SONGS THAT SHOULD BE METALCORE COVERS, VOL. II
Here on installment number two, we consider five more tracks that lend themselves perfectly to metalcore (and metalcore-adjacent) covers.
DMX-"What’s My Name?"
You could pick any number of DMX tracks to be perfect "core" covers, but "What’s My Name?" didn’t just suggest itself to me for inclusion by typifying peak DMX in all his raw and belligerent glory, it demanded it. His delivery sounds like he’s about to come unspooled at any moment, the beat and lyrics are hard, and even the music video is just oozing menace. I could see one of those hard-as-nails European bands that straddle the beatdown-metalcore line like Nasty doing a great cover; rap-influenced metallic hardcore stalwarts TRC would probably also have a field day with it. Side note: the lyrics "Ride or die!" always remind me of Doomriders’ "Ride or Die" and vice versa.
Ludacris-"Get Back"
You take the rap counterpart to Limp Bizkit’s "Break Stuff" and put it in the hands of Diamond Construct to give it the "Hit It Back" treatment and look out!
Cameo-"Single Life"
I would be very curious to hear what an RnB-core meets shoegaze-core hybrid of this song would sound like, as that’s automatically where my mind goes every time I hear it for how I would "translate" it, so to speak, in the spirit of this exercise. Think Loathe meets nightlife. Side note: what a great music video!
Vanilla Ice-"Ninja Rap"
Done in the style of Issues’ "Hooligans," tell me this wouldn’t absolutely slap!
Charli xcx-"360"
I originally had N.E.R.D.’s "Lapdance" here—it’s already got all the ingredients of a killer metalcore cover with the dark and menacing tone, the angry and acerbic lyrics, the music that could easily convert over to a heavier genre, and even the video’s grimey, post-industrial backdrop works with the aesthetics more closely related to what you’d see in a metalcore or hardcore video than a rap video, sort of the inverse of what Attila was actively mining over a decade later—but pulses. beat me to the punch with their version featuring Sierra Binondo of With Sails Ahead (it’s a great cover by the way)! Although not exactly metalcore, it’s close enough to my criteria (see "metalcore-adjacent" above) to warrant the track’s exclusion. Instead, I’d like to nominate "360" as the harbinger of making bratcore a thing. After all, "666 with a princess streak" just screams bratcore as the other side of the baddiecore coin, don’t you think?