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- - - - - - - - - - - - Nov. 7, 2000 | Sometimes it's hard to know whether Fred Durst really is the angriest dog in the world or just another high school loser getting the last laugh. His lyrics may be dumb, but the joker knows that commodified rage is the surest route to rock star success -- if not a spot on the permanent guest list at the Playboy Mansion. The frontman for Limp Bizkit has become one of pop's most public icons, instantly flagged by his backward, red Yankees baseball cap, his chinful of goat scruff and his ever-present arm candy (today Carmen Electra, tomorrow the world). In the few short years since he gave up a career as a Jacksonville, Fla., tattoo artist to become a heavy-rock poster boy, Durst has accumulated quite a résumé: a cameo role in one of Gen X porn auteur Matt Zane's "Backstage Sluts" videos and an even more notorious role at Woodstock 99 (aka Rapestock), where the singer's command to "break stuff" anticipated a white riot the Clash's Joe Strummer could only fantasize about. ("Was I fanning them at Woodstock? Fuck, no. We were doing a Limp Bizkit show, same as we always do," Durst told Revolver magazine.) The singer also snagged a senior vice president post at his label, Interscope, became a Hollywood player and marked his mainstream breakthrough as the voice that launched a thousand lap dances with the whine and grind of Bizkit's 1999 hit "Nookie," which became the national anthem of strip clubs from coast to saline-enhanced coast.
Though Durst seems convinced that everyone hates him -- everyone but the fans, man, and the dudes at Napster -- he deserves some kind of due, if only for having the brains or moves to make the music industry work overtime to accommodate one more mediocre blowhard. And he has gotten it: Along with Eminem and Kid Rock, he's part of the wigga holy trinity, even though his straight-outta-the-sandbox raps make Slim Shady sound as eloquent as Shakespeare, and his streak of Puritan misogyny makes Rock's early-morning stoned pimpin' seem like a feminist conspiracy. Like his fellow Caucasian rappers, who each have made bank emulating hip-hop style, Durst belongs to a neo-cracker elite, contributing to a national trailer-park zeitgeist whose prime movers include Howard Stern, a bunch of those bone crushers in the World Wrestling Federation and Wisconsin truck driver Susan Hawk from "Survivor." There's probably no better time to proudly call yourself "a redneck fucker from Jacksonville." That's exactly what Durst does on "Livin' It Up," one of the more, um, personal tracks on "Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water," Limp Bizkit's new album, which boasts a title so improbable it could be a parody of one of Prince's late-'80s conceits. Between samples from the Eagles' "Life in the Fast Lane," the singer outlines his style secrets: "Pay me no mind/I seen 'Fight Club' about 28 times/And I'm'a keep my pants saggin'/Keep a skateboard/A spray can for the taggin'/And I'm gonna keep a lot of girls on my bandwagon."
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