Fuck Guilty Pleasures: Limp Bizkit Had An Amazing Run

They don't like hairy buttholes

Fred Durst was the Kanye West of his day. Not to say he was as talented. But at the height of Limp Bizkit's fame -- and make no mistake, this was hundreds of millions of dollars of fame -- he was the same type of beloved villain.

He succeed in that era's popular music despite being (and also because he was) an unhinged asshole. If there was a Twitter in 1999, Durst would've been the king of it. Let's pause to remember his bon mot for critics of his homophobia: "You like apples, I like oranges. You like hairy buttholes and I don't." And he capitalized on a tossed-off Eminem punchline to insist he really did get with from Christina Aguilera.

Like Kanye, Durst never fucked up to an extraordinary degree. His tiresome sameness just reached a breaking point. People tire of acrid public personas; just ask Eminem, who preemptively changed tack for last year's safety-valved "comeback" Recovery.

But it's a shame that Durst's dominance over this band has irreparably distorted history, because Limp Bizkit was hardly the worst nu-metal had to offer. In fact, you could even say they were good. I certainly find them to be.

In 1999, Rolling Stone wrote of their multi-multi-platinum smash Significant Other: "At this point, hating them seems a little disingenuous. They're actually (gulp) good." Listening to Other today, it's shocking how grooving and un-turgid it is. Unlike most drummers at the time, John Otto knew his way around "Funky Drummer" better than a double-kick setup, as you can hear in the funky interludes between songs like "I'm Broke." His pinging piccolo snare sound makes even their chunkiest riffs fleet-of-foot; witness the lightly drumrolled verses of "Trust?"