Rage Against the Machine's last LP was never in the running for the position of "Best RATM album" - being a collection of covers it had no chance of even really comparable. In a lot of ways, that was lucky, the three albums they did write have all gone down in history as being great in their own ways. Renegades makes for a curious addition, albeit a very enjoyable one.
I found this copy of Renegades in a record shop in Bournemouth about 2 years after it was released (for a bargain £9) and a few months after picking up their debut on vinyl. I hadn't bought the cd of Renegades when it came out but remember borrowing a copy from my friend Johnny. It was a good album, but I wasn't into it anywhere near as much as I was their actual albums. A lot of the covers are of old-school hip-hop songs, which I didn't know the originals of (in fact, I don't think I knew any of the originals that well the first time around - a lot have fallen into place since). On top of that, Zach's rapping is great on RATM songs, but not always brilliant on more traditional hip hop.
Microphone Fiend is huge and the whole band shines on it - there isn't a song on the rest of the album that could open it as well as Microphone Fiend does. Renegades of Funk got a lot of play on MTV around the release, so is effectively the single. It starts strong, but all the band are too low in the mix - it could easily be a great RATM song, but the funk aspect is too strong; I miss the metal. Devo's Beautiful World is lovely and thoroughly unexpected. I'm glad Rage didn't write any songs as slow and touching as this, because it wouldn't have worked on any of the albums, so this is a great chance to hear how it might have turned out. Under any other circumstance, I'd love to hear these musicians write and play more songs like this, but not as Rage; it's brilliantly brooding. I'm Housin' has one of the best riffs on the album (closely followed by The Ghost of Tom Joad).
I hadn't heard much Minor Threat when I first heard Renegades - just a few covers - but by the time I got the LP I was a big fan of Minor Threat. I've heard a lot of Minor Threat covers in my time, and this sits somewhere in the middle - not great but not bad. Zach does a good job of Ian's "what the fuck have you done?", but it doesn't hurt anywhere near as much as when Ian sings it. The flow from that to Cypress Hill's How I Could Just Kill a Man doesn't work in my opinion - it's moments like that that remind you you're listening to a collection of songs, not an album.
One final note, I love the poem on the picture sleeve (and spread across a number of pages in the cd booklet) - it's just brilliantly simple and concise. I'm not much of a poetry fan, but I like that one a lot.
Format: 12", picture sleeve
Tracks: 12
Cost: £9 new
Bought: Bournemouth
When: 29/10/02
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
