Zack de la Rocha

Zack de la Rocha is an American singer-songwriter, lead-vocalist, and political activist whose three-decade music career — primarily as the lead-vocalist-and-lyricist of the American rap-metal band Rage Against the Machine across 1991–2000 and 2007–present — has produced one of the foundational documents of 1990s American politically-engaged rap-metal music. He was born Zacarias Manuel de la Rocha on January 12, 1970, in Long Beach, California, into a Mexican-American Chicano-activist family. His father Beto de la Rocha was a Mexican-American Chicano-political-art-and-mural painter (one of the foundational late-1960s and 1970s Los Angeles Chicano Art Movement painters), and his mother Olivia Lorraine Carter was a German-American anthropologist. His parents divorced when Zack was an infant.

His teenage and early-adulthood music career across 1985–1991 — across multiple Los Angeles-area hardcore-punk and Inside Out hardcore-punk bands — produced his late-1980s and early-1990s American hardcore-punk public profile.

His 1991 founding of Rage Against the Machine in Los Angeles, California — alongside guitarist Tom Morello, bassist Tim Commerford, and drummer Brad Wilk — launched his 1990s American politically-engaged rap-metal-genre public profile. The 1991 Rage Against the Machine lineup produced one of the foundational documents of 1990s American politically-engaged rap-metal music.

His November 3, 1992 first commercial Rage Against the Machine album Rage Against the Machine — released by Epic Records — sold over three million American copies and produced his mid-1990s American politically-engaged rap-metal public profile through the singles "Killing in the Name" and "Bullet in the Head."

His subsequent commercial Rage Against the Machine career has produced four commercial Rage Against the Machine albums — particularly the 1996 second commercial album Evil Empire (which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and won the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance), the 1999 third commercial album The Battle of Los Angeles (which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200), and the 2000 fourth commercial album Renegades.

His October 18, 2000 abrupt departure from Rage Against the Machine shaped his later biographical narrative. The band's subsequent 2007 reunion (which has continued through multiple subsequent international tours, including the cancelled 2022 international tour due to de la Rocha's leg injury) produced his later international rap-metal public profile. He has been continuously single across his career.

His name Zack is the English short form of Zachary (from the Hebrew Zekharyah meaning "the Lord remembers"). Zack has been climbing in American naming since the 1980s.