shit, with the best-selling album of 2001,
Hybrid Theory, still riding high on the charts and the radio. Nobody ever accused them of having the most original sound around, but what sets them apart is how they shape all their heavy influences into something fresh and tuneful. Brad Delson's flash guitar, Mike Shinoda's low-key rapping and Chester Bennington's Freddie Mercury-has-risen-from-the-grave vocals fuse into intensely emotional songs of teen angst. "In the End," their biggest and best hit, is really the flip side of Limp Bizkit's "Nookie," a breakup song from an embattled young dude who finds out the hard way that nice guys have girl troubles, too, just like the Fred Dursts of the world. Musically and lyrically, "In the End" sums up everything that makes Linkin Park stand out so far ahead of the pack.
On Reanimation, Linkin Park rework their music from the inside out. Shinoda is the mastermind here, overseeing the project (along with Linkin Park DJ Joseph "Chairman" Hahn) to turn down the rock vocals, de-emphasize the riffs and cut a host of illustrious underground hip-hop names in on the action. It's not so much an album as it is a capital-P Project, the kind of record that rock stars make when they get caught short of new material between albums. For a young band coming off a blockbuster debut, a Project lets it recuperate and stall for time, but it also allows it to (1) prove that the group is, like, so totally still down creatively, and (2) clock some serious next-album dollars before actually having to write next-album songs. In the past, bands have usually gone for live or unplugged records. But Linkin Park have opened the remix-project door in a calculating but earnest effort to establish their underground hip-hop art cred: Reanimation is basically the Pro Tools era's answer to GN'R Lies.
Shinoda has recruited some impeccably pedigreed collaborators, including underground hip-hop producers Kutmasta Kurt, Alchemist, Cheapshot, X-ecutioners, Dilated Peoples' Evidence and the excellently named Jewbacca. Guest vocalists include rockers such as Korn's Jonathan Davis and Staind's Aaron Lewis, as well as indie rappers including Aceyalone, Rasco, Planet Asia and Jurassic 5's Chali 2na. "High Voltage" is easily the best thing here, as well as one of the only tracks not previously heard on Hybrid Theory; originally a headbanging rocker from an EP by the band, "High Voltage" becomes a vehicle for the maniacally ranting Rawkus rapper Pharoahe Monch. Shinoda himself remixes "Pushing Me Away" and "By Myself" (featuri
