Oh shit—the game just changed again. Limp Bizkit has emerged from a ten-year hiatus from being popular to drop the video for their pant-tightener of a comeback single, “Ready To Go,” which features Lil Wayne laying down a guest verse. It might seem like an odd combo, but Weezy’s got form when it comes to terrible rock music, having previously paid more than just lip service to the genre by actually releasing 2009’s nu-rock family funeral, Rebirth.
However, his commitment to having awful taste was only truly cemented when he became the Justin Timberlake to Fred Durst’s MySpace, signing the band to his label Young Money in February of 2012. “Ready to Go” is Bizkit’s first Young Money single, and the first of their tracks to include a proper rapper since 1999’s legitimately good stoner-rap joint “N 2 Together Now” with Method Man. It’s also been uploaded to Vimeo (meaning that Limp Bizkit are serious artists now), so I thought it deserved a bit of an examination.
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Let’s begin at the beginning: America is now the sort of place where Limp Bizkit logos have replaced traffic signs. Limp Bizkit aren’t just a nu-metal band, or a shortcut to the cringe mechanisms of a generation of twenty-somethings, they’re also a physical place. A place where every traffic violation is presumably punished by a man with a “chainsaw” who “will skin your ass raw,” where the army where Red Yankees caps, where women try to dance to metal on podiums and where the word “fuck” still shocks.
Sure enough, the track itself opens with Fred screaming “GO FUCK YOURSELF!” at no one in particular. Welcome home, old friend; your rage is just as directionless as it ever was.
This shot shows Fred stopping to meet some fans. These particular ones don’t definitely drive forklifts for a living, but they probably do, in the same way that not all cab drivers are serial killers. If you think that was snarky, intellectual snobbery, belt up. It’s only getting worse from here.
Cut to Fred arriving at a venue in full 2011 snapback swag. Yes, he’s a little behind the streetwear curve with that Day-Glo number perched on his big bald fucking head, but give him a break guys, he’s 42 years old!
Jesus, he really is 42. This is Fred doing “Glaswegian Alcoholic In Stolen FUBU Hoodie Swag” and knocking it completely out of the park.
On paper, three-day-old grey stubble and a quilted MCA tribute hoodie made by his road manager’s wife for her Etsy site are not a winning combination. In real life, it’s just as awful as it is on paper.
If Fred Durst was a Mortal Kombat character, his special move would be the Hammered Wedding Dad Simian Wigga Shuffle, and to execute it you’d have to press A, B, then select, then mash the keypad with your fist and live with your parents well into your thirties.
Can you believe we’re only 37 seconds into the song?!
This is Fred’s guitarist, Wes Borland, applying his stage make up. There’s nothing snarky or mean-spirited to say about Wes Borland; he’s a genuinely talented eccentric who should probably be ranked alongside the likes of Mike Patton and Buzz Osborne in that weird school of inventive and imaginative 90s American rock musicians. He’s also a more than accomplished oil painter.
Sidenote: he gets his black contact lenses from the people who did the contacts for Babylon 5. The more you know.
At 0:43, just when he’s being tight with his bros, it sounds exactly like Fred’s saying, “We’re drinking jizz / till we pass out and fall on the floor.” But azlyrics.com says he’s saying, “We’re drinking gin / till we pass out and fall on the floor.”
But you should never trust lyrics websites. They’re run by liars. He’s definitely saying “jizz,” maybe for the same reasons as Jenna in that 30 Rock episode where she writes an intentionally innuendo-filled parody song so that Weird Al can’t parody her. Do you watch 30 Rock? It’s pretty much the exact opposite of Limp Bizkit.
The image of Fred Durst laying unconscious on the floor of a frat house with jizz all around his mouth might be a discomfiting one, but Wes’s costume game is still really, really strong. He’s like a Guitar Center-sponsored version of Blue Man Group. He’s also probably quite good company at a dinner party, at least until Fred Durst turns up with bottles of jizz. Then it’s game over.
Is this a Make-A-Wish kid? Poor little guy. It’s probably a competition winner who’s destined to spend the evening getting too drunk on free Jäger and spitting into Fred Durst’s ear until he’s discretely led away by Fred’s personal security. That or Florida Man.
“Throw them fingers up and fingerfuck the sky!” Oh, you.
It’s true, though. A man who is tired of finger-blasting is tired of life. If you’re not still finger-blasting chicks and/or the sky at 42, then you’re not living, my friend, and that’s God’s honest truth.
Oh wow, the quilted hoodie is actually a crust-punk Snuggie romper onesie. Which is so distracting I literally only just noticed that for some reason there’s a shark in the background and it took me about 12 attempts to get a semi-decent screengrab.
Then a not-unattractive lady turns up, pushing a child in a stroller across a road. It’s not a particularly extraordinary scene and at this stage it’s difficult to figure out why she’s in the video.
But then, suddenly, Weezy and a few of his boys appear (sorry for cropping you out, anonymous grunt #3) and they begin gesturing in the not unattractive lady’s direction.
Wait, what is she doing? Are you serious? The not-unattractive lady is pushing her baby away!
Ohhhhh, she’s a slut. Totally had me for a few seconds there, I genuinely believed that a woman in a Limp Bizkit video might not be a slut.
Weezy opens with, “What the fuck is up? / Fuck the world, buss a nut.” Which—without wishing to take a turn for the Pitchfork—is everything that was wrong and right about nu-metal and, by extension, male adolescence circa-2001, conveyed in 11 syllables. If this track were a room, Weezy would be the rug that tied it together.
We’re winding down now, and Wes is showering off his body make-up post-show, which brings to mind Iggy Pop defending punk rock on Peter Gzowski’s CBC show in 1977:
“I don’t know Johnny Rotten, but I’m sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise is, in fact, the brilliant music of a genius. And that music is so powerful that it’s quite beyond my control and, ah… when I’m in the grips of it I don’t feel pleasure and I don’t feel pain.”
That said, Pop’s quote might have been slightly heavy-handed language to describe a video with this scene in it:
Previously by Robert Foster – Reviewed: The Worst Music Video Ever Starring the World’s Biggest Dickhead
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