Creativity being forced? Do you think LP is too obsessed with trying to do something different? They always seem like they want shock value and responses. A lot of their transformation is natural but in some cases like Guilty All The Same they go "this is awesome but instead of Mike rapping let's get in a guest it's too predictable for Mike to rap". Like would Mike's rapping really bore people on a six minute heavy ass track that just came out of nowhere after one electronic experimental album and one pop album?
Thread title is a bit too vague. And about LP, it's positive to try and do something different, even when what they do isn't exactly 'new' or 'paradigm shifting'. Main critic for them about LT was about songs being 'cookie cutter', so they needed to shake up things a bit, and also for GATS, Rakim made Mike reflect about his own game, and that has to be a good thing, you can't just be stagnant, you have to think outside the box. In fewer words, I don't think it's healthy for any band to stay the very same throughout the years, you have to be inventive.
Linkin Park is obsessed with trying to convince people that what they're doing is very different. If we ignore the promo and just listen to the music, no, I don't think they do things just for shock value. In some ways they change and in other ways they don't, it usually isn't anything too jarring. But the way they talk about it in the press, you'd think it was.
Dat thread title Anyway, there are many bands who didn't change much through the years and still remained big (Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rammstein, Death Cab for Cutie, R.E.M. etc.), but Linkin Park just isn't fortunate enough to be able to do that and keep it interesting, as nu metal died within years of their breakthrough. They could have settled for another sound, but instead they choose to do something different with each album – fine by me.
I don't think Mike ever fully got that "nu-metal" chip off his shoulder, every pre-album interview from MtM onward he brings it up in some capacity and I think, even if his his band is known as one of the better of that era/genre, it obviously really, really bothers him. As such he goes to different extremes to try and break away from it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I think a lot of what drives the bands "new album new genre" attitude stems from how bothered he is by being known as a now despised genre of music. And yes his rapping would have blown on GATS. Rakim >>>> Shinoda.