Three years ago, it seemed like you couldn't turn on MTV or open a music magazine without Fred Durst and his iconographic backwards baseball cap staring back at you. Limp Bizkit, Durst and co. profited from the popularity of nu-metal, a musical genre pioneered by Korn or, more accurately, Faith No More and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. While those bands had acquired their own hardcore fans before success came knocking on their door, Limp Bizkit rose quickly to popularity in the wake of the surprising success of their more accomplished peers. Nonetheless, Fred Durst embraced his celebrity status, becoming the glue that held the world of celebrity scandals together.
Now Limp Bizkit's back, and while the rap-rock genre may have been vanquished by five nonchalant guys in jean jackets from New York and a Detroit duo with a penchant for red and white, Fred's not content to let his superstar status fade. Despite that, the promotion of the band's latest album reveals Limp Bizkit's irrelevance in today's musical climate.
Results May Vary has been virtually ignored by most reputable music publications. Neither Spin nor Rolling Stone even reviewed the album. What's more, the band's own label, Interscope, de-emphasizes Bizkit's latest release on their website, highlighting the label's other, more popular stars. Yet while the album's first single, "Eat You Alive," hasn't made an impact on either the modern rock or mainstream rock charts, Results debuted at number three on the Billboard albums chart, according to Soundscan. This is an unimpressive debut compared to the band's past two albums--both of which debuted at number one and sold one million copies each in their first week--but still high considering the band's current irrelevance. The explanation? The heavy promotion it has received on MTV.
Durst allowed MTV News exclusive access into the making of the band's fourth studio album, which the channel broadcast as a five-part series the week of the album's release. Still, the MTV coverage did not document the creation of an artistic masterpiece, but instead showcased a band desperately trying to find its sound amidst all too familiar circumstances. The series took music fans through the ups and downs of Limp Bizkit resuscitation. Following guitarist Wes Borland's well-known departure, the band decided to forsake their definitive rap-rock sound: Lacking creative inspiration, they resorted to recording cover songs, trying to rekindle the magic of their rap-rock version of "Faith." The shortage of imagination led Durst to find his muse in Britney Spears, channeling his anger towards her denial of their "relationship" into the sort of angry lyrics for which Limp Bizkit is known. The band even committed to tour dates on the Summer Sanitarium tour before the album was finished, still lacking a guitarist: a mistake that could have been avoided had Bono taken Fred aside during the "What's Going On" recordings to remind him of U2's Pop-debacle. And to top it all off, after collaborating with the celebrity rap icon of the moment, Snoop Dogg, Bizkit finally acquired a guitarist and produced some heavier material only to have Interscope-head Jimmy Iovine tell them to stick to the rap-rock sound epitomized on "Nookie."
Although most of these events are already well known to the public, the MTV audience in particular, the documentary offered Limp Bizkit the chance to tell their side of the story, showing how they recovered from adversity. Despite its pretensions, what the series really did was offer Fred the opportunity to try to further cement his celebrity status: biz-ness as usual.
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