There is a rich, aging Floridian who wears red hats, says horrible things about women, insists that he’s a victim and flirts with Vladimir Putin. Many Americans consider him to be a terrible human. But to some, he remains unassailable -- almost godlike.

His name, of course, is Fred Durst.

Context is everything. For example, “What’s up bro” can sound like either a fraternal welcome or a threatening provocation, depending on the circumstances. What some people consume as news sure looks and sounds a lot like propaganda to others. My point is less about the relativism of truth -- although I suppose it’s partially that. I obviously believe that there are such things as facts and lies and bias and echo chambers. But, it’s also that, in the age of “likes” and Tweets and algorithms, our push for cognitive closure comes at the expense of perspective.

Never before have we so desperately needed to be right. In the moment. All the time. This cultural and technological imperative, exacerbated by social media and identity politics and machine learning and psychographic sorting, has left us gorged on information but starved for truth. Never before has the relationship between signifier and signified appeared so close but, in actuality, been so completely out of reach. Want proof? Look no further than Limp Bizkit’s frontman.

On the surface, Fred Durst looks like a dull misogynist who gave permission to hormonal frat boys to break shit. For the last quarter century, I assumed him to be that, and worse. He was a charmless singer who could not sing and could only barely rap, leading a crappy Nu Metal band. He stole any good ideas he ever had from Korn, The Beastie Boys and Nirvana. He was the guy who might have slept with Britney Spears, but who definitely wanted the world to think he did. He was a wayward soul. An actual criminal. A certified misogynist. Though I barely thought about Durst or his band, it all seemed sadly obvious. I’d never heard an entire Limp Bizkit album. I’d never seen them perform live. But I didn’t need much convincing. That Fred Durst sucked seemed like settled law. I never even considered another perspective.

Then came the dueling Woodstock 99 documentaries: “Peace, Love and Rage” and “Trainwreck.” One on HBO and one on Netflix. Both featuring wild and disturbing footage of neo-hippie idealism consumed by the searing anger of populism. Both highlighting unabashed misogyny and assault. Both describing four days of dirty bare feet, dirty Doc Martens, body paint, too much vodka and not enough water. And, most of all, both making it very clear that, if there was one person to blame for everything, it was William Frederick Durst. 

It’s hard to find much evidence for the counter-argument. The villainization of Fred Durst is almost too easy. It fits. In the prevailing discourse. “Fred Durst” is basically synonymous with “douche.” And that definition is not new. As popular as Limp Bizkit was between 1999 and 2003, they were more so reviled. They appeared to be derivative and undeserving of their massive success. To many, the band’s frontman was simply an under-talented, garbage-spewing bro. Even then, twenty years ago, the blame for the Woodstock 99 had been placed firmly on his shoulders. To his nominal credit, though, Durst has been consistent in his own defense: He says that he has been the lifelong victim of bullying. He says that he’s not the bad guy. He’s just trying to have a good time. He’s the messenger of a story about rejection and rage. He’s horrified that his band’s music was co-opted by misogynists. He knows his band sucks. We don’t get that he gets it. In fact, we are the bullies. Not him. He’s the one who’s constantly being picked on.

As I watched those Woodstock docs, I became more enthralled with the facts but less convinced of their conclusions. The narratives and the ensuing parade of think pieces all seemed so sure of themselves. There was a mountain of evidence. A long line of talking heads. A total insistence on the thesis: Limp Bizkit was to blame. Fred Durst did it.

But Durst’s (unwritten) autobiography is an inversion. It’s the story of an outsider. A failed breakdancer. A terrible singer. An incompetent tattoo artist. A creative dude who was constantly reminded of his failings but who, nevertheless, worked and worked. His telling is the story of a lost soul who loved music and craved friends and connection. For him, the joke that was Limp Bizkit was obvious. He understood that everything about the band -- their grating news, their ridiculous name and their tuneless singer -- was patently awful. According to Durst, he wasn’t simply in on the joke, he was the one who’d written the joke. 

Durst’s version suggests that his rage was the rage of a victim. If he was a monster, he felt more like Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris than like the Cobra Kai or the Malfoy brothers. He wasn’t Tyler Durden, he was the Edward Norton character. His defense rests on the premise that Limp Bizkit was the tip of the wick of a powder-keg that they did not create. They did not book Alanis and Jewel and Sheryl Crow to play alongside Korn, Rage, ICP and Kid Rock at Woodstock 99. They did not design the toxic, combustible recipe. They were the canaries in the coal mine for a culture that was obsessed with Pam & Tommy and Britney’s body and TMZ. They were nothing compared to the meth-addled Jackasses whose masochism we celebrated. They never could have predicted what those red baseball caps would one day signify.

In fact, if you asked Durst or Wes Borland what it is that they actually do in Limp Bizkit, I suspect that their answer would sound more like “performance art” than “rock and roll.” Borland, with his ghoulish costumes and guitars as weapons, covering up for the shy, quiet, church going boy underneath. Durst, with his shaved head, thick chest, stubble and shorts, fronting for the guy who was never popular, never the star at anything, always getting dumped. Durst and Borland were emphatic: we are not the bad guys!

That’s kind of the thing with Limp Bizkit and their critics. They are making the same claims and drawing the opposite conclusions. What Limp Bizkit hoped would capture the rage of the victim, instead galvanized the anger of the assailant. For whatever reason -- naïveté, bias, desperation -- Durst and Borland did not understand that Korn was different from NIN and Ministry. They did not discern the space between Rage Against the Machine’s liberalism and Kid Rock’s populism. And they could not see the white maleness of it all. And so, if Limp Bizkit was (or is) performance art, it was art that was woefully unaware of its implications. They could not see how they would be perceived or who they were actually giving voice to. As commerce, it proved to be highly successful. As performance art, it backfired. As music, well, we haven’t even talked about that yet.

I never liked Limp Bizkit’s music. It was not made for me and I was not made for it. I assumed that their cover of “Faith,” from 1997, was simply a bad joke -- an intentionally not enjoyable novelty. I thought “Nookie,” “Re-Arranged” and “Break Stuff” were less thrilling than anything from RATM and less artful than Korn and, certainly, Tool. It was music that upset my stomach and grated on my ears. And yet, I kind of understood the appeal. Just as Limp Bizkit was coming up, I got to see Rage Against the Machine play live twice in New York, indoors, for a couple thousand people. I stood safely away from the scrum but close enough to feel a force I’d never seen before or since. Zack and Tom were functionally conducting the sea of (mostly) young men. They could bring the pot to a boil and then let it simmer and then bring it back to a boil and then let it all spill over. At times it felt like mind control. Other times it felt like a tidal wave. It went far beyond excitement. And it was kind of terrifying. In Rage’s hands, it felt militant, but progressive. In lesser hands, I feared the worst. By any measure, Limp Bizkit were lesser hands. 

Having seen Rage play live and understanding the through line between Tool and Korn and System of a Down, it never really surprised me that Limp Bizkit got so popular. And it certainly never surprised me that they were (and are) so despised. What has surