A ridiculous number of iconic albums have been recorded at NRG Studios in North Hollywood, to say the least. In fact, the list is pretty staggering – it’s been home to records like Make Yourself (Incubus), Follow The Leader (Korn), Distant Relatives (Nas + Damian Marley), and much of Linkin Park’s discography (including their Hybrid Theory and Meteora albums). Clearly, the studio has been home to a diverse selection of records that shaped popular culture and changed the music industry forever.
Your results may vary (hah!) with Limp Bizkit and what they accomplished on their sophomore album, Significant Other. The fact is, though, that it arrived at basically the perfect time. Context matters here, and there is plenty. Nu-metal was the scene’s biggest cash cow at the time, competing with Dr. Dre, hip-hop legends, Celine Dion, and boy bands galore on the Billboard charts. Like our friends at The Nu Metal Agenda noted recently, Significant Other was the coolest fucking album to listen to if you were a teenager around this time. Breaking stuff? Hell yeah. Videos with skateboarders and songs about nookie? Double hell yeah. Method Man, Scott Weiland, and Jonathan Davis guest spots? Wrestling promos? It couldn’t be any better.
Ever the genius-level marketer, Fred Durst helped Limp Bizkit’s stock rise between albums #1 and #2 with the notable Ladies Night In Cambodia tour. The concept was simple. Saddled with criticism that their debut album had misogynistic tendencies, the early 1998 tour (which also featured Sevendust and Clutch) allowed women in for free – helping their fanbase skyrocket. This, coupled with their appearances at the Family Values tour, helped hype for Significant Other reach a fever pitch. Having their sophomore album (and also their Chocolate Starfish album the next year) emerge at the time where CD sales peaked certainly helped things, but Significant Other would’ve been a flop had it not been for the album’s instantly recognizable songs and impact on pop culture.
Smartly, the first four songs on the album (five, if you count the intro) are all sequenced for immediate, visceral impact. Opening track “Just Like This” serves as a statement of intent as much as it does a vehicle for Terry Date’s production, where Fred Durst asks the listener “do you want to catch the vibe, that’s keeping me alive?”. Thanks to the snappy rhythm section of drummer John Otto, underrated bassist Sam Rivers, and guitarist Wes Borland, you’re only left nodding your head in agreement. DJ Lethal’s true coming out party, his imprint is all over Significant Other, providing important atmosphere on “Re-Arranged” (seriously, what an incredible song) and mid-album cut “Don’t Go Off Wandering”. There’s also an overarching presence of self-awareness here, where Fred Durst literally raps about being “broke” because people won’t pay him back. If you’ve ever had a bunch of invoices that weren’t paid out in a timely fashion (this is true for yours truly), you can probably relate. And there’s also the chorus of “Nookie”, which is absolutely batshit hilarious – substituting “Yeah!” where there could have been another of the album’s many profanities.
While the band’s ability to poke fun at themselves wasn’t fully developed until later in their career, on Significant Other it does help balance out the more introspective and serious nature of the aforementioned “Re-Arranged” and also “No Sex”.
One of nu-metal’s ultimate guitar riffs appears on “Break Stuff”, which sounds just like the title implies. Somehow making lyrics about chainsaws and skinning asses raw sound more hilarious than threatening, “Break Stuff” is one of nu-metal’s most memeable songs, only behind perhaps “Down With The Sickness” and the hilarious “cut my life into pizzas” quip on Papa Roach’s “Last Resort”. Almost every line of the lyrics on this song have been mined for various purposes, from the parent and worker relatable “it’s just one of those days”, to the nu-metal standard emotion of “keep your distance”. Even if you simply wake up on the wrong side of the bed, it’s the ultimate anthem for anyone who’s sick of their job, their school, or if you’re thirteen, your parental units.
If you need proof of Limp Bizkit’s star power at this point, consider that Scott Weiland, Jonathan Davis, Aaron Lewis (pre-right-wing pandering country music career), Matt Pinfield, Method Man, and Les Claypool make varying appearances on the record (Pinfield and Claypool appear on the record’s final “song”, “Outro”). The album’s most hip-hop oriented song, “N 2 Gether Now”. The song, which brought together Limp Bizkit with the legendary Method Man, also featured equally legendary producer DJ Premier of Gang Starr. Oddly enough, DJ Premier had hesitations about working with Fred Durst’s rapping abilities at first – but when he found out that Method Man would be featured on the track (and after a face to face meeting with Red Cap himself), he signed on for it. It ended up being one of the most unlikely collaborations you could have imagined in 1997, but two years later, Limp Bizkit was ready to become the face of pop culture.
This album wouldn’t be possible without each of the musicians involved, either. Guitarist Wes Borland, often considered far and away the band’s biggest talent, is everywhere on Significant Other. Often oscillating between simple, rhythmic guitar riffs and deceptively more complex ones in the same song (see: “Break Stuff”), Borland secured his place as the guitarist that even people who hate Limp Bizkit think is really talented. Because he is. His riffs to open up the underrated “Nobody Like You”? God-tier. Speaking of “Nobody Like You”, John Otto drum solo, holy shit. Does that even happen in nu-metal? Not really. It’s also the song where each member feels most in sync with each other. No Fred Durst rapping, Sam Rivers and John Otto locked in on the bass/drum combination, DJ Lethal’s ominous atmosphere, Wes Borland BABY, and Jonathan Davis and the late Scott Weiland on the same track. It’s a left-field track that showcases Limp Bizkit at their most unpredictable.
Fittingly, there’s a song titled “9 Teen 90 Nine” here, and to be honest, it sums up most of the album. Significant Other was simply the nu-metal album that had to be made, at the right time and place in music history, in 1999. It kicked off a 2-3 year run where Limp Bizkit was simply one of the biggest bands on the planet, and where the follow-up to this album would sell one MILLION copies in its first week of release.
