From the UK's Slowthai to JPEGMAFIA and Rico Nasty in the US, a thrilling hip-hop punk hybrid sound is stirring young people into a frenzy, writes Thomas Hobbs. This manner of reacting to, rethinking, recycling and ultimately rejecting and then reclaiming the music of yesterday is what keeps it so vital and rock music will continue to strengthen and grow as long as people aren't allowed to arbitrarily choose which of those evolutionary steps are included AS rock and which aren't.
But Kenny Beats believes one of the most important songs in this new age of punk could be Look At Me by XXXTentacion - the controversial Florida rapper, real name Jahseh Onfroy, who was shot dead last year at the age of 20, while facing multiple criminal charges.



But in reality rock music never remained unchanging for very long, for it always needed to fulfill its artists creative ambitions, which resulted in constant experimentation with new sounds and ideas that broadened the definition of what qualified under the term, and at the same time it had to continually appeal to each successive generation of listeners and satisfy their current perspective, ensuring that the previous standards and boundaries rock held would never be enough.
Clyde McPhatter, The Ventures, Aretha Franklin, The Who, Bob Marley, Prince, The Wu-Tang Clan and Green Day all have distinct subgenres they fit in, and would be No Yesterday out of place if you moved them into one another's specific style, yet they're all classified as rock music because that's where their primary musical DNA lies.

They emerged in the mainstream in 1988, led by a series of multimillion-selling acts: Korn (tormented Bakersfield, California metalheads with a human-beatboxing singer in a kilt), Limp Bizkit (Korn's loose-screw stepbrothers), and Kid Rock (wack MC turned country-rock yahoo).
Instead, the combined genre of R&B and hip-hop has taken the crown, and while the two styles are fairly close to one another when it comes to percentages, the latter has pulled ahead, and it seems like it will continue to distance itself from the competition in the coming months and years.

Bambaataa, who had attended downtown New York punk clubs, hooked up with John Johnny Rotten” Lydon (of the Sex Pistols and Public Image Ltd.) for 1983's agit-rant World Destruction.” But while Blondie's softly purred new-wave rap hit Rapture” was a No. 1 pop hit, the Cold Crush Brothers' Punk Rock Rap” was a marginal oddity.