Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water

Average nu-metal decimated by Fred Durst, very generous 2

Combing the funk metal stylings and anger of rage against the machine or claw finger, the punk ( modern American flavor) attitude of green day , some musical influences of nine inch Nails … all the elements to be great album , just feels a tad puerile.

Loaded magazine as an album or the sound of booming from a 13 year old boys bedroom .

The heavy Wes Borland songs are absolutely fantastic and are part of the reason that Limp Bizkit are now a Download headlining band. That guy is a genius.

I like it when John Otto takes it to the Matthews Bridge.

But my god the other songs are really bad. Just chop out 30 minutes of the problematic and difficult-to-listen to stuff and you have a very good album.

Fred's working through some big feelings. I'll say this: some of the songs aren't as bad as some of the other ones.

A few thoughts:

-I think the only time I’ve heard this was on the way to Foot Locker regionals in my XC assistant coach’s (a former runner 3 years older than me) car. Kenosha wasn’t ready for us: the bad boys of fading in the last mile to finish in the high 17s!

-is a song whose entire chorus is NIN lyrics a sample, an interpolation, an homage, a ripoff, or some combination of those?

-not enough lyricists count the fucks they use and then write a metatextual lyric about it. NYT, there’s still time to amend that “greatest living songwriters” article!

-In “my way,” he sings “just one more fight about your leadership.” “Leadership” is a more jarring word than any of the cursing on this album. Is it a song about fighting with your significant other, or your boss?

-when he says “to all the ladies, to all the fellas, and to all the people who just don’t give a fuck,” is that an early example of nonbinary acceptance? Was Fred Durst progressive for his time? In this essay I will…

-I had a suspicion the rollin remix would still hit me just right, and it did. A little embarrassed, but not that embarrassed. I like that song and I like the soundscape/production of my way—I would listen to an instrumental version of my way, I’m saying. And i also didn’t hate the mission impossible song—they certainly played the notes of the mission impossible theme. Let’s call that 2 songs (1 for rollin remix + .5 for the other two). So that’s 2 songs on this putrid, juvenile, excessively long album. It should be a 1, but know that if I give it a 2, it’s so this album cover doesn’t appear on my summary page.

-it was a little endearing including Ben stiller making fun of your band

I committed a lot of musical sins in my adolescence but I'm happy to have passed on this Album

Some great songs, brings me back to the hockey dressing room in when I was 11. Some filler too... so I'll say 3.

A hilariously stupid album that captured the end of millennium zeitgeist of vague undirected being pissed. The singles aren't as good as from Significant Other where they really dialled in their signature style (swirly atmosphere then thudding thick downtuned guitar blasts) but Rollin' and My Way are quintessential dumb guy anthems. Fun riffs, extremely corny accents like the DJ scratching, and idiotic lyrics. People are mad about it, but metal has always been this dumb, this was just dumb music for especially dumb times. CD era bloat and loudness wars production make it sound bad and drag on forever. The songs are all at least a minute or two too long. Incredibly funny to be a band as huge as they were at the time and putnout that album cover that's so bad looking and not actually funny - one for all time moron mt Rushmore.

Favorite: Take a look around

On y est, l’an 2000. La fin d’un millénaire et l’apogée d’un truc que personne n’avait vraiment vu venir sous cette forme aussi boursouflée : le Nu-Metal. Et au sommet de la montagne de testostérone, de casquettes rouges à l’envers et de bermudas trop larges, il y a eux. Limp Bizkit et cet album au titre d’une débilité profonde, presque poétique dans sa vulgarité crasse : Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water. Rien que le titre, c’est une déclaration de guerre au bon goût, c'est l’équivalent sonore d’un rot après avoir descendu un litre de soda tiède.

Je lui ai donné 3 sur 5 car c'est la note de l’efficacité pure, celle qu’on donne au fast-food quand on sait que c’est de la merde mais que, putain, le burger est bon.

Et de l'efficacité, on en a et dès l'intro. C’est boursouflé, c’est arrogant, c’est américain. Fred Durst est le personnage le plus détestable des années 2000, c’est un fait. Ce mec, c'est le symbole même de la vulgarité commerciale. Mais — et c’est là que mon côté snob de l'indie rock en prend un coup — le groupe derrière lui est d'une puissance phénoménale. Wes Borland n’est pas un guitariste de métal, c’est un plasticien sonore égaré dans une foire à la saucisse. Ses riffs sur ce disque sont des modèles de textures, de dissonances contrôlées et de grooves massifs.

