Cover Story: Linkin Park - Rap Metal Rulers

Executives at other record companies must be in tears. For three years, Linkin Park were rejected by every major label in the business and by a lot of indies, as well. Warner Bros. passed three times before finally signing the band in late '99. Blue, who gave the group a development deal in 1997 after seeing just one show, recalls a Xero club date in Los Angeles packed with A&R scouts. They had all fled by the third song. "The place was empty," says Blue, now a vice president of A&R at Warner Bros. and the executive producer of Hybrid Theory. "You could hear crickets." When Bennington arrived in 1999, the band played forty-two showcases for labels and, the singer says, "got turned down by everybody."

It is hard to imagine how the suits blew it. At a soundstage in North Hollywood, where Linkin Park are rehearsing for their current Projekt: Revolution Tour with Cypress Hill, they romp and roar with an invention and intensity free of gangsta affectation and devil-metal posturing — closer to classic Faith No More than mere electric Eminem. Delson, a wiry paragon of concentration who wears a bulky set of headphones as he plays, colors his power chords in "Crawling" and "Papercut" with ringing harmonics that betray his affection for U2 and the Smiths. Hahn scratches custom-pressed discs of his own samples (he does not use other artists' records) with ambient brawn, often charging behind Delson like a second guitar. Over Bourdon's tumbling funk in "Runaway," Bennington and Shinoda shoot and share rhymes like they're joined at the lip, their bodies rocking in spasms of conviction.

"We hit a lot of roadblocks — we could have easily given up," says Delson, 24, during a chicken-dinner break at a nearby Popeyes. "But we said, 'We know what we have is great. We're gonna keep going until someone else thinks so.' It should be inspirational for people to know that if you really go for something and are willing to bust your ass, then you can make it happen."

It is clear, in their manner and chatter, that Linkin Park are wrestling with the magnitude of their revenge. Hahn, a twenty-four-year-old Korean-American who conceives and directs videos for the band, talks about success with a guarded tone. "It has been a blessing to get to this point," he says before rehearsal, trying to steady himself in a broken chair. "But when you're an outsider looking in, it seems like a bigger deal than when you're in it. It's like when you graduate high school: You wait for that day to come, and when you actually get there, you're like, 'OK, what next?' "

Farrell, 25, turns to Hahn in mild surprise. "I don't know if you remember this," the bassist says, "but three or four years ago, we asked ourselves, like every other band, 'What do we want out of this?' We all went home and wrote down goals. Mike came back with his list of goals, and one of them was 'I want to win a Grammy.' We were like, 'Wow, that's crazy. It's cool, but it's crazy.' "

Bennington, who had already done hard time with a Phoenix band called Grey Daze, is a charming mix of bull-elephant certainty and childlike astonishment. Before Hybrid Theory's release, he made a bet with Myra Simpson, national promotions manager at Warner Bros. "She had a triple-platinum Stone Temple Pilots plaque," says Bennington, a huge STP fan. "She said, 'If you go gold by Christmas, I'll give it to you.' I said, 'Cough it up.' " He laughs. "I was joking."

Sure enough, Hybrid Theory was gold by Christmas 2000. "And I got my STP plaque," Bennington says, beaming. He slept with it in his bunk on the tour bus every night. "Nobody touched it."

"I'll tell you the worst-case scenario." Shinoda, 25, is sitting under a patio umbrella outside a Starbucks. The rapper — a second-generation Japanese-American whose father, as a young boy, lived in a U.S. internment camp during World War II — is explaining how he juggled his course load at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, with shows and rehearsals in the growing-pain days of Linkin Park.

"I'd do classes from nine to four, four to seven and seven to ten at night," he says over the swish of traffic from the Ventura Freeway half a block away. "I'd go from there to band practice in Hollywood for two or three hours, then all the way back to my parents' house and work on paintings until I couldn't do it anymore. Then I'd get up in the morning and do it all again.

"A week could be awful," Shinoda goes on, "especially if we had a show on Friday. I'd try to get my friends to come, and they'd go, 'Screw you, I've got a triptych due on Monday. I can't get the second or third painting done if I go to your show.' "