Is a question no one asks, but if they did, I’d slip them this movie’s soundtrack.
Judgment Night is one of those films that flew under the radar but left an outsized cultural footprint. The movie itself is a solid urban survival thriller starring Emilio Estevez, Cuba Gooding Jr., Stephen Dorff and Denis Leary. It following a group of friends whose night out turns into a desperate fight for survival when they take a wrong turn into gang territory. It’s got that early ’90s grim and grit, but it’s the soundtrack that cemented its legacy.
The Judgment Night soundtrack was revolutionary, and while it didn’t invent the genre by a long shot, it helped drive rap-rock fusion further into the mainstream. By pairing hip-hop artists with rock and metal bands – like Ice-T with Slayer, Cypress Hill with Sonic Youth, and Run-D.M.C. with Living Colour – it’s credited for starting a wave that nu-metal and rap-rock would ride into early 2000s. Even if the movie itself has faded into the background, the soundtrack remains an influential artifact of the 90s music scene. – Pop