L’album est une succession de tubes qui ont littéralement saturé l’espace médiatique. "My Generation", "Rollin’", "My Way"... On ne pouvait pas y échapper. Même en travaillant dans un magasin de disques indépendant, entouré de trucs pointus et de post-rock contemplatif, on finissait par avoir ces refrains plantés dans le crâne comme des échardes. "Rollin’" est sans doute le morceau le plus stupide et le plus jouissif de la décennie. C’est l’hymne d’une génération qui ne voulait pas réfléchir, juste sauter partout dans un moshpit géant.

Le son de Terry Date à la production est absolument titanesque et tout est compressé pour vous exploser les tympans. C’est un album qui a été conçu pour être écouté à fond dans une bagnole tunée. C’est le testament d’une époque où le rock était encore la force dominante sur MTV, juste avant que Napster et le streaming ne viennent tout fragmenter.

Le disque est évidemment trop long. Soixante-quinze minutes, c’est une agression. On finit par saturer devant les simagrées de Durst, ses tentatives de rap maladroites et ses moments de "sensibilité" sur des morceaux comme "It'll Be OK" qui sonnent un peu faux.

Mais je ne peux pas descendre en dessous de 3. Parce que Limp Bizkit, sur cet album, a réussi le hold-up parfait. Ils ont pris le métal, le hip-hop, la pop et le mauvais goût le plus crasse pour en faire un objet de consommation de masse qui, techniquement, tient la route. Wes Borland sauve littéralement les meubles à chaque morceau avec ses inventions sonores et ses pédales d’effets qui apportent une touche presque psychédélique à cette boucherie.

Aujourd'hui, quand je remets ce disque, j'ai une pensée pour mes années de disquaire. On jugeait les gens qui achetaient ça, on se sentait supérieurs avec nos écoutes plus pointues. Mais avec le recul, ce Chocolate Starfish est un marqueur temporel incroyable. C’est la bande-son d’un monde pré-11 septembre, un monde où l’on pouvait être bruyant, idiot et arrogant sans que ça ne porte trop à conséquence.

C'est un album que j'écoute comme on regarde un vieux film de Michael Bay : on sait que c’est trop, on sait que c’est bête, mais l’exécution est tellement pro qu’on se laisse embarquer. C’est la foire, c’est le cirque, c’est le chaos organisé par un mec en casquette rouge qui se prend pour le roi du monde. Et pour un court instant, en l'an 2000, il l'était.

Ce disque mérite sa place dans la liste des 1001 albums non pas pour sa qualité intrinsèque de composition, mais pour ce qu’il représente historiquement. C’est l’apothéose et le début de la fin du Nu-Metal. Après ça, la bulle allait éclater et on allait revenir à des choses plus sobres, plus "indie", plus authentiques. Mais Limp Bizkit nous a laissé cette trace de pneu géante sur la route du rock.

Alors voilà, 3 sur 5. C’est bien payé pour les paroles, c’est mérité pour les musiciens, et c’est le prix de la nostalgie pour une époque où l’on avait encore l’énergie de s’énerver pour rien.

It should be noted that later releases of this record replace the original version of "Getcha Groove On" with the "Dirt Road Mix" version from their New Old Songs remix album, due to sample clearance issues.

I'll be honest, I did not have an "angry white boy" phase growing up, and I attribute that to the generational gap. I was four years old when Limp Bizkit saw their mainstream breakthrough with Significant Other, followed by even more publicity for taking the heat with what happened at Woodstock '99, albeit unfairly. By the time I reached an adolescent age and formally got into rock and metal music, the band went on hiatus as the first wave of nu metal had died off. Then, by the time they came back with Gold Cobra, I was already into nu metal acts that had more longevity than them, some of which were also included in the 1001 Albums books and will be addressed later in my journey. Suffice it to say, I didn't have much in the way of nostalgia or expectations for Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, an album in which the band sought to capitalize on their then-recent attention. So after giving this album a listen, I can comfortably say that it's not good.

But before I get too deep into why I don't like it, I want to at least mention the elements of this record that keep it from being outright terrible. In particular, the instrumentation on this record was rather decent. There's a solid beat from John Otto on some of these tracks, Wes Borland seems to be an underrated guitarist, and the sampling and record-scratching from DJ Lethal was reasonably good outside of the egregious flip of the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane" on "Livin' It Up". Probably the most notable example on here from an instrumental standpoint is "Take a Look Around", which is pretty much a nu-metal rendition of Lalo Schifrin's theme for the Mission: Impossible franchise, but I can also appreciate the few attempts at atmosphere building on "The One" and "Hold On". Couple the instrumentation with solid production from Terry Date, and this makes for a reasonable foundation for a competent rapper or singer to jump on. Of course, if you know this band, you know exactly where I'm going with this...

