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The Battle of Los Angeles (album)

The Battle of Los Angeles is the third studio album by American rock band Rage Against the Machine, released by Epic Records on November 2, 1999. At the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards, it was nominated for Best Rock Album, and the song "Guerrilla Radio" won the award for Best Hard Rock Performance. In their year-end lists, Time and Rolling Stone magazines both named the album the best of 1999.

The album has been certified double platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, indicating sales of at least two million units. It would be the last full-length studio album of original material released by the band before their first breakup in 2000 (their next album consisted entirely of covers and was released after the breakup).

Concept

"Voice of the Voiceless", a song referring to American political activist and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, references a letter written by Mao Zedong, called "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire". Another Rage–Mumia–Mao connection can be seen in Mumia's paraphrased words from Mao's "power grows out of the barrel of a gun" when Mumia gave testimony in his trial for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer in an altercation after a traffic stop: "It is America who has seized political power from the Indian [Native American] race, not by God, not by Christianity, not by goodness, but by the barrel of a gun."

The album's cover art was an original piece spraypainted by Joey Krebs (also known as "The Street Phantom", "The Phantom Street Artist", or Joel Jaramillo), a well-known Los Angeles graffiti artist who has exhibited at numerous galleries in Los Angeles, New York City, and throughout the United States. Phantom's graffiti work regularly uses an outline profile of a human with text overlaid.

Release and promotion

The Battle of Los Angeles debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 420,000 copies its first week and keeping Mariah Carey's highly anticipated new album Rainbow from reaching the top of the chart. It was nominated for Best Rock Album at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards.

The music videos made for "Sleep Now in the Fire" and "Testify" were directed by documentarian Michael Moore, who appears in both videos.

Critical reception

In their year-end lists, Time and Rolling Stone magazines both named The Battle of Los Angeles the best album of 1999. Retrospectively, it was ranked number 426 on Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2005, the album was listed at number 53 in Spin magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums from 1985–2005, as well as number 369 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. In 2021, Metal Hammer magazine named it one of the 20 best metal albums of 1999.

Awards

1999: #1 Time Magazine Critic Pick (The Best Music of 1999)
1999: #1 Rolling Stone Critic Pick (Best Album of 1999)
2001: "Guerrilla Radio" – Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance

Track listing

Bonus promo CD/tape

In the US, some retail stores gave a free promo CD to those who pre-ordered the album that contained the songs "Clear the Lane" (from the "Killing in the Name" single) and "Hadda Be Playing on the Jukebox" (Live) (from the "Bulls on Parade" single). In Australia, certain chains gave a promo tape titled New... Live... Rare to those who pre-ordered the album that featured "Calm Like a Bomb" and the aforementioned two songs repeated on both sides. The versions of all three songs were the same as those that had been previously released.

Personnel

Charts

Certifications

Appearances in other media

"Guerrilla Radio" is featured in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000). The song as it appears in the Nintendo 64 version of the game is heavily edited, as it is in Madden NFL 10 (2009). Both "Testify" and "Guerrilla Radio" are featured in the 2008 video game Rock Band 2, being on-disc and downloadable, respectively.

"Calm Like a Bomb" appears in the end credits of The Matrix Reloaded (2003).

Saul Williams sampled "Born of a Broken Man" for the song "Om Nia Merican" on his 2001 album Amethyst Rock Star.

"Maria" was covered by Canadian-American singer Grandson in 2019.