Much to the disbelief of fans of classic rock, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda has revealed he only heard Led Zeppelin via a Beastie Boys sample.
The revelation came during an appearance on Kerrang Radio (via Ultimate Guitar) when Shinoda was asked about nu-metal and his thoughts on pigeonholing music.
When the interviewer said, “People who got into rock through nu-metal are now denying the validity of emo-rap, and it’s interesting because nu-metal was denied by rock before that, and it’s like both genres are kind of a reflection of the evolution of where rock is going,” Shinoda replied:
“Honestly, I’ve lived through I don’t even know how many irritations of, ‘This thing being dead, and that thing being corny…’ And that comes back around. Nu-metal went from the biggest thing on the planet to the corniest thing on the planet to the coolest thing again.”
“This stuff is typical and we have a new generation of artists, not just rappers, but artists in general who are infusing lots of rock and other styles into their music. It’s exciting – I don’t hate them for that.”
He continued: “From Ian to 24KGoldn, and Kid LAROI, and even Post Malone! Post is a rockstar, Post is a singer, guitar player, and people think of him as a rapper because he presents himself that way sometimes, but music is just music. I’m not stuck on any of that genre garbage.”
“We, the band, were called the Hybrid Theory before the album, and we played a role in it – none of us tried to claim that we broke the boundaries between genres, but we played a role in breaking boundaries between genres. Some of the new generation don’t even know the way things were before bands like us, and then how albums like Hybrid Theory and so on changed the way people looked at music.”
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“They were born after that, and they were born into the things that they are, the mixed genres. ‘Hey, what’s your favourite type of music?’ ‘Oh, whatever.’ When I was a kid – when somebody said, ‘What’s your favourite type of music?’, you had an answer. It was rap, it was metal, it was a specific kind of metal, and that was it.”
“‘Do you listen to this?’ ‘No, fuck those things.’ It would be that serious. And now people don’t even think about it. I heard Led Zeppelin because Beastie Boys sampled them.”
“My first concert was Public Enemy with Anthrax and Primus. Those guys were paving the way for what was teaching me about blending genres. Rage had just come out! It was crazy,” he concluded.
Check out Mike Shinoda discussing nu-metal, Led Zeppelin and the Beastie Boys:
