose idea was it to put that host and that musical guest together? It's a terrible idea. Rage hung upside down American flags on their amplifiers,

and were not allowed to play a second song. For posterity's sake, the single Goofiest Tom Morello guitar solo in a rage against the machine song goes as follows. What the hell is that? Precisely. Is there a guitar pedal shaped like a clown's spinning bow tie?

That's from Sleep Now in the Fire. From the Battle of Los Angeles. Michael Moore directed the video for Sleep Now in the Fire where the band attempted to storm the New York Stock Exchange. You know that phrase having a normal one? This band doesn't. 21-year-old me hated that solo, but I quite like it now,

mostly because 21-year-old me hated it. We have an adversarial relationship, me then, and me now. But when I return to the whole Battle of Los Angeles record now, this is the song. This is the part of a song that gets me, the quietest moment again. There's a mass without roofs. There's a prison to fill. There's a country soul that reads post-no-bill.

There's a prison to fill. I should have listened harder, sooner. This is the end of a song called Calm Like a Bomb. Brad Wilk on drums, non-flamboyant excellence from Brad Wilk on drums reliably. In terms of his own political awakening and education, Brad once told Rolling Stone, and I genuinely appreciate this. He said, when we first started the band, I was learning shit. The stuff that I was learning from Tom and Zach, my eyes were opened in the same way as our fans. Similar deal for Tim Comerford, who's known Zach De La Rocha since the fifth grade. Tim says, if I could go back in time to high school with this knowledge, I'd be psyched. There wasn't anything like that for me except for the clash.

In that Rolling Stone cover story, Tim adds that he recently been talking with two black police officers on his neighborhood flag football team. And he brought up Mumia Abu Jamal, another one of Rage Against the Machine's high profile political causes. Mumia was sentenced to death for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, but he has maintained

his innocence and he's now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. And Tim was disappointed that the cops didn't know much about Mumia. A lot of great detail to that anecdote, the flag football part especially. Anyway, the malevolent hush to the way calm like a

bombs ends, kills me every time. There's a strike in a line of cops offside of the mill because there's a right to obey and there's the right to kill. There's a line of cops and there's a right to kill. But who's right to kill whom? We've been jumping around a lot chronologically, but that's an occupational hazard. When the song we're primarily supposed to be talking about

is the band's very first single. Tom Morello discussing the song, Killing in the Name on the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast in 2020 observed. We actually left the lyrics off of the lyric sheet of the first record because I think this song is two lines, 16 fuck yous and one motherfucker. And we're like in the midst of all this grand political poetry, let's just let that one stand for itself. End quote. If you didn't know the killing in the name as 16 fuck you's and a motherfucker, please forget I mention it. So you'll be surprised 60 seconds from now. I don't know if I'm inclined to belabor or

saw in this simple and direct with too much analysis. Killing in the name is about Rodney King, about the police, the LAPD, especially, but really the police everywhere, as an instrument as the apex of white supremacy. You can, of course, choose to respect that authority. or you can call you or you can call what they told you called you now you do what they told you about they told you

or you can call that authority what it is in 2020 Rage Against the Machine partnered with a black film collective called the Uma Kroma on a 15-minute

many documentary about killing in the name except the documentary is called Killing in Thy Name. You've got to teach talking to teenagers about how white people were created, saying that Europeans didn't consider themselves white people until they all got to America. You've got a truly unsettling scene where there's a bubbly little blonde girl on camera, eight, nine, ten years old, maybe,

and a voice off screen, her mother, I think, asks, and what was the first time that you realized you were white? And then for 60 solid seconds, you watch this girl's face darken. And she gets increasingly upset and sad until she has to turn the camera off. I'm going to process that scene privately, if it's all the same to you. You got Zach Daler Roca, an old interview footage, calling the United States one of the most brutal societies in the history of the world. You've got Tim Comerford, reliably lightening the mood a little bit, quoted as saying, writing songs that have something to say about what's going on socially and politically isn't a choice for us. It's an obligation. I want to be a question. I want to be a question. I want to

to use music as a weapon and start spraying fools. And then the last five minutes of the doc is rage playing the song, which ends, as you hopefully forgot, I told you 60 seconds ago with 16 fuck yous and a motherfucker. You owe it to yourself, whatever your politics, however you feel about anything I've said or anything I've quoted anybody else saying,

