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Limp Bizkit does not deserve to be anywhere near this list. They are a piss stain on the seat of the limo Kurt Kobain's brother rented for Prom.
How on god's green earth did limp bizkit make it on this list?
Kneecap. If you're even partly plugged in you know about Kneecap.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/arts/music/kneecap-glastonbury.html
Kneecap has 3 cds and the first one seems like a throwaway. They could use the Glastonbury controversy to leap into that brand but only time will show.
They need to clean up the gay phobia/slurs.
Nirvana, Limp Bizkit and Tupac, all famous for not using slurs
You understand that things change over a period of time? It's not the 90s anymore.
Before those, in the 60's there was CSNY, CCR, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Buffalo Springfield writing protest bangers.
Can't really think of much for this generation unfortunately. Instead we have, uh... Ye. :(
Fontaines D.C. comes to mind.
I'm surprised someone finally brought them up. I feel kneecap and Bob Vylan is brought up to the recent news postings.
My point is mainstream is not speaking out, not lesser know groups. Think Farm Aid, Live Aid, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stone, NAS, Boogie down productions, etc... at their peak speaking out.
Some got blacklisted, some got arrested, some had the U.S. federal government come after them, and some died (Bob Marley) bc they dared to challenge the system. I haven't seen that since the 90s. 2000-to now, feels like money stops the current generations from taking those steps.
Fuck, Taylor Swift makes sure ever word is so starile before say she would vote for a democrat. Instead of ripping apart a child molester. Killer Mike goes from destroying Reagen and Bush to Obama. One of those are not the same.
Jesse welles
Sorry, but his music is pretty bad. Sounds like the guy that brings guitar to a party and clears out the place.
His most popular song by the charts is "Horses" which is a change to most of his other stuff. If he continues down this path he could be a voice for a generation but we will see.
Maybe you don't like his music, but there's plenty of us that do. "United Health", for example, was the best piece of art on that subject, bar none.
Don't know who us is. Only heard of him through my post.
Plenty of bands take time to get going.
Zeal & Andor, Manuel Gagneux has been through a lot of wide changes.
Wunderhorse, Jacob Slater seems unrecognizable from past work.
Durry, Austin Durry was in coyote kid for 12 years which was a nothing band by comparison.
Jesse Welles aka Welles aka dead indian aka Cosmic-American...... seems like he is trying to find his sound. A few more adjustments, I can really see him blowing up and still having a message.
Edit: Rock N Roll is a very good song and he kills it on the guitar.
Get into the punk/folk scene.
Wingnut Dishwashers Union Pat the Bunny Daze N Days The Orphans
Really anything in this genre. You'd be surprised at the observations made by people living on the streets or just generally down on their luck.
Bob Vylan.
Love those guys
They don't exist, at least not in Western mainstream music. Record labels have learned from those artists and will now drop anyone who doesn't toe the capitalist/imperialist line. Like the singers being cancelled for supporting BLM or Palestine.
And it's very specifically just for leftist messages. Kanye straight up calls himself a Nazi and sold shirts with swastikas on it and didn't get canceled for antisemitism, but tons of pro-Palestine artists did. If an artist straight up calls themselves a socialist like Tupac did it would be career suicide.
As someone in Gen Z, I have never heard a mainstream song released in my lifetime that actually attacks capitalism beyond useless lip service or calls for any kind of anticapitalist action by the general public. They definitely exist but only by indie artists who will either never get signed onto a label or will be forced to capitulate to the capitalist propaganda machine if they do.
Childish Gambino? Yasiin Bey? Kendrick? Killer Mike? Hip hop alone has never stopped being critical of the machine... You must be living with your head under a rock or in headphones that only play top 40 or something. There is an absolute wealth of music that takes on the various hierarchies that dominate our world...
one of those is not like the others
OP was born in 1991 and was too young to have lived through the proper grunge revolution, but was just the right age to experience the corporate grunge poser revolution.
Off topic, why would you put Limp Bizkit with the classics?
OP wasn't asking about classics, was asking about protest music
Fred Durst is and has always been a boot sucking poser. He has never protested anything beyond a groupie telling him "no."
In all fairness, back in the day it was limp Bizkit that got me into rock and the much better stuff. Not listening to them anymore (maybe every now and then something from their very first album) but still, without LB I would never gotten into rock the way I'm today
OP could have used Rise Against instead of Limp Biskit
didn't realize until just this moment that Rise Against โ Rage Against The Machine
mackelmore dropped like a couple of bangers when the palestine stuff was gaining traction in the mainstream.
Kneecap
Keep in mind that music lost a lot of its cultural cache since your benchmark decade of the 90's. Mass culture isn't really the same as it was then. I remember Weird Al talking about doing a lot fewer parody songs just because fewer people recognize any given song.
Yeah there's still music out there, but if you don't know it that's not really your fault.
Most punk like Bad Religion, Dead Kennedys, Anti Flag, Black Flag, The Clash, Dropkick Murphys has been very political from the start.
I know they are older now but Dead Prez, Foo Fighters, Rise Against and System of a Down are still active. Then there is the much older Roger Waters who has been very political throughout his career. And let's not forget the legendary Los Tigres Del Norte.
But coming back to younger artists
whoa Lowkey mentioned! yeah, that's the kind of politically conscious hip-hop I meant. Immortal Technique was even moreso, but he's been inactive for a long time and the extreme homophobia makes it hard for me to listen to, which is a shame.
Yes. I would like to think he was a product of the toxic masculinity culture, especially due to his time in the prison. It is a shame that while he was being radical on one front, he managed to dehumanize people who should have been his allies.
It's this super unknown band. Very underground. Nobody seems to know who they are. They're called Apostrophe.