I appreciate RATM a lot more now than I did as a kid.

It's interesting to go back to, because they did have an original sound, but it's crazy that it just works. Like the vocals aren't great, this is a guy who can only rap to the base guitar sound of the band, and he can't sing whatsoever, their covers album is all over the place, such ad their cover of The Stooges sounding like drunk karaoke. Then you get the Prophets Of Rage albums, where ideally it should be good, the band with Chuck D and Cypress Hill members, but it just doesn't work very well. They had this distinct recipe that only worked with the original guys. As for the lyrics, it's fine, but it's not Jello Biafra's lyrics, it's also hard to write great scathing political music after the 80s hardcore punk scene, especially when it was rock against Reagan. In the 90s, George HW Bush was the only republican president, the Clinton years weren't that buzz worthy on the surface, he was a shitty person, not just with what we know now, but being even more harsh on crime, targeting minorities, and being more right of center. It's just there wasn't a major villain of free thinking during the 90s. It felt like a low bar for making political commentary in rock music. We're still feeling the effects of Reagan now, and a lot of 80s punk has held up great, we've basically had every following president a different flavor of Ronnie. The rich get richer, the poor suffer the burden, and we vote another lying jackass in the next election.