Well, I don't think anyone here would complain if live bass were given a more prominent role in the band's music. And I could never complain about electronic elements.
The foundation of Linkin Park was rock and hip hop. The core of who they are is to explore and stray from being pinned to one specific genre. To erase those elements completely from future records just because Mike has a side project to that genre would be baffling. I used the Dead By Sunrise/Stone Temple Pilots remark as an example to display how ludicrous it sounds to say, "Nope. There's Fort Minor for that". Go watch his recent interview with ETC Machinima for a little insight as to where his mindset with Fort Minor was during its inception, in the years to follow, and where it is now. On that note, Linkin Park has all the elements to create a great hip hop oriented album, and they have sprinkled great examples of that throughout the course of their career with 'Reanimation' and side projects and tracks with the likes of Dan The Automator, Prince Paul, and Young Buck just to name a few.
Sounds about right. ~Rock~ has been done by Dead By Sunrise and Stone Temple Pilots, but there's still room for Linkin Park to continue incorporating rock elements heavily in their music as well.
The only thing keeping me from being in favor of this is that doing it would basically relegate Chester to being "guy who sings hooks." Anybody else in the band could probably make it work, but Chester would be terribly limited. It's not like the guy's a rapper himself...
Only if it's done with live instruments and Mr. Hahn's scratches. Oh and Chester has to sing like Fetty Wap
They should do an album that's focused on interesting melodies, sounds and rhythm. No rap, no distorted guitars, no repeated synth melodies.
They will always have some rap, they have always had rap in all their albums that will never change, that's one of their foundations.
Agreed, I know ATS had 3, not 2, but on that album especially it really felt like Mike rapped only when it was what the song really needed, and I like that, the rapping fits the music so perfectly and there's no excess. I feel like on the last 2 albums, there are points where it feels like the rapping is just there for the sake of having rapping, there are only a few songs where I feel the rapping fits snugly and perfectly with the rest of the music (LITE bridge, Victimised, UIB, ALITS). Just my opinion, obviously, but I feel like the rapping should be treated the same way they currently treat piano, or orchestration. A tool that can make a song amazing, but not to be used on every song (as much as I'd love to see more piano and orchestration in LP's music).
I wouldn't mind more rapping if it was just more heartfelt and not the "I'm fucking awesome" raps that Mike has been rapping for a while now. I don't mind rapping if Mike puts some emotion behind it and the lyrics are well written. It doesn't even have to be fast, it just has to fit. And if they did go down the hip hop route, I'd want Mike to utilize his storytelling skills similar to what he did with Kenji.
Even then, having the rapping in just two songs on an album is good to me because, if you like the rapping, you get two songs with the best verses that Shinoda could muster, so quality over quantity; if you don't like the rapping, or even just those specific verses ... there are only two songs. Worked great on "Midnight" and "A Thousand Suns", I think.
It would be super interesting to see Chester doing some rap stuff in the style of his covers of Beastie Boys like Sabotage, Fight For Your Right and his verses of Blackout.