Disclaimer. It's late and i'm tired and i came up with all of this off the top of my head based on my hazy memories of the nu-metal era, nearly two decades ago. It has not been fact checked. That is all. Proceed with caution.
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One of the young 'uns at work today undermined a threat i made to another coworker by saying, "What's Limp Bizkit?" and i have been thinking about that for hours now. And i finally think i have an interesting metaphor to explain.
Limp Bizkit was a terrible band that we absolutely could not get enough of from about 1999-2003 or so (also known as the exact years i was in high school). They had a bunch of big hits, most notably a song called Nookie. It's honestly not that bad of a song per se, but it was the track that opened the floodgates for rap metal to enter the mainstream and ruin the airwaves for half a decade or more. Limp Bizkit continued to pump out hits of low to middling quality for years after, featuring angsty teenage lyrics perfectly represented by titles like Break Stuff, My Generation, and Eat You Alive.
Only...that's not exactly true. They weren't a terrible band. They were just somehow less than the sum of their parts. If you take the band apart, it turns out they were mostly very good musicians with one glaring weak link.
Wes Borland is one of the greatest guitarists of his generation. Quote me on that, i don't care. He's a little weird and off the wall, and his subsequent projects Big Dumb Face and Black Light Burns are some of the most interesting entries you could possibly find in the nu-metal canon.
John Otto and Sam Rivers are both classically-trained musicians, comprising the group's rhythm section. They're beyond competent and stand out majestically in a field of their peers in the early-00s nu metal scene.
DJ Lethal was already a legend before Limp Bizkit even began, earning notoriety on the turntables for Irish rap sensations House of Pain, of Jump Around fame. How he ended up in Limp Bizkit after that, i'll never know, unless i google it.
And then there's Fred Durst, a cranky white boy from Florida, a state which has an entire stereotype named after their men. Overconfident and undercompetent, he shout-rapped inane verses with lyrics you could only love if you hated your dad.
Here's the metaphor part.
It's like if you were trying to assemble the Avengers, and you started with two very talented, highly skilled masters of their craft, like Black Widow and Hawkeye. You bring in a living legend to increase your public image, and they also happen to be very good at what they do, like Captain America. And you top it off with a bad boy who maybe doesn't follow the rules because he doesn't know them, but can't stop innovating, forging his own path, and spends way too much time cultivating a specific image, like Iron Man.
Then you make Iron Fist their leader. A whiny, cocky white kid who is hilariously outclassed by everyone around him, but the universe constantly proves him right and rewards him for his incomprehensible actions even though no one watching actually wants to see him succeed. Yes. That guy is in charge.
The end. Might rewrite this later, using facts, but probably won't.
