sadatx

What about the Beastie Boys who started in the punk underground? Wouldn't you say the roots of rap/rock started with them? ("No Sleep 'Til Brooklyn", "Fight for your right to party", come on, tell me these aren't the beginnings of rap/rock).

Or, more to the point, with the Beasties and Rick Rubin?

Rubin used the Beasties first Def Jam album for his signature blend of rock meets hip hop production.

Then there was, of course, Run DMC's (also on Def Jam) "Walk This Way" with Aerosmith. Anthrax brought the noise with Public Enemy (also of Def Jam) a few years later. (Also, as filtherton pointed out, the soundtrack to "judgement night" tried to capitalize on the rap rock mix).

So the stage was set for someone to really combine a rock band with a rapper on vocals. And, of course, we know who was the first to do this:

That's right Urban Dance Squad.

"Urban Dance who? What crack have you been smoking?"

No, seriously, check them out. They were, as far as I can tell the first to come out with an album that mixed rap and rock (and a shitload of other styles) within the same band. And they came out with their first album in 1990 (if anyone remembers the minor hit "Deeper Shade of Soul", well that's them).

To obscure? Well what about Ice-T?

"What?" You say. "New Jack City Ice-T? When did he do rap rock?"

Well, remember the scandal with his song "Cop Killer". That was off his album Body Count that he made with his metal band of the same name. Now was it good? Not my favorite. Was it rap/rock in the truest sense of the term? Kind of. But the point is that it was a hybrid and it came out five year's before the Bizkit's first album.

We can also go back a year before to a completely different example: The Red Hot Chili Peppers "Blood Sugar Sex Magik". Sure, they were more funk than rock, but if Anthony Kiedis isn't rapping, I don't know what he's doing.

And going back further, what of Faith No More? Not really rap/rock yet, but close.

So none of these examples were quite the same as Limp Bizkit, you might be saying, so a case could still be made for their influence. But who did they influence? I can't think of anyone.

Faith No More, Primus, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch nails, 311, Sublime, Incubus...and many others I can't think of at the moment. All these bands influenced the new wave of alt-metal-pop-rap that you see in the likes of Evanescence, Linkin Park, etc.

And if you think about it Kid Rock came out at the exact same time as Limp Bizkit (so did Insane Clown Posse, and even though they suck, they are rap rock). So Limp Bizkit wasn't even the first of they're little niche (and they're not even innovative, Durst just took the exaggerated Beastie Boys style of rap and crossed it with Korn-like metal riffs).

Okay, I'll end the rant here, and honestly I actually like some Limp Bizkit songs (they maybe idiotic songs, but Durst does have a talent for creating catchy hooks). However, whenever someone calls Limp Bizkit pioneering (and it's happened more than once) I just get irritated. Because, honestly, they're anything but. Durst just has a good pop sensibility and was in the right place at the right time, end of story.