Limp Bizkit - Significant Other

Limp Bizkit spent 1997 and 1998 as a support act with one novelty hit to their name. Then they hired Terry Date, a producer with Pantera, White Zombie, and Deftones behind him, cut this record between November 1998 and February 1999, and came out the other side as the biggest rock band in America. Significant Other debuted at No. 1 with 643,874 copies in its first week and went on to seven times platinum in the States.

Date's contribution is audible immediately. Where the debut sounded like a band shouting in a garage, this one is sculpted: Wes Borland's guitar tones shift track to track, John Otto and Sam Rivers lock into grooves with real weight behind them, and DJ Lethal's scratching sits in the mix as an instrument. "Nookie" was the song that broke the band on radio and MTV, "Re-Arranged" became their only No. 1 on the modern rock chart, and "Break Stuff" is still the two minutes and forty-eight seconds most people picture when they think of this era, for better and worse. Method Man turns up on "N 2 Gether Now" with DJ Premier producing, while Scott Weiland and Jonathan Davis both appear on "Nobody Like You" and Les Claypool wanders through elsewhere.

Everything that followed, the record-breaking sales of Chocolate Starfish, the Woodstock '99 fallout, the decade of backlash, traces back to this album. It is the sound of nu metal arriving at full commercial force, produced far better than the genre's reputation suggests, and it has aged into a legitimately fun listen for anyone who was there.

This double LP spreads the album across four sides in a gatefold sleeve via Flip and Interscope.