This year we celebrate 50 years of Hip-Hop. Born at a birthday party in the rec room of an apartment building in The Bronx, New York City on August 11, 1973 -- Hip-Hop's cultural impact is still growing and rising to new heights as one of the most influential musical art forms.
Listen to Hip-Hop Made: 50 Years of Hip-Hop and more on the free Audacy app
Joining in on the celebration and conversation, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda who shared about Hip-Hop artists that played an influence in his music, his favorite Hip-Hop concerts, plus some backstory and the major fan-boy moment he had working on the LP and JAY-Z collab album Collision Course.
When it comes to the influence of Hip-Hop Mike admitted, “when I was growing up I listened to primarily Hip-Hop.” Adding, “The first vinyl I bought were Beastie Boys, Run-D.M.C., at the time I remember when I got Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy that was like a big deal. It changed the way I heard music entirely. And then with Linkin Park I think leading up to that I started to listen to other things more, but everything was stacked on top of Hip Hop."
Recalling his “two favorite Hip-Hop concerts of all time,” Mike revealed those “would be EPMD in like 1995-ish… they brought out Redman and I was like these guys are insane. Like it was my favorite type of music. And the other one was the Kendrick show, Kendrick Lamar this last year was otherworldly, one of the best shows of any kind that I’ve seen.”
As for how the Collision Course collab came about, Mike divulged, “when JAY-Z came to us, when his manager came to us about what became Collision Course, they said ‘mash-ups are hot right now, MTV wants to do a show about mash-ups, JAY wants to do it with you.’ The question was ‘do you want to do this,’ the response was three songs,” to which “JAY sent a message through John Meneilly that said ‘oh s***’, and we were like 'great.'"
“What they didn’t know is that the person they were asking that question was a massive JAY-Z fan. I grew up doing mash-ups, that’s the way I learned to make music. I studied twelve years of classical piano and immediately at the end of that pivoted into buying keyboards and samplers and learning how to make beats. So doing that record was like getting to take all my favorite stuff and favorite ways of making things and assembling them into something that I knew was for people like me.”
Stay tuned as Audacy continues to celebrate the birth and trailblazing influence of Hip-Hop. Check out audacy.com/hiphopmade all through 2023 for more. And listen to your favorite music on Audacy's Hip Hop Made suite of stations, as well as Conscious Hip Hop, Hip Hop Uncut, Women of Hip Hop, and more -- plus check out our talent-hosted Ed Lover's Timeless Throwbacks and Greg Street's Dirty South Hip Hop!
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