Limp Bizkit - Significant Other
The second studio album "Significant Other" by "Limp Bizkit", was released on June 22, 1999.
This is one of top Nu-Metal explosions accrued in the beginning of 2000. A crazy red capped singer with a heavy guitar player, heavy beats drummer and bassist accompanied by a "lethal" DJ dropped their music on the world.
Their first album "Three Dollar Bill, Y'all" issued in 1997 did not make any waves or much attention to the new group which was good neighbors of "Korn" starting the Nu-Metal growth. But one song out of this album was a match in a sea of gasoline. The cover song for George Michael's "Faith" quickly and staidly got bigger and bigger, it was playing in many radio stations, clubs, and was huge hit on MTV.
Now everybody knew "Limp Bizkit" and the anticipation for the next album was all around very high.
Very high on the low side, everybody were expecting Bizkit to be a "one hit wonder" band. They were expecting to have a bad album, seriously, except "Faith" nothing worked from the first album so...
This was only part of the fuel injected to Fred and his friends to come up with the best selling album they could. Yes, best selling! Bizkit wanted to be rock stars, the wanted the fame and the success, they were making their dream come true and that was it.
The band wanted to make a strong heavy metal riffs combined with hip-hop, strong heavy beats and effects. Right after the famous "Family Values Tour" initiated by "Korn", Bizkit was anxious to start recording. Against the advise of their label, to take a break, they hired producer Terry Date due to his work with "Pantera", "White Zombie" and "Deftones" in order to sharpen their attack and enter the studio.
The album creativity, as the spirit of the band was lead by the two characters
Fred Durst - Was an outsider all of his youth, finding solace in alternative music. Railing against the authorities surprisingly he joined the army but quickly found himself dropping out, homeless, leaving on the streets. He knew his greatest strengths were his loud mouth and a pouty, relatable angst that would fit right in at a high school detention hall anywhere in the western world, so he built the band around them.
On the other side of the scales, this was a Character (capital C) from the opposite end of the nu-metal spectrum: a flamboyant freak in body paint and black eye contacts who just happened to be the brains behind the operation.
Wes Borland - Was the brain of the band carrying the creation and musical "burden". Growing up in Nashville, Tennessee he was fighting not to be drawn by the country music and found his taste when moving to Jacksonville. He is the mastermind behind the band melodies and sound. Taking the high and low part to different genres of rock music. His riffs heavyweight enough to shoulder the frontman’s more awful and outlandish lyrical absurdities, they would not fly without instrumentality that evokes the feeling of having ones face slammed into a windshield with the repetitive force of 100,000 car wrecks. He is well known for his extravaganza stage appearances, doing all the customs and make-up by himself.
Although credit, of course, is due to drummer John Otto, turntablist DJ Lethal and bassist Sam Rivers, it was the symbiosis between Wes and Fred that kept things ticking-over – as they would discover in the wake of the guitarist’s departure, years later. (don't worry he came back)
Lead by those two characters the band was riding on the wave of the musical revolution of the year 2000.
They took the sludgy loud-quiet-loud formula made famous by Nirvana, undergirded it with rolling hip-hop beats, and topped it off with base, churlish outbursts about disloyal friends and lovers seasoned with sexual and eschatological humor.
Introduced the album with the opening line: “You wanted the worst, you got the worst.”
While all the teenagers where about to head out to summer vacation, on June 16 1999, "Nookie" came out. The first single from the album, inspired from Fred's breakup with his girlfriend, a pure sexy powerhouse rap-rock hybrid. A bolt directly to the overwhelmed and overfloated body by hormones of the young crazy teenagers. This is exactly what they were looking for and don't be embarrassed that so do you!
Six days later the album came out and sold 643,874 copies in its first week. In its second week of release, the album sold an additional 335,000 copies. Very quickly it reached the top and conquered the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart.
The band collaborated with "Korn" vocalist Jonathan Davis and Scott Weiland of "Stone Temple Pilots" on "Nobody Like You". Weiland would frequently visit NRG studios and help Fred with the vocals.
"Staind" singer Aaron Lewis provided backup vocals on the song "No Sex", while Scott Borland, Wes' brother, played keyboards on "Just Like This", "Nookie", "Re-Arranged", "I'm Broke", "9 Teen 90 Nine" and "A Lesson Learned". The band allowed Durst and DJ Lethal to explore their hip hop influences by recording with Method Man. DJ Premier of Gang Starr was brought in to produce the collaboration on the song "N 2 Gether Now".
Listen to the album on: Spotify, Apple Music.