With over ten million copies sold of their debut album “Hybrid Theory” in the US alone, Linkin Park frontman Mike Shinoda could easily claim to be in one of—if not the most—commercially successful nu metal acts ever. As it turns out though, he and the group never felt they connected wholly with the genre, as he recently told NME.com:
“At the same time, as big as the band got, we always felt we had something to prove. Even now, that whole nu-metal tag is still there. We never held the flag for nu-metal – it was associated with frat rock. Arrogant, misogynistic, and full of testosterone; we were reacting against that. It breeds an outsiders’ feeling once it’s come and gone and people make jokes about. I fucking make jokes about it! What people don’t realise is I feel the same way.”
