YMMV / Limp Bizkit

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• Audience-Alienating Era: Results May Vary can't be entirely blamed for the downfall of Nu Metal, but it sure didn't help. At the very least, it stopped any momentum the band had right in its tracks. Without Wes Borland, Limp Bizkit's direction became unclear, and it wasn't any more clear when people finally got to hear the album, the end result of multiple scrapped concepts so the band could have something to show for all the difficulty they had making it (which is best explained in the Trivia section). As such, the album lives up to its title by pulling in different directions, like a more "emotional" sound ("Underneath The Gun," "Build A Bridge"), attempts to recapture their rougher early rap-metal sound, some Post-Grunge by way of Staind, and an inexplicable cover of The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" with a Speak-And-Spell(?) on the bridge. Whatever they were trying to accomplish, fans didn't respond well to any of these elements - Fred Durst's attempt at being more vulnerable and sympathetic was a particularly tough sell - and Results May Vary proved to be a huge misstep at the worst possible time, right when the band was suffering from serious overexposure. Thus, critics had too much fun tearing into the album. Even the band's biggest supporters tend to agree that Results May Vary was a low point.
• Broken Base: Even without factoring in the band's still-vocal hatedom.
  • 2000's Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water is often considered the band's best, or at least definitive, album, but it does have its detractors that view it as a shallow rehash of 1999's Significant Other.
  • 2003's Results May Vary was, well, eaten alive upon its release, even by a lot of fans, not helped by Limp Bizkit's general overexposure around that period. It may surprise you to know, however, that the album did gain a few vocal supporters over time, who appreciated that the band took some risks and tried different sounds and more emotional material on the album.
  • 2005's The Unquestionable Truth is either a refreshing new direction for the band, or it's a clumsy attempt to invoke the feel of a Rage Against the Machine record.
• Condemned by History: As the Trope Codifier of Nu Metal, they caught the brunt of the genre's backlash, and it is generally agreed that they were responsible for nu metal's later association with late 90s/early 00s frat boys and Testosterone Poisoning, and for shifting it from being music for the misfits escaping their tormentors and exorcising their demons to being music for the bullies who tormented them and fed their trauma. There is a reason why it is mostly agreed that they bore the brunt of the responsibility for destroying the genre.
• Ending Fatigue: After Still Sucks was praised for its extremely brisk pacing, it has been noted that perhaps an issue with previous albums was that they simply dragged on for far longer than Limp Bizkit's style was designed to support. Compare Still Sucks managing to squeeze 12 songs into 32 minutes, to Chocolate Starfish being 15 songs long yet having a run time of 74 minutes.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Slipknot, Metallica, Linkin Park and Eminem fans.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: A literal example. While Limp Bizkit has received a significant backlash in their native US since their heyday in the late 1990s (the planned North American leg of one tour was cancelled due to low ticket sales), the band still has a reasonably large following in several European countries, namely Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands.
• Growing the Beard: The Unquestionable Truth, Part 1 is around the point when critics started to view Limp Bizkit as more cohesive than they had been prior, with Gold Cobra and Still Sucks going on to receive more positive reviews than their other albums.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The line "Burn this motherfucker down!" from "Full Nelson" became this when Fred Durst’s house burned down in 2019.
  • The music video for "Rollin'" prominently features the Twin Towers. Bizkit even received a letter from the World Trade Centre, thanking him for featuring them in their video, the day before 9/11.
• He Really Can Act: Fred Durst surprised many critics with his acting in Population 436, and his directorial debut, The Education of Charlie Banks.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Fred Durst's legendarily horrible attempt at playing a guitar solo, followed by this: "SHAVE MY FRIENDS TONIGHT!"
  • "Can we please keep talking about Fred Durst?" - Fred Durst
  • The line from "Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)" regarding "Ladies, fellas, and the people who don't give a fuck" has led to jokes about Limp Bizkit being an extremely progressive band, giving non-binary people representation all the way back in 2000.
• Misaimed Fandom: Durst regrets that many of the band's songs, which were written as a release for being bullied when he was younger, ended up being popular favorites among the kind of people that used to bully him.
  Fred Durst: For years I looked into the crowd and saw a bunch of bullies and assholes who tortured me and ruined my life. They were using my music as fuel to torture other people, even dressing like me. The music was being misinterpreted, and the irony affected me and we stepped away... I don't even listen to any type of music that's like Limp Bizkit at all. I love jazz music and sad music. I'm a sentimental guy. I'm a romantic guy.
• Mis-blamed: Nobody can exactly pinpoint where Woodstock '99 went to hell (because it was such an almighty clusterfuck on almost every conceivable level; important things like food and restroom convenience were completely ruined). As a result, whether Durst is to blame or not has become a topic of debate. In fact, during the concert Fred Durst was giving advice such as "Don't let anybody get hurt." as he saw things were already getting out of hand... although him downright sending aggressive messages for the crowd in "Break Stuff" wound up cancelling any other good intentions.
• Nightmare Fuel: Now has its own page.
• Signature Song: By album...
  • Three Dollar Bill, Y'all$: "Counterfeit" or "Faith"
  • Significant Other: "Nookie" or "Break Stuff"
  • Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water: "Hot Dog", "My Way", or "Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)"
  • New Old Songs: "Crushed" or "N 2gether Now"
  • Results May Vary: "Eat You Alive" or "Behind Blue Eyes"
  • The Unquestionable Truth, Part 1: "The Truth" or "The Priest"
  • Gold Cobra: The title track, "Shark Attack", or "Walking Away"
  • Still Sucks: "Out Of Style", "Dirty Rotten Bizkit", "Dad Vibes", or "Pill Popper"
    • Overall: Four-way tie between "Nookie", "Break Stuff", "Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)", and "Behind Blue Eyes". A possible fifth is "Take a Look Around", specially as Mission: Impossible II boosts its recognition.
• Stuck in Their Shadow: Any member not named Fred Durst or Wes Borland is a non-entity to the general public, though Sam Rivers and John Otto get some respect in bass and drum circles, respectively.
• Tough Act to Follow: Mike Smith, given he was replacing Wes Borland, the one member that everyone gave a pass to.
• Vindicated by History: Wes Borland, Sam Rivers, and John Otto. Borland was praised back during their original run for his creative and unorthodox riffing styles and his technical ability and continues to be, while Rivers and Otto gained recognition later on as a similarly creative and technically gifted rhythm section with a flair for the memorable, and are now respected in bass and drum communities.
  • Hell, beginning in the late 2010s this even applies to Fred Durst himself, since it's become increasingly apparent that his douchebag frat-boy persona was (mostly) an act to market the band, with many people praising the level of consistency in his performances, given that he sounds about the same now in his early fifties as he did in their prime.
  • The band's 2021 Lollapalooza set was met with a lot of jokes about Fred's bizarre appearance (see below). And yet, they also got a positive crowd response, and all the jokes helped the set go viral and be met with a lot of old and new fans who found Limp Bizkit's old hits to be a lot of fun after all. Months later, those same fans eagerly snatched up the warmly-received Still Sucks, capping off an incredibly unlikely comeback.
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • For their appearance at Lollapalooza 2021, Fred Durst decided to wear what looked like '80s dad clothing, complete with tinted sunglasses and a handlebar mustache. He managed to look weirder than even Wes Borland himself. In fairness, this look was meant to play off of the song "Dad Vibes", but it still managed to look jarring.
  • This is quite obviously Wes Borland's bread and butter.

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