How Successful Are The Prophets Of Rage?

Members of Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill (Tom Morello, Brad Wilk, Chuck D, DJ Lord and B-Real) formed a supergroup called Prophets of Rage.

After much anticipation, the "elite task force of revolutionary musicians determined to confront this mountain of election year bullshit” finally announced the date (August 26) for its debut EP, "The Party's Over."

The five-track EP will be available for pre-order one week before its launch, and a couple of tracks will be released via Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) Music's Beats 1 radio station on August 18 and August 25.

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Benzinga took a look into the popularity of the groups the musicians integrated prior to Prophets of Rage.

Album Sales

• Rage Against the Machine has sold more than 16 million records worldwide.
• Cypress Hill was the first Latino American hip hop group to get a platinum record, and has sold more than 18 million albums worldwide.
• Public Enemy, which became just the fourth hip-hop group to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hallf Of Fame, has three platinum albums to its name.

YouTube Views

If YouTube can be used as an indicator or proxy of a band's popularity, we can certainly conclude all three bands are widely followed.

• Cypress Hill's most viewed video, "Insane In The Brain," boasts more than 45.66 million visits, and its top three videos total more than 110 million.
• For Public Enemy, the view count reaches 8.64 million and 7.79 million for its two most popular tracks.
• Rage Against The Machine has 42.33 million views for its top video, "Killing In The Name," and another 19.11 million for a live version of the song.

Given the popularity of these artists, one can only expect great things from Prophets of Rage. Brace yourselves for some confrontational, politically-charged music.

Image: Jordan Uhl, Flickr