Let's talk about Fred Durst. Now, it's not new for a decent band to be hampered by their frontman; I've seen it happen multiple times on my album journey thus far. But Fred Durst certainly did his best to make an impression. You know exactly what you're getting into from the get-go with "Hot Dog", where he takes some gleeful pride in dropping an f-bomb or two in every line of his verses while taking the cheapest of pot shots at Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor, though Trent does get the last laugh by getting a sampling credit. At best, Fred's lyrics and performance are meme-able, as is the case with most of the singles. At worst, they're some of the most egregious whinging and lame duck non-rhyming from a man who seems to want to put up a front to hide his insecurities. Even for what should have been a more serious song with "Boiler", he can't help but take me out of it with such mindless nagging and talking about "crawling up your butt". Similar case with "It'll Be OK", where it's admittedly hard to accept him trying to move on from a toxic relationship. The only reprieves I have from Fred Durst's faux-rapping getting in the way are "The One" and "Hold On", where he takes on a more limited singing role, and "Take a Look Around," which, again, is the Mission: Impossible theme. You'd have to try really hard to make me hate that rendition.

Oh, but it doesn't stop here, for Fred Durst also can't help but flaunt the industry connections that he built up. Not only does Scott Weiland from Stone Temple Pilots show up to duet on "Hold On" and prove to be a better singer than Fred, but Xzibit on "Getcha Groove On", and DMX, Redman, and Method Man on "Rollin' (Urban Assault Vehicle)" all proved to be better rappers than Fred, and they weren't even trying that hard. Also, I may have buried the lede here, but there are two versions of "Rollin'" on this album when there didn't need to be. Of course, if you want a more notable example of how needlessly long this album is, check out the nearly ten-minute outro track. It starts with the robot voice from the intro track signing off, followed by comedian/actor Ben Stiller making attempts at humor on Fred Durst in the studio. This is then followed by three goddamn minutes of looping on Ben Stiller laughing, then a phone call between Fred and Third Eye Blind frontman Stephan Jenkins, and we finally wrap it up with two voicemails from skateboarding/TV personality Rob Dyrdek and actor Mark Wahlberg.

I don't think I need to elaborate any more than I need to. I did not enjoy Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. I may not have that much vitriol for Limp Bizkit these days, as they've largely mellowed out and firmly established themselves as a nostalgia act for the festival circuits. I also know this is not the worst album in their discography, as that would be the next record, Results May Vary, which doesn't have the luxury of Wes Borland on guitar. But I cannot in good conscience say this album has aged well.

I grew up in the 90s and I have never heard this album. I wish I could still say the same.

How in the unholy FUCK does this project not have a single Deftones album, but I've been subjected to Kid Rock and now this.

I now understand why "nu-metal" has a bad reputation.

There's still some enjoyment to be had no matter how poorly this aged

Wanted to be contrary and like this but it's really really bad

'Ain't it a shame that you can't say "fuck" (fuck) / Fuck's just a word & it's all fucked up.' Compare that to Eminem's crusade against censorship, & you'll see who has the cultural & cerebral edge: 'Will Smith don't gotta cus in his raps to sell records / Well I do, so fuck him, & fuck you too.' I don't give a fuck if you don't give a fuck, unless you don't give a fuck freshly & revolutionarily. 'Burn this motherfucker down.' Nothing 'bout Durst & co. is impressively countercultural or subversive. The problem is they also sound bad, i.e., their songs aren't helpful or creative examples of pop metal, rap-metal, or rage styles. I love the word 'fuck' - I think it's English's best & by far most versatile word - but after this record, even I need a break. F this!

I unironically enjoy Limp Bizkit and all the goofy ass rage-y hit songs they make. This one has a lot of the classic Limp Bizkit tracks on it, such as Rollin, My Generation and My Way. I wish this album ended at the 40 minute mark though. Limp Bizkit is not a great albums band and the album progressively gets shittier and less fun the more you get into it. This didn't to be 75 minutes long, or have a remix of a track already featured earlier in the album, or that dumbass 10 minute outro laughing track.

It's fine. The best song is Rollin' because other better artists take over for a while

I despise everything about their aesthetic. I'd be embarrassed to be caught listening to this. The lyrics objectively suck ass. Outside of the admittedly good riffs, it's all so over the top trash that it's impossible to take seriously; so much so, that it weirdly loops back to being kind of fun. I don't know, I think I kind of limp with the bizkit actually 😭

Standouts: My Way • Rollin (Air Raid Vehicle) • Getcha Groove On - Dirt Road Remix • Take A Look Around • Boiler • Rollin (Urban Assault Vehicle)

Ya know, I really didn’t hate this as much as I thought I would. I can understand the hate for Fred Durst, but the band had some killer ideas and riffs happening throughout this album.

Would be a fun album but there is much bloat everywhere. Would be a 4 for me if the album was cut to half its length

You can’t be serious with this one.