A solo album from Zack de la Rocha, former frontman of Rage Against The Machine, has got to be one of the most mythical and mysterious non-entities in all of music.
For years, artists and collaborators have hinted at new, solo work. Meanwhile, the remainder of the band have existed in various non-RATM incarnations, having recently teamed up with members of Cypress Hill and Public Enemy to create the formidable Prophets of Rage.
De La Rocha has all but disappeared entirely, save for a collaborative EP with The Mars Volta‘s Jon Theodore in 2008 and a brilliant feature on Run The Jewels’ Close Your Eyes (And Count to Fuck) in 2014.
Now, finally, a solo single is here. More than that, it’s produced by El-P. More still, it’s really fucking good.
The song – De La Rocha’s first solo output in more than ten years – is called Digging For Windows. Of its release, El-P has stated that it was written in 2016 and that a full solo album will out next year.
https://twitter.com/therealelp/status/773885755210862595
It’s been released as a free download on BitTorrent, and you can listen right here:
The beat is sparser than expected, but that’s just a result of 15+ years listening to RATM. The core beat is deep, heavy and synthetic, with the remainder of the instrumental peppered by bulging synths and sound effect. El-P’s penchant for the post-apocalyptic is the perfect accompaniment to this powerful song. Lyrically, it’s a dark and visceral depiction of the world surrounding him – lyrics here.
El’s industrial beats and Zack’s starkly poetic lyrics are an impeccable match. I cannot wait for more.
Welcome back Zack. We’ve missed you.
The image credit is as follows, as written by Zack: Thanks to the late Manuel Alvarez Bravo for creating the cover art photo “Fireworks for the Infant Jesus”, 1990 (Castillo en el barrio del Niño), by Manuel Álvarez Bravo (c) Copyright 1990 Archivo Manuel Álvarez Bravo, S.C.
If you enjoyed the first collaboration between hip hop tag team champions Run The Jewels and Rage Against The Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha from the wildly successful Run The Jewels 2 album, Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck), then this photo is going to have you going from six to midnight.
Yes, that’s a whole lot of rap royalty packed into one studio, with RTJ, Zack and now the Illmatic one himself, Nas, seemingly getting in on the fun. The photo was posted on El-P’s Instagram account with the infuriatingly ambiguous caption ‘This happened’.
WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT???
Fingers crossed the ‘this’ is in reference to Run The Jewels 3, and it involves all four of them, because that would be just fantastic. We all know how amazing Close Your Eyes (And Count To Fuck Was) and Nas has previously performed onstage with Run The Jewels, with sexy results. Perhaps they just all happened to run into each other at the same studio, it’s all a giant mystery right now.
If you simply can’t wait until RTJ3 and need a fixin’, their latest release Meow The Jewels features cats and is uh… insane. We also caught up with the pair a little while back, with sexy results. We’ll keep you posted on anything that comes of this team-up.