Did "Epic" by Faith No More unintentionally imspire the rap metal scene of today?
 

Just wondering since it was made in the late 80's way before bands like Limp, soad, Linkin Park, ect...

"Epic" helped it along. So did "Bring the Noise" by Anthrax and Public Enemy and "Walk this Way" by Run DMC and Aerosmith...

I've never heard it creditted as helping it, but it is pretty obvious that it very well could have. Generally speaking Walk this Way and Bring the Noise are the ones people talk about.


I wouldn't exactly classify SOAD as rap metal though...

I don't think there's much of an influence between Anthrax/PE, Aerosmith/Run-DMC, FNM and the current crop of rap/rock.

I mean, yes, the stuff was there, but I think most of the current stuff has more to do with hard rock adopting hip-hop trappings after grunge imploded in the early-mid 90s.

At some point, the long-haired, hairspray and "glam" thing started to look ridiculous, and mostly went away with grunge. And the hard-rockers, needing a new image, adopted the hip-hop and rap look and sound, as that was proven to be a viable commercial model. Even though trends had come and gone, rap was still a popular genre after a decade.

Probably the "patient zero" of the trend was KORN. And even then, I don't think the above three had much of an influence on them.

I could include the "Judgment Night" soundtrack in here (which featured songs that were "duets" between metal acts and rap acts), but that was more of a curiosity than any kind of commercial success. A case could be made Anthrax/PE and Aerosmith/Run-DMC begat that soundtrack, which then begat rap-rock, but I think it's probably tenuous at best.