This. There are a huge amount of different musical styles which feature neither rapping or screaming, but combining them would still be the same "hybrid" theory. I'd be interested to see what LP could do without using either on an entire album, could they keep it innovative and fresh and incorporate styles no one would ever have expected the band to manage or would they end up with a bunch of bland radio rock ballads?
As much as I agree, if a song calls for it then it can still work fantastically in a way that only LP can provide. For example, I think ALITS's rap verse was perfect, because it fit in so snugly, it wasn't shoehorned in, and the song wasn't written around it. The music just called for it and it fit amazingly, even though it's not a technical verse whatsoever. On the flip side, many people on here consider UIB to be one of the highlights of LT, and that song is based around Mike's rapping. Again, it wasn't shoehorned in there, a song just happened to be built around rapping and it worked well enough to be included on the album. These are just off the last two albums, there're much more examples further back. I much, much, much prefer Mike's singing to his rapping, and I wouldn't be disappointed whatsoever if he didn't rap at all in subsequent LP albums, but if there's a song that really calls for him to rap then I still maintain that it can work out well. I do hope we get a lot of Mike's singing on the new album though, after him singing on five tracks on LT I was disappointed to hear how little he sung on THP.
I can only imagine some slow, soft acoustic type song with Mike casually "talk rapping", telling some amazing story. I could only hope.
Mike had fairly prominent singing parts on KTTK, AFN, Rebellion, MTG, and ALITS. That's half of the non-instrumentals.
Idk, looks like I'm getting fairly positive reception this time. Opening their minds. I'll gladly elaborate why 95% of the fanbase is wrong.
Even though I often roll my eyes at Mike's cheesy raps, I still love rapping along with him. LP wouldn't be LP for me if they dropped the rapping completely. I just wish Mike would find something else to rap about besides being a five star general...
Here's the deal, though. Rap rock is dead. It has been dead for 10 years. If you try to write an early Linkin Park-esque track, you're beating a dead horse. When Linkin Park tries to write an early Linkin Park-esque song, it's just pathetic. Come on, compress All For Nothing and add a shitload of static and white noise. Go tell people it's an unreleased Xero demo. It'll pass. Is Mike still a good rapper? Yes. Do new Linkin Park rap-rock songs stick out in any fucking way? No. Are they done in a new and interesting way like this or this? No, they aren't. Does it make any sense for a band that promotes going forward with their career to be writing songs like "Wastelands" and "All For Nothing" 20 years into their career? No, it doesn't. Oh, jeez, if only there was a way for Mike Shinoda to produce hip hop beats, rap over them and release them and for them to get a shit ton of publicity... [THUMB]http://www.lpassociation.com/upload/images/082515-185547_fortMinor.png[/THUMB] I love Mike to death, he's my favorite musician and favorite famous person all around (well, maybe behind Chester). But this is how I feel about his rapping.
He's singing in unison with Paige in AFN, so it's not particularly audible, and MTG's only backing vocals, which is perfectly valid, but compare that to LT where he sung lead on five songs and sung backing on almost every other one, and you can't deny that he had a much less prominent role as a vocalist. On THP apart from the one tiny verse on KTTK, he's only at the fore on two tracks (singing). I think the distinction between rap-rock and rapping is important, I agree with everything you said about songs like AFN and Wastelands, but that doesn't mean that Mike can't incorporate rapping into new LP music and still keep it interesting, fresh, and innovative. I'm not sure if he will be able to, so I wouldn't miss him rapping if he decided not to on LP7, but I still think he could rap without it negatively impacting the band's new music, although I'm not particularly confident in that being the case. I felt it was almost completely unnecessary on THP apart from a few specific cases.
On every LP album to date, except fot "Midnight", there's been some rapping by Shinoda that I don't like. It's the thing that sticks out the most. I'd like to see the band create an album entirely devoid of it, just to see how it goes.
Linkin Park should evolve and stop being a rap-rock band, since that genre doesn't exist anymore. If Mike wants to rap, he has Fort Minor and he can easily make a follow up to The Rising Tied. We had enough of rap-rock. Don't get me wrong, I love rap. But I'm sick of hearing that mix of rap and rock every single album. If you want to hear Nu-Metal and Rap-Rock you have Hybrid Theory and Meteora. If you want to hear alternative rock and rock ballad, you have Minutes To Midnight. If you want to hear something completely new and fresh, you can hear to A Thousand Suns. Do you wanna LP trying to return to their roots? And maybe a bit of 'electronic rock'? Well, you have Living Things. Finally, if you want to hear some serious heavy album, try to listen The Hunting Party. Do you like Dubstep? You can hear Recharged. Do you like remixes and electronic? You can hear Reanimation. Do you like Hip-Hop and Rap? You can hear every LP album or Collision Course or Fort Minor... and so on. Conclusion: Linkin Park has tons of material all with different styles. So that being said, I think they should do what they supposedly are doing. A soft album. No screaming, no rap, no metal or heavy guitars. And I would like to hear acoustic guitars, piano, maybe some electronic sounds and Mike and Chester singing. Maybe with the rest of the band backing vocals. They never did a complete album like that so... why not?
If they had left out rapping when they went away from rap rock we would've never gotten When They Come for Me. So just because the possibility of ever getting something like that again, the rapping has to stay.
There should definitely not be an end to Mike's hip hop side in Linkin Park. They all have an influence on their music and often times in great ways. Sure he doesn't have to do rap/rock the way we know it but that doesn't mean it can't evolve. I would hardly call WFTE, WTCFM, or VICTIMIZED true rap/rock songs at all. Those were great songs with some awesome rapping fun.
That's exactly what I think. For me, rapping was always a part of LP's songs. They've never completely dropped it, at the most they've cut it back by a bit. It's like guitars or drums, it's just an integral part of Linkin Park. That said, I wouldn't mind if they keep some consistency in all their experimentation. But I'm not against them doing something absolutely different (although I doubt they will do it), if they want to, they should do it and I'm sure it will work out well. After all, I think what everyone here loves about LP is when they do experiment, so why shouldn't they go all in this time? On another note, I somehow have the impression that most people here at the LPA did goad each other in terms of this whole "Mike's rapping is bad"-thing. I don't want to judge if it really is good or bad, but I think it never ever occurred to me that so many people almost hate Mike's rapping. Prior to joining the LPA, I only knew this attitude, for the most part: "Mike is rapping on this, and this, and this song on the new album, it's great to hear some new rapping by him, I love it." And suddenly, most people are hating on Mike's rapping, it's weird. But maybe the reason is just that I'm from Germany. (non-nativeness and so on...) Edit: Hadn't read the last page yet, so yes, there are also many people who don't have this opinion, yes.
one thing LP that never embraced properly is the folk-influenced they had on LIVING THINGS. That album had the potential to turn out great if they don't muddled the folk elements and everything. LP could try to incorporate Reggae (BURN IT DOWN had a reggae treatment during their soundcheck once). There are lots of things they haven't tried yet.