you owe it to yourself to experience this song live once in your life. I saw Rage Live once in 1996, and then I tried to toilet paper a mailbox. A couple of years back I saw Tom Morello's solo, one of his many post-rage adventures and misadventures. I saw Tom Morello and his solo backing band at a Super Agro Hard Rock Festival in Columbus, Ohio, and he played Killing in the name,

and it's truly sincerely electrifying what happens to the people around you, the air around you, as this song ramps up to its dramatic conclusion. Your hands ball up into fists, and your brain empties of all thoughts that aren't this thought. Tom Morello in that Rolling Stone podcast said, fuck you, I won't do what you tell me is a universal sentiment.

While it's a simple lyric, I think it's one of Zach's most brilliant. And to me, it relates to Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass said the moment he became free was not the moment that he was physically loosed from his bonds. It was the moment when the master said, yes, and he said, no. And that's the essence of fuck you, I will not do what you tell me. End quote. The eternal rage against the machine conundrum being. As this song ramps up to its dramatic, electrifying, unbelievable, unrivaled conclusion,

if you are fortunate enough to ever hear this song live, what percentage of the people around you? Their hands also bawling up into fists, their brains also emptying of all other thoughts? What percentage of those people are thinking about Frederick Douglass or Rodney King or white supremacy? Maybe they're thinking about Joe Biden. Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me.

Maybe they're thinking about the CDC. Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. Maybe they're thinking about the Yahoo fantasy fold. football projected points feature that told me I should start Ezekiel Elliott because he was going to score 16.52 fantasy points in week 17 when I played in the finals he scored four points four point zero zero I hate Yahoo fuck you I shouldn't have done what you told me maybe they're thinking about something they read on Twitter definitely fuck you I won't do what you tell me maybe they're thinking about rage against the machine when rage against the machine is not playing killing

in the name. No, fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. Maybe they're thinking about their mothers. You know that song, Wake Up from the first rage album and from the end of the first Matrix movie when Neo slams the phone down? You know the red pill from the Matrix movie? How on the internet, the red pill now means something way different than what the directors of the Matrix meant the red pill to mean in the movie. See, that's the thing. Cop Killer, the song is unspinnably. You cannot make the song Cop Killer address something or mean something other than what Ice Team meant it to mean. That was the great strength and perhaps the ultimate weakness of Cop Killer. That's what made Cop Killer so powerful and therefore why it had to be for all practical purposes destroyed.

Whereas the great strength and perhaps the ultimate weakness of killing in the name is that's a universal sentiment but also a malleable one. So when the beat finally drops, you can yell this at whoever the fuck you want. Anger is a gift, or so I've been told. All I ask is that you listen hard and be careful who you give that gift to and who you accept it from. We are honored to be joined this week by Sage Francis, rapper, poet, label owner, husband, father, Renaissance man. Thanks so much for being here, Sage. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Of course, of course. So your own career was just getting started, right, as Raged Against the Machine peaked and then broke up. Personal Journal's your first album. I think it was, came out in 2002. Were you a rage fan? Would you go so far as to call them an influence at all? I wouldn't say they were an influence, but I really did enjoy them, especially the scene I came up in what kind of introduced me to that style of music, the hardcore scene and the punk scene.

But they were beyond that. they just sort of like seemed to be the mainstream version of what I had been exposed to earlier. And I know that's the scene they came out of. And but the songs and the energy definitely like still got me pumped. It's not like it was a turn off to me. And the fact that they were rallying against the system and their anger obviously on full displays. You know, that's not how I really went about a lot of my stuff, but I appreciated it. They were obviously like a fiercely political, like explicitly socialist.

band, but they were on a major label. They were on Sony. They're on magazine covers, you know, Saturday Night Live briefly, like at the top of the charts. Headlining festivals even now, like, does the size of their platform dilute their message, like in your scene, were they taken a little less seriously just because they were so huge? No, I don't think so. And I wasn't really part of that scene when they were, they got that big, but I can only look at them as, or how conflicted they must have felt about it all. And it's probably a big part of the breakup or when left. I can identify with that. I, you know, I relate in a certain way. I've seen it with people in our own scene in the hip-hop scene. You know, it almost is sort of like they were, what happened with them is

what happened with Nirvana or they, you know, didn't expect to really be as big as they became and like icons. And it must have just been a strange way for them to view themselves and how they would proceed and stick to their politics or, you know, they're, I don't know, they're rebellion. You know, like, you're on Rolling Stone magazine, you know, you're on the cover and kids far and wide and soldiers far and wide. Like, everyone's listening to you, no matter what you say, what you're saying or what you're about and what they're doing, they're fans of you because they're not really paying attention to what you're saying. And that's partly because they are so ambiguous. I wouldn't say ambiguous, but it leaves a lot up to interpretation.

