On their triumphant comeback record Darker White, FEVER 333 let loose a blaze of righteous fury channeled through a tightly-wound coalition of smacking rhythm propelling frontman Jason Aalon Butler’s lyrical onslaughts. From the first moment of the album, Butler embraces an outsider ethos of combining rap with punk rock with spit-quick bars, double-take double-entendres, and a variety of voicings and genre influences that set his style apart from just about any other MC in the game. That sonic diversity, in tandem with Butler’s role as nu metal’s prospective political prophet, serves to highlight the value of modernizing the genre’s essential roots in rap–for as much as discourse around the first wave of nu has centered on the rock space, it would do us all well to remember just how essential the contributions of rap artists across a wide span of colors and creeds has been to the development of our melting pot of a genre. Butler embodies a welcome reminder of that fact across tracks such as “Tourist” and “Mob Music Pt. 2” as a worthy successor to the likes of Rage Against the Machine and (hed) p.e.
Runner-up: Emotional Xan (Scarred)
Emotional Xan deserves equal props for modernizing the nu palate when it comes to hip hop stylings. In between dreamy, layered choruses and screeching blends of instrumentation, Xan wrecks mics.
