Newly nominated Melissa Etheridge vehemently disagrees with Gene Simmons’ argument that hip hop don’t belong in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. She says instead that rock and roll is more about “feeling.”
“It’s not my music,” the Kiss star said during a February podcast interview. “I don’t come from the ghetto. It doesn’t speak my language, and I said in print many times hip-hop does not belong in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – nor does opera symphony orchestras.”
If elected, Etheridge would potentially join Simmons in the Rock Hall later this fall. Meanwhile, she’ll make good on her cross-genre comments by including a collaboration with country star Chris Stapleton called “Other Side of Blue” on her upcoming album, Rise.
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“Sometimes you just have to work up the nerve and ask somebody,” Ehteridge tells Rolling Stone. “I called my manager [and] said, ‘I’m only interested in writing with one person, and that would be Chris Stapleton.'”
Etheridge says Stapleton is part of a new movement in country that sounds very familiar, since it calls back to an era when she had a run of Top 40 singles including “I’m the Only One” and “Come to My Window” from the six-times platinum Yes I Am.
“I find myself turning on SiriusXM in the car, [stations like] Outlaw Country or the Highway. I always felt like I made music for people that drive cars and listen to music,” she said. “Then you listen to these artists, and they sound like ’90s rock and roll artists.”
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Etheridge’s fellow 2026 Rock Hall nominees include Wu-Tang Clan, who would follow recent hip-hop honorees like Eminem, Tupac Shakur, N.W.A., Outkast, the Notorious B.I.G., Salt-N-Pepa, Missy Elliott and Jay-Z, among others. Unlike Simmons, Etheridge applauds their inclusion.
“There was that classic rock and roll we know,” she tells Rolling Stone, “and then there’s everything that has been influenced [by it] and has that rock and roll spirit. That’s your R&B, rap and country.”
As for Simmons comments, Etheridge adds: “That says more about him than anything. Rock and roll is a feeling. You can’t bottle it up and say, ‘This is mine, not yours.'”
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Gallery Credit: Jim Allen
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