“Too Black for the White kids, and too White for the Blacks,” Earl Sweatshirt confesses on his 2013 track “Chum.” The lyric hit like a punch to the gut because it wasn’t just Earl’s story, it was a generational truth. To exist in-between, to never fully belong in the spaces people expect you to. But what Earl captured in one bar has echoed through decades of music and culture. For every kid who found themselves skating in Vans, reading manga or moshing in an at-home basement show, “alternative” wasn’t a trend. It was a way of life. And long before Odd Future’s DIY visuals carved out a lane in the 2010s, Black artists were already rewriting what it meant to belong in rock, punk and beyond.
Odd Future’s cult following gravitated to their alternative lifestyle choices in addition to their sound during their come-up. Their love of skateboarding, Vans sneakers and internet trolling reframed the narrow thinking of what was “cool” in Black America, making space for another facet of the community’s identity to break through the mold.
The 2003 documentary Afro-Punk placed a snappy name on Black fans of the genre, and helped to generate mainstream visibility for the scene long before it was packaged into festivals and fashion. However, its present-day commodification hasn’t taken away from what Black punk music really stands for: resistance, reclamation and fostering a sense of belonging.
“The real point we were making [with our work] is that no one’s gonna tell us what we can and cannot be, and that [punk] is part of our DNA,” Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid explained in 2015 of the freedom to exist in the genre. The all-Black band sprinkled melodies over punk, funk and heavy metal stylings, specifically with their hit “Cult Of Personality,” which hit the top 20 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 1988, and earned the group a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1990.
“It’s not some weirdly novel thing, or an identity crisis,” Reid continued. “It was never the point, the point was always that we were kind of misfits.”
Punk began in the mid-1970s in the U.K. and U.S. as a way to loudly push back against mainstream rock’s commercial turn. Instead of spectacle, anger and social disillusionment helped to soundtrack the lives of its participants, who often wore torn, thrifted finds and were adorned in piercings. Similar to rock and country music, punk is largely viewed as a predominantly white genre. The Sex Pistols, The Stooges and The Ramones were some of the earliest examples of punk rock stars, but Black artists’ influence on the scene without proper attribution or support is a tale as old as time.
Before the punk wave gained traction, Detroit-based band Death was busy crafting a rebellious sound all their own during the early ’70s. Despite recording a seven-song LP in 1975, they were unable to secure a record deal and ultimately disbanded. Another Black punk band, Pure Hell, considered the first Black punk band, but disbanded in 1978 without a proper album release.
“No one really accepted them for what they were trying to do,” Urian Hackney, son of Death’s lead singer and bassist Bobby Hackney, told PBS earlier this year. To be Black and alternative often means navigating exclusion on various fronts: too “white” for the Black mainstream, yet too Black to fully belong within a predominantly white space. What does it mean, then, to claim this genre as a safe space, when the world insists you don’t belong in either?
And that’s where the deeper tension lies: punk’s spirit is inseparable from the experience of being Black in America, making its Black acts central to its history rather than peripheral. The genre was birthed from the ability to turn struggle into sound, a longstanding tradition Black artists have embodied through survival, protest and innovation. This practice carried forward in Black alternative spaces, and by the 1980s, Black punk bands began being visible icons for those who felt “othered.” These groups insisted on expanding this world with sonic innovations, proving a refusal to be boxed in.
Bad Brains’ genre-blending approach to punk gave way for bands like Sublime, No Doubt and Red Hot Chili Peppers to do the same in their work. Bad Brains' innovative, self-titled debut, marked by a fusion of blistering hardcore with reggae, was released in 1982 and stands as a hallmark of the scene, redefining the genre’s possibilities. The late Adam Yauch, founding member of the Beastie Boys, called the album "the best punk/hardcore album of all time.”
This spirit of innovation carried into the decades that followed. L.A.-based group Fishbone made waves in the ’90s for their ability to fuse punk, ska, free jazz and soul. Brooklyn-based indie rock group TV on the Radio layered punk sensibilities with experimental rock and electronic textures during the post-punk revival of the new millennium.
Black punk/alt groups not only dismantle racial boundaries within the genre, but also thematic expectations. Fishbone’s work touches upon everything from child custody battles (“Ma and Pa”), to the current occupant of the Oval Office (“Racist Piece of Shit” from their 2025 album, Stockholm Syndrome), while TV on the Radio’s 2008 album Dear Science was critically and culturally-acclaimed for its takes on the opposing values of life, from love to politics. Rather than leaning into punk’s shock value, Black artists opted to expand its messaging.
“When we first came out, [punk] was kind of on some vulgar shit,” Bad Brains’ bassist Darryl Jenifer said in a 2015 interview. “Some kids who wanted to see some regular shit saw us, and every kid’s heart and mind was opened… You might walk away from that and go, ‘Damn, that’s some consciousness in this music.’” The band often touched upon punk’s largely anti-establishment messages, as well as the practice of maintaining a positive mental attitude (PMA).
As the lines of the genre have blurred in recent years, punk’s DIY spirit has seen continuity in the work of modern-day Black alternative artists. These musicians carry the tradition forward by tying their work to prevalent conversations within the community, such as gender, sexuality and mental health, while subsequently crafting hybrid sounds that push back against easy categorization.
As the 2010s and 2020s arrived, new waves of artists continued to carry the torch, stretching the DNA of punk and alt music for present-day audiences. N.J.-bred Ho99o9 fuses punk and hip-hop, while British-based female duo Nova Twins bring fresh textures and perspective to nu-metal. The latter’s most recent musical offering, Parasites and Butterflies, features references to icons across the Black diaspora, from Nigerian warrior queen Amina of Zazzau to legendary boxer and social activist Muhammad Ali.
Additionally, Philadelphia’s Soul Glo pushes hardcore punk into new territory, while artists like Scarlxrd and Meet Me @ the Altar reimagine genres like trap metal and pop punk. Black alternative artists like Fousheé, Infinity Song, serpentwithfeet and Johnny Based experiment with genre-fluid approaches that dissolve the boundaries between R&B, indie, gospel and experimental pop.
“Black youth get taught that we belong in R&B and rap spaces, and we don’t do the research,” Willow Smith said on being able to express art across genre lines as a Black musician. On her 2021 album, Lately I Feel Everything, the multifaceted singer channels Y2K pop-punk foreparents like Avril Lavigne and Travis Barker (both of whom appear on the project), while also drawing on the influence of her mother Jada’s own heavy metal band, Wicked Wisdom.
“I want to tell all the Black and brown young girls that… they can do whatever they want,” Willow explained of her foray into the pop punk space. “They can make any kind of music and do it better than anyone they’ve seen.”
At its core, punk has always been about resistance, and no community has embodied that more deeply than Black artists. From Death’s unheard demos in a Detroit garage to Willow Smith shredding on a global stage, Black musicians have turned struggle into sound, misfit energy into movement, exclusion into expansion. What was once dismissed as “too weird” or “too White” has become undeniable proof that Black creativity doesn’t just fit into alternative spaces, it defines them. Today’s wave of genre-benders isn’t chasing validation; they’re reclaiming freedom. And in doing so, they remind us that being “alternative” has never been about standing outside of Blackness, it’s always been another way of expressing it.