Like killing in the name of is like an eight-year-old kid can get psyched by that song. It's just a general like, fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. You know, like to simplify it and put it in such simple terms to be able to relate to that rage, like that primal rage where it's just, like you slow buildup. Everything about that is just classic, you know. Absolutely. What I have been working through in my own head is like you could say fuck you to anybody. You know, you could say fuck you to the exact opposite people that rage against the machine would prefer you say fuck you too.

Like is the best political rap vague enough that you can apply it to everything? Or is the best political rap like specific enough so that you know that like the people who are listening are getting the specific message and and opposed to this specific thing you're trying to get them opposed to? Yeah, you'll get a way more specific approach and hip hop and rap. That's why they're not rap, but he wraps, but it's not a hip-hop group. And that song in particular is a rap song can't have just the same four phrases repeated over and over. Maybe they can't in 2022, actually. The new era. Yeah, the political hip-hop.

Yeah, the political hip-hop I came up on was extremely specific. There's a lot of words there and there's a lot of things to talk about and they did. But yeah, that's, I think that's the difference in genres. Did you have much time for rap rock in general in the late 90s and early 2000s? Like how much worse is the rapping generally in your average rap rock situation? Really bad. Really bad. The rap rock is a naughty word.

You know, it's a naughty term. Yeah, right, right. And I had a band back then and, you know, it was a hip-hop band, and we had to be very conscious to stay away from the, rap rock sound and it's tough when you know the people are playing instruments they make you know we rocked out from time to time but it had to be more more of a focus on the lyrics and on me the rapper because we're very selfish and territorial rappers are yeah no how do you do that how do you rap with a band but not make the listener

think like oh rap rock like what is what the trick is just to focus as much as possible on you on the lyrics on the rap part the main The main thing has to be a good enough rapper, I think. Yeah. Because anyone can rap. Everyone can rap. Literally, they can rap well. Can they write well?

So all those things factor in. And the music itself has to be rap friendly. But you never really know what you're going to go into because, you know, when the Judgment Night soundtrack came out and all the rappers collaborated with, you know, the rock bands and heavy metal bands. Some of it was actually great, really good stuff. Absolutely. Some, not so much.

You know, but, you know, the roll of the dice, really. I'm not sure anyone really knows what they're going to come up with until you get the end product. And you're like, yeah, I think this is, this isn't rap. It's rap rock. Right. The De La Sol song on the Judgment Night soundtrack, right? Are they with teenage fan club? I always get the people scrambled.

You know, I do remember Mud Honey and Sir Mix a lot doing freak mama. You know, that is very crystal clear in my mind. but the rest of it is sort of a blur. Yeah, they let us all do the Tom Petty song. They did free phone, but I like that soundtrack. I remember liking it. Yeah, absolutely. I don't think anybody saw that movie, but I think everybody at least knew about the soundtrack.

It's not a good movie. That's a bad film. No. I think it's hard to explain now that in the late 90s, when Rage and Corn and Limp Biscuit were all huge, you had Woodstock 99, like rap rock felt like the future, right? And it seemed to be this dominant thing we'd be stuck with forever. Is it a little easier to love this stuff in retrospect now that it's not in your face all the time? No, I feel like it's dated. It sounds dated.

I don't think it translates. They just were trying to figure it out. And hip hop was on its way to taking over pop culture. Hip hop had a slow crawl and then boom, they're just in everything. Like hip hop is everywhere. And I think the record labels understood that. They wanted to see how they could start incorporating it into their problem. They're bands who would soon become phased out the way hair bands did when, you know, Grunge took over.

