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How Rage Against the Machine's 'Evil Empire' unified the masses

XPN | By John Morrison,
Raina Douris, Kimberly Junod
Published April 20, 2026 at 11:04 AM PDT
Evil Empire was Rage Against the Machine's second studio album, released in 1996.
Courtesy of the artist
Evil Empire was Rage Against the Machine's second studio album, released in 1996.

In 1996, Rage Against the Machine released their album Evil Empire, and as World Cafe correspondent John Morrison says, it was a unifying moment.

"Everybody in all the, like, little cliques in my school as a kid liked this record," he says. "Punks liked it. Hip-hop kids liked it. Metalheads liked it. And I think that is one of the most inspired, quintessential mainstream rock records of the '90s."

Today on The Culture Corner, Morrison digs into that album as it turns 30 years old. We talk about why it had such broad appeal, and why it still feels just as vital and as it did when it came out three decades ago.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod.  Our digital producer is Miguel Perez. World Cafe's engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

Copyright 2026 XPN

Corrected: April 20, 2026 at 9:53 AM PDT
An earlier version of this story misstated the name of Rage Against the Machine's song "Down Rodeo" as "Down Radio."
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World CafeNPR Music
John Morrison
John Morrison is a writer, DJ, and sample-flipper from Philadelphia. As a writer, his work has appeared in NPR Music, Bandcamp Daily, Jazz Tokyo, Grammy.com, and more. He is also the host of Culture Cypher Radio, a hip-hop radio show on NPR member station WXPN.
Raina Douris
Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.
Kimberly Junod
World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).
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