The Neighborhood Kids explained why protest belongs in Hip-Hop after bringing their message to Tom Morello’s festival.
The Neighborhood Kids made their case for protest rap in a new interview. Amon the MC argued that music born from struggle should speak to it.
“Hip Hop was birthed in the struggle,” Amon told Daylight. The San Diego rapper said the genre’s origins made it a natural tool for speaking about oppression.
“It was birthed by oppressed people, so it only makes sense that people should use it to talk about the oppression of the people. I think to use such a powerful art form and talk about nonsense is just blasphemous to me,” Amon the MC said.
For fellow MC Verde, the motivation was empathy. She said she wanted to make room for people whose suffering might otherwise go unheard. The bilingual group pairs the two rappers with DJ JG and live musicians.
That mission had a fitting setting on October 3, when Tom Morello introduced the group to open his “Power To The People” festival at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. A Rogers Revue eyewitness account described a four-song set on the Chrysalis stage. Amon led the crowd in a call-and-response. The group closed with “Kids in the Cages.”
The event also gave fans places to act on what they heard. Its Freedom Village hosted nonprofit groups including Rock the Vote and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
The group had already shared a bill with Morello at his “Defend L.A.” protest fundraiser in Los Angeles in June 2025.
Morello’s ties to outspoken rappers go back decades. When Ice-T inducted Rage Against the Machine into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2023, he recalled how the band landed an early opening slot for Body Count.
The festival followed another stop outside the group’s hometown: a June 2026 session for “Live on KEXP”. The station’s episode credits listed Amon and Verde on vocals alongside DJ JG. KEXP published the five-song session on its podcast in August.
Their message was already clear in an April 2026 interview with Jejune.
Amon explained that a song could reach someone who would never sit through a speech. Verde pointed to the way listeners learn songs and keep them in their lives. Amon also described different sounds for their full-band and three-piece sets, while stressing that both carried the same intensity.
Looking back on the October festival, Amon told Daylight, “It felt beautiful seeing so many people come out for love, resistance and music.”