Every so often, I will stumble across an album that somehow gets stuck in my head and nothing I do will reverse the process. Renegades is one of those albums. I’ve a longstanding love/hate relationship with RATM. While I’ve been known to poke fun at the obvious hypocrisy of their message, Evil Empire is a rare example of a virtually perfect album. Unsurpassed is their ability to make funk so primal and brutal, and they didn’t fail to deliver with this collection of cover songs. The subject matter tackled here is diverse, interesting, and, at times, questionable. Where this album works best is when the band elevated a classic hip hop track to the level of blast-beat rock funk. Of course, this sets the stage for disappointment when they failed to funk up the rock tracks that they covered. The weakest track on the album was the one for which I had the highest excitement: DEVO’s “Beautiful World”. And we have to wonder why they chose “In My Eyes” as the Minor Threat track to cover (I would have killed to hear them funk up a cover of “Filler”… *drool* ). But, all-in-all, the album stands well as their denouement, and certainly has found it’s niche in my library.
[Rating:4/5]