So they were probably very, I don't know, scared to, like, lose footing. And that's what it resulted in, which was not a genuine organic rise of a subgenre or a genre at all. I don't listen back because I don't really put rage in that category. That's why what's cool about what Zach did was it's tough to pinball. point, but it didn't come across, even though he's rapping, and it took me a long time to realize, like, wow, he never sings. He's literally, it's a cadence.

It's a rap cadence. And it's, the music is heavy as hell and repetitive as hell, like a hip-hop beat. Right. It just, it worked. They made, they did it in a way that really worked, and it captured a lot of people's

imaginations, and it kind of hit people who weren't into hip-hop at all, which is funny to think of now, because I feel like he probably just really wanted to be a rapper. He looked at as a rapper, you know, but I didn't even consider that until many years later. I did shows with Rage Against the Machine when they reunited for the Rock the Bells, festivals. And maybe I think Coachella, I think they were on the ones that I was on.

Never met him. I know people who met him. I remember someone told us that you're not supposed to look at the stage when they're doing sound check. So it was like weird diva-ish thing. things that to me didn't totally correlate with who I had in my mind of what like a Zach Dela Roker is. That's not their image. Is that a typical thing for headliners to be that diva-ish, even in the rock the bells sort of sphere?

I don't think so. There's only a couple, like the radio head had some weird stuff going on from Blackwell and Lauren Hill. You know, she's the one. You can't look her. I never played a show with her, but I know many people who've played with her. I remember the kids in my school who weren't into hip hop were very much into Rage Against the Machine in 92. The first album dropped, and they were trying to push it on me because they probably thought, oh, you know, like it kind of is like rap.

Maybe, you know, I would like it. I wouldn't say that's when I got into them that it was a while later. Just because I was inundated with Rage Against the Machine music. And just to hear more of that than I would be Limp Biscuit. I think Lynn Biscuit would even say that. What were you listening to in 92? What would you rather have been listening to that Rage didn't totally work for you? Yeah.

In 92, it was all hip hop. It was even the bad. There was a lot of bad hip hop in 92. And I listened to it all because I was just so happy to get my hands on any of it. So obviously, ice tea was in the mix. But public enemy had been like my favorite for a few years at that point. Sure. And Public Enemy was doing that stuff with anthrax.

So they did the bring the noise cover, which was another one of those rock rap moments where it was like actual rap. So it was like, I don't know, there was cross-pollination between the genres that felt cool. It wasn't frowned upon. It was accepted, I think, by heads on both sides of the spectrum. Whereas in that era, you had to always pick a side. Like, are you a hip-hop. Right. It was tribal.

Right. head. Yes, very, very tribal, much more than now. Yeah. I'm sure that Rage in 1992 would have loved to think of themselves as in that lineage of Ice T and then public enemy. Like does that, now that you've listened to Rage a little more, does that make sense to you? Do they feel like a natural enough outgrowth of that, you know, of that continuation? Is there a public enemy in them? Yeah. Their image, their sound, their messages, it was very, very public enemy-esque. I think that was probably a huge influence on. on their style and sound and the bomb squad who produced for the early Public Enemy albums. I feel like they're bringing that into their music with the gratings, certain grading sounds, but the repetition. I always felt there was a parallel between what they were doing and what Public Enemy was doing. Yeah. As your own fan base grew,

did you get the sense that Rage had served as a sort of gateway drug for rock kids getting into rap? Like, did you have fans that you think they didn't really know rap at all? like got into it through rage and then they wound up, you know, getting into you. Like how did what did that seem like to you, that progression? No, I don't see. I don't, not as much as like public enemy brought in, I think, a lot of metalheads or rockers to hip hop, but specifically public enemy and not much other hip hop. For some reason, public enemy was that group that it was cool for them to listen to.

Rage Against the Machine, I'm not so sure. there was a lot of overlapping during those days. But what I saw in the hardcore scene in the early days or the mid-90s, it always felt like the hardcore kids wanted to be hip-hop, but they knew they couldn't be. So they were doing hardcore. Right, right. The next best thing.

That's a very elitist. I mean, this is my hip-hop elitist brain looking back. Sure. Even in the moment where I'm just like, I see it in them. They really, really want to do hip-hop. but they're not comfortable enough to do it. So they're doing hardcore. Right.

Just their fallback school. Yeah. Yeah. Did you say Rage is the intro music to a sports talk show that you listen to? Yeah. Do I have that right? Yeah. Yeah.

