Now playing; Three Dollar Bill, Y'all, Significant Other, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, Results May Vary, Still Sucks
Considering the key releases of nu-metal titans Limp Bizkit.
Of my nu-metal big four (Korn, Deftones, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot), Bizkit were the most culturally dominant as Fred Durst took full advantage of an exceedingly friendly MTV to become a household name while educating a generation on what “nookie” meant. Today I’m covering their first four albums along with late career highlight Still Sucks. Follow me into a solo;
Three Dollar Bill, Y’all [Flip/Interscope, 1997]
The usual factors of success like timing and luck were on Fred Durst’s side but he also just plain wanted it more than anyone else. He was a businessman first, musician second and I don’t mean that as a slight. Durst knew where the limits of his talent ran out and to stack the deck in his favor with one of the greatest guitarists in metal history, a DJ from an already established platinum act, the producer responsible for the whole sub-genre and an endlessly disrespectful 80s pop cover. Even the juvenile misogyny feels like a careful balancing act between serious menace and goofy childish tantruming— how anyone could take his whimpering delivery of “You wanna play that game bitch!?” seriously is beyond me. So Three Dollar Bill is calculated but it’s not cold— instead Limp Bizkit’s debut is an album in italics, leaning forward in a determined rush through the checkout counter and into your CD binder. A-
Significant Other [Flip/Interscope, 1999]
The most telling song on Significant Other is way deep cut “Show Me What You Got” which is more or less an extended advertisement in the guise of a song. Across the song’s four and a half minutes Fred Durst - well before maintaining an entire personal brand was a prerequisite to to be a professional musician - makes certain to shoutout the band that got them signed (“Korn for the love and the swappin' up of tracks”), producer Terry Date, the band’s management (“The Firm, you always got my back!”) and even the band Durst had just signed to his own record label imprint (“Staind, a brand new drug for your brain”) I can only imagine what this sounded like at the time, craven politicking from a man more concerned about his new A&R gig than his music, today it sounds smart- some shoring up of stock options while writing an efficient banger in the process. Durst so dominated the frame that I’ve already blown a whole paragraph ignoring the contributions of endlessly creative guitarist Wes Borland or the combined efforts of Terry Date and John Otto to create one of the nu-metal era’s definitive drum sounds but that’s how beautiful celebrity Fred Durst masterminded it. Seven million domestic units shipped? Guess it worked. A-
Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water [Flip/Interscope, 2000]
What a genius maneuver this was. After Significant Other’s globe conquering success and Woodstock 99’s mayhem orgy, Freddy D must have known the backlash was incoming. If Limp Bizkit had waited even one more year to get more product on store shelves it would have been too late, instead Durst hustled everyone back into the studio and sat this plastic on FYEs, Tower Records, and Coconuts across America less than a year after Significant Other. Which is how an album named after the appearance of a butthole and the taste of vaginal mucus sold 7-figures its first week out. So miraculous was their timing that not only did they avoid the 9/11 induced heavy music downturn they even shot a music video on top of the World Trade Center, almost a powerflex on the World Trade Center-less future to come. The music therein isn’t quite as good as the marketing savvy that produced it and lacking in the originality department - “Full Nelson” and “Getcha Groove On” are recycled “Stuck” and “N 2 Gether Now” respectively - but it sounds great and is sequenced a bit better than Significant Other with singles “Take a Look Around” and “Boiler” coming in the 4th quarter. Still, Chocolate Starfish hits hardest for the cultural moment it represents rather than a piece of music- as a snapshot of a guy with a red baseball cap defying gravity for three straight years. B+
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