At the start of the 2000s, Limp Bizkit were the biggest band in rock and metal. It was a position that was always going to be hard to maintain, but when the drop off came, it was brutal; the departure of an iconic member, scathing reviews from basically every music outlet on the planet and the band being held up as figureheads of a nu metal genre that was quickly dying in front of the world all hit at once. Even when the band wrote a song that ripped off some post-hardcore legends and roped in some Hollywood superstars, it couldn’t stop the slide.
Although Limp Bizkit had released one of the biggest albums of the era with 2000’s Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, a record that had sold an astonishing 1,054,511 copies in its first week of release in the US, there was a significant backlash against them. Kerrang! Magazine voted it the worst album of the year, and Limp Bizkit as the worst band.