There's a sports hub 98.5 in Boston every single day, weekday at 10 a.m. I hear. Oh, hey. Bannum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bong, bach, bach, right. Oh, dear. That's a lot for 10 a.m. That's, that's, that's a, that's a fine song. But ideally afternoon, I think is when you put that song on.

It's like starting to drink at 10 a.m. That's, is it weird that a band this political anymore? Is it weird that a band that politically inflammatory is now just part of the permanent, like, super mainstream. like sports bro canon does it still feel dissonance you know to hear that song and then to hear sports news yeah yeah it is but that's that's the position they they found themselves in early on and i think they knew that they were bro culture they're a part of bro culture and again i'm sure it's fucked with their heads i'm sure it fucked with how they looked at themselves and the type of music they make and what their aim was what their goals were what they were trying to achieve with their art

and their activism and even when they would protest, it would come across as them being rebellious, but just like any, people would process it, like mainstream audiences would just process it as them being badasses, not for any one particular cause.

I remember playing poker at a friend's house and Rage Against the Machine came on and, like, you know, they're all just poker bros. But one guy got up, it was like, turn the shit off. They hate America. So sometimes they,

so you'd make sense of it. There's always one guy at the poker night who thinks they're raised against the machine hates America. That's tough. That's rough. In terms of political rap, quote unquote, in the 90s, to your mind, like, who did it well? Who was the gold standard to you? It'll be beyond public enemy, I guess, is like who everybody turns to.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, in the early 90s, it was a lot of black power. You know, that was the political, socioeconomic approach with, like, X K-Klan and KRS-1. KRS-1 and iced tea. And it was almost in all hip-hop. It was trendy, actually, at that time, for everyone to have some type of political message. You know, Tupac was even his debut album had, you know, they got me locked up. And there was a lot of, everybody had that type of material.

which inspired me and influenced what I would eventually be doing in my own music without being labeled completely as a political rapper or boxed in. It was just part of the genre at the time. And then it kind of got faded out for gangster rap, which could be looked at as its own type of political message. And then eventually, you know, I don't know where we're at now, but it's very amorphous. It could be anything at any time.

But yeah, back then, it was everybody. I wouldn't say the native tongues were specifically political, but yeah, that's funny to think about because they were, that was some of my favorite hip hop and they had the Afrocentric vibe going on. You put out of the song, MakeShift Patriot a month after 9-11. Like, would you describe that as a protest song? Like, whether it's killing in the name or whatever. I feel like usually the artist, the songwriter, doesn't say, okay, this is a protest song. Here it comes. I'm protesting.

Like, is that a term you'd ever use to describe your own work? Makeshift Patriot, I wouldn't say as a protest song, unless you're protesting ignorance. Sure. It was more of a shout for people to stop being so scared and recognize what was going on in the media, calling out the media. So I protest against the mainstream media, I suppose, yeah. In that realm it works. But no, when we're talking about rage against the machine, I remember after 9-11 happened, And specifically I was waiting for raging against the machine and public enemy to make sense of it all for us.

Right, right. Which is kind of, it's silly to think of now. Because when people now come looking to me to make sense of corona and vaccines and they're like, where's a song, man? I'm like, dog, I'm just trying to live my life and make sense of this myself, right? Right, right. I am not going to give you the answers. And I'm not going to reiterate what you already believe so that you feel. about whatever bullshit you've, you know, subscribed to.

But back then, I, like, because they had just made so much noise in that period of time. And for everything to have gone completely silent during a very desperate time for us, that finally inspired me to just write it myself. Because I was like, you know what? These are the things that I'm feeling and thinking. I know other people out there feel the same way. Let me put it down. And that's just how Makeshift Patriot came about.

And it was a scary time to release. any type of music or any type of statement that may come across as anti-American. People were ready to explode. Right. Because I'm trying to get a feel for how the backlash feels. Like what the risk for you as an artist if your work is political. If it's critical of the cops or the government or the media or whatever, especially right after 9-11, like, were you confronted at shows? Did you lose out on shows? On bookings, on opportunities? Like, are there consequences? There was a couple times that I was approach that shows by service members who I feel like probably felt uncomfortable by not being celebrated or me just saying, you know, the fuck recruitment officers and explaining why I felt like

in my song, slow down Gandhi. I'm just like bring back my motherfucking brothers and sisters. So a lot, I actually get a lot of love from the service members or people in the military, but every so often there would be somebody who would confront me and I'd have to, you know, ease their attention and try to explain myself as best as I could. More often than not, it was people who were just very grateful that I spoke out on something that they were also thinking but didn't feel comfortable saying themselves. You know, and I did, I felt like I was on, you know, I was red flagged here and there. I don't know. Maybe my phone was tapped, but I never really talked much shit on the phone anyways. So, yeah, it was all good for the most part.

