Welcome back to Can’t Get Much Higher, the internet’s favorite place for music and data. If you enjoy this newsletter, check out my book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. It’s a data-driven history of popular music that I wrote as I spent years listening to every number one hit in history.
Rockers Who Rap and Rappers Who Rock
By Chris Dalla Riva
A few weeks ago, Rolling Stone published their list of the greatest rock songs of the 21st century. This list naturally generated a ton of discussion online. Here is some of what I wrote about the list two weeks ago:
Sure, I was thrilled to see some of my favorites scattered throughout. “All My Friends” by LCD Soundsystem (#17) is transcendent. “The 59 Sound” by The Gaslight Anthem (#115) is criminally underrated. And “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (spoiler alert) really is that good (#1). But did we really need representation from The Rolling Stones’ 2023 effort Hackney Diamonds (#169)? (Good album. Nothing from it should have sniffed this list, though.) If we insist on including Taylor Swift (we shouldn’t), should “All Too Well” (#33) be the choice when the more-rocking “Better Than Revenge” exists? And can we stop pretending “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” is good (#56)?
All music lists generate gripes. (In some cases, that may be the point.) But as I noted elsewhere in my piece, “Making lists is hard, especially when the scope is grand.” And the scope of this list was grand. There’s been a lot of rock music released in the last 26 years. But even that wasn’t enough grandness for Rolling Stone. They looked beyond strict definitions of the genres to include songs by the likes of Jay-Z.
Jay-Z? Yes. Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” clocked in at number eight on the list. I found this head-scratching. “99 Problems” is a rock song? In what universe? Here’s how Brian Hiatt from Rolling Stone explained the selection:
This song is the heir to one of the great rock and roll traditions of the past 30 years or so, which is a tradition that began with the same producer of this song, Rick Rubin, with “Walk This Way” [by] Aerosmith and Run-D.M.C., and it goes into “Bring the Noise” with Anthrax and Public Enemy. It is a great rap-rock song. It happens to come, as with previous rap-rock songs, from the hip-hop side as opposed to the rock side.
I actually found this line of reasoning pretty compelling. I wouldn’t list “99 Problems” as the eighth greatest rock song of the 21st century, but there’s a case that it is a rock song. This got me thinking about other ways the two genres have intersected.
Rock doesn’t really factor into the origins of hip-hop, but the two genres began interacting in the public eye not long after its founding. As Hiatt notes, Run-D.M.C.’s remix of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” made a big splash when it came out in 1986, peaking inside the top five on the Hot 100. There are even earlier examples, though.
Kurtis Blow, for example, covered Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s “Takin’ Care of Business” on his 1980 debut. Rock songs have also been sampled endlessly in the genre, like Billy Squier’s “The Big Beat.” In fact, that song is sampled on “99 Problems.”
Inspired by Rolling Stone, I asked some critics, artists, and industry folks what the greatest rap song by a rock artist is and vice versa. But before we get to that I wanted to shout out what the editor of this newsletter (i.e., my dad) sent along when he saw this topic: “The Magnificent Seven” by The Clash. The Clash were notorious genre-benders, and this funky song from Sandinista! was supposedly inspired by early rappers.
Okay. Now, let’s turn to the suggestions from the other people that I spoke to over the last few days.