Do you want more?
It is 2016, but I am flashing back to 2004 HARD. I’m driving in my 1995 Grand Prix, alternating between Jay-Z’s smooth verses and Linkin Park’s throaty choruses. Somehow, I know every word to every song on this EP. I am unapologetic in my temporary fascination with Collision Course, an MTV-presented remix album of six tracks from both Linkin Park and Jay-Z.
Almost 12 years later, that fascination has waned. It’s a mostly-forgotten bullet point in my life, a time when I would rap along “When I come back like Jordan wearin’ the 4-5, it ain’t to play games with you; it’s to aim at you, probably maim you,” without any self-awareness. It was also a time when I lacked the self-awareness to know that a Nas and — I don’t know, Korn? — mashup would’ve been objectively better.
With that knowledge, let me walk you through my thought process as I watched this self-stroking Titanfall 2 trailer. First three seconds: “Linkin Park, huh? Bold choice, EA. Bold choice.” The next 57 seconds were spent thinking: “HOLY SHIT, CHRISTMAS HAS COME EARLY BECAUSE THIS IS ‘NUMB/ENCORE’ IN A VIDEO GAME TRAILER.”
Overshadowed by all the decade-old nu-metal excitement is the quote “Bombastic” by Stuff at the very end of the trailer. What’s fun about this is that it takes a misunderstanding of the word by two companies — both EA and Stuff — to lead to this inclusion. Remember: bombastic means “high-sounding but with little meaning” and is synonymous with pretentious and overwrought. It most certainly does not mean “there’s a bunch of cool shit blowing up.”