There was one instance. I was playing a show in Jacksonville, Florida, and Makeshift Page Tree. It was my last song. I remember it was outside on a stage. And after the first verse, the sound man just cut everything off. Just cut it, cut it off. Everything went out. Right.

Yeah, yeah. I was like, all right. See you guys later. We walked off stage. That's my cue. Yeah. I did want to ask you about cop killer, which feels to me in 2022, like, I'm a song everyone vaguely knows, but relatively few young people have actually heard.

Like, even after all the awfulness, all the protests in the last two years, like, that song still feels like it's behind glass that can never be broken. Is Cop Killer a song that has a legacy per se? And like, what do you think that legacy is? It almost exists as a mess. Right. I'll be honest. I never listened.

I never listened to the whole song until yesterday because I knew we were going to be talking about it, but it's, I've always known about it. It's always referenced. And partly why the youth might never hear it is because it's not on the streaming services. You can't buy the MP3. Like, you have to listen, you can listen to it on YouTube, but you almost have to listen to it illegally. So even when it made big news when I was a kid, it's, we didn't have the internet, so I couldn't just search it and listen to it. Nobody I knew had a body count album. And I didn't like any type of metal or punk at the time. So that just was not of interest to me.

And it was weird how hip hop got blamed for it. It was like a lot of things came on rappers. And I was like, this is not even a rap song. It's not a rap song at all. Yeah. No. I was surprised by actually how good it is. I was going to ask you if it sounded.

This is actually a good punk song. I was going to ask how if it sounded the way you always assumed it would sound or for it surprised you at all when you finally listened to it was going to be a lot whacker than it actually is. No, I thought it was going to be whack. I thought it was like rock rap. I really didn't. I was afraid to listen to it. And then I was like, you know what?

This gives me, this gives me early punk vibes or, you know, southern California punk wave. Right. Black flag or whatever. Yes. Yes. That's exactly what it gave me kudos to Ice T for being a cop killer and then being a cop on TV for the last 20 years. Yeah, for the rest of time, I think, at this point. I catch myself sometimes trying to calculate what rage against the machine ultimately did politically,

like how you'd even measure the success of their activism beyond all the money they donated and they donated a toned. Given their popularity, the scale they were operating at, like, did they change minds? Like, is there a way to measure what they accomplished? Or is that totally the wrong way to look at it? It may have opened up thoughtful people. It may have opened them up to a new world that they were. wouldn't have even experienced or thought of before. I mean, didn't they on their first album on the inner sleeve, there was like books that they listed or a picture of books. It was like a

bibliography. Like, yes. Yeah. So back then, we would, and I remember B. Dolan telling me, like, an artist that I work with and were in a group together, B. Dolan told me that that's how he first got into his own political activism is because he saw those books and he got those books and he read those books. So they have, there you go. The music didn't actually have an impact, but it did in a certain way. So I imagine that probably happened with a lot of people. Just little things like that that can like a little spark turns into a fire. And I'm sure it happened. But also I know for a fact that it probably inspired people to do stuff that they didn't want done at all. And I know that there are soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who are rocking out to rage against the machine and just being inspired by that

music just getting pumped up by it. So at the end of the day, how do you weigh it? What the pros and cons, but art is art. I respect that they put all that out there. You can't be held responsible to how you're interpreted. So I respect them rallying and raging against the machine, even though it's very obvious and ironic that they are very much a big part of the music machine. The machine, yes.

This has been awesome, Sage. Thanks so much for talking. We really appreciate your time. Thank you, man. Appreciate you. Thanks very much to our guest this week, Sage Francis. Thanks, as always, to our producers, Devin Ronaldo and Justin Sales. And thanks to you, as always, for listening.

And now, without further ado, here we have Rage Against the Machine, doing killing in the name. We'll see you next week.