In this season of Sonic Subcultures, we ask ‘what makes a listener over time?’ By revisiting 10 formative records for our hosts, we trace the way personal taste can develop and evolve, and how lives intersect with cultural and subcultural moments through music.

With choreographed personas and sleek marketing, the Spice Girls were pop icons built in the boardroom. But they also opened doors.

In this episode, Marc Lajeunesse and Safa Hachi trace the blurred line between empowerment and performance, and how the Spice Girls helped reshape the pop landscape—for better or worse.

We ask: when feminism becomes a product, who does it serve?

We opened the season with Limp Bizkit’s Significant Other. Now, we close it with Chocolate Starfish. In just a year, the band went from rising stars to overexposed icons– cockier, louder and more self-aware than ever.

In this season finale, Marc Lajeunesse and Safa Hachi reflect on Fred Durst’s transformation from cultural villain to ironic icon, the band’s unapologetic legacy and why Limp Bizkit’s blend of loud, messy rebellion might be exactly what this generation needs.

Dallas-based band UnityTX blends rap, hardocre, and nu metal into a chaotic, genre-blurring sound that challenges everything we thought nu metal was. But their identity as an all-POC band also reveals the deep-rooted racial gatekeeping in alt spaces.

In this episode, Marc Lajeunesse and Safa Hachi explore UnityTX’s 2020 MadBoy EP and how it fits into a broader conversation about nu metal’s legacy. From its whitewashed roots to its revival through fusion and experimentation, we ask: where does nu metal go from here? And who gets to define it?