Guilty Pleasure: Limp Bizkit - Significant Other
As per mentioned in my recent review of Disturbed’s Indestructible, I am a child of the 90s. So, with that being said, my guilty pleasure looms in the confines of nu-metal and rap/rock mainstream artist Limp Bizkit.
If there ever was a time to be an angry white kid in high school, it was 1999. After hearing LB’s rapcore debut, Three Dollar Bill, Y’all, the time of change was imminent. Lines of musical taste divided every teenager in America between those who were pop music savvy (N*Sync, Christina Aguilera, Ricky Martin, Backstreet Boys) and those who wanted to “break stuff”.
When Limp Bizkit’s guest appearance-heavy nu-metal disasterpiece, Significant Other was released in June of 1999, nearly every male student I knew in school owned a red Yankees ball cap, and nearly every one of them chanted the chorus to “Nookie” or “Re-Arranged” in the now-defunct student smoking section.
As I thought about it being almost a decade since that album’s release, I sifted through my CD case to find my lone, semi-scratched copy and popped it into my family van on the way to work yesterday afternoon. I recaptured my 14-year-old self, immediately - and all for this particular review and some nostalgic bliss.
It amazes me how much boasting Fred Durst actually did on this album, how much machismo he conveyed - and considering his has-been status and position of not being taken all that seriously, it’s somewhat funny.
Either way, one cannot deny the effectively catchy (if not occasionally cheesy) lyrics on Significant Other. I remember the words to every song as if it were like riding a bike, and banging my head on Wes Borland’s bass riffs. For all of its novelty worth, that band had some great music despite Durst’s absurd rantings about life on the mean streets of Jacksonville, Florida or his being a walking ATM (listen to “I’m Broke” and “Trust?”).
Only Limp Bizkit could churn out hit after manufactured hit about everything from being “worth more than” sex to name-dropping half the United States. My favorite song to date off of this album is still by far, “N 2 Gether Now”. One reason being that (unlike Fred), I respect Method Man’s talent as an established rapper - the other being that stupid-ass music video with Pauly Shore as the pizza delivery guy and Durst vs. Meth in a sword fight over the remote control.
All in all, during the nine years we’ve seen this album in the malls and on clearance racks across the country, there are those like myself who still find charm in such a piece of 90s memorabilia - or at the very least, we like to scream “you can take that cookie, and stick it up your…” in the car when no one’s around.
Check Out:
The latter of the two.
sidenote: DSOTM is a phenomenal album
This is me being silly, but do you mean “Classic Rock”, like a radio station that plays the allman brothers too much, or classic “rock” album, meaning anything from Dark Side of the Moon to Master of Puppets?
OK Computer was a phenomenal album, but yes I was always terrible with dates. I always have to double check my dates and times, it’s maddening.
No wonder I barely passed World History in high school.
I only have one question…
you say “Fat Of The Land” is your favorite album, so out of curiosity what is your favorite CLASSIC rock album? This is me being nosy.
FUNNY
um Kid A came out in 2000 (not to be a technical jackass or anything).
it was Ok Computer that came out in 1997.
along with Prodigy’s “Fat of the Land” (my favorite album of all time)
Undeniably true, and thanks to the 90s we do have Kid A (thanks, Radiohead).
I can’t argue the descent into musical madness that the latter half of this decade provided for us, but at the same time…
that’s why this is a Guilty Pleasure and not an Instant Classic.
worst band ever. the late 1990s was easily one of the worst times for music since i’ve been alive. though we got kid a, the strokes, and eminem out of it all, the majority of music, especially popular music, was just awful around this time.
This is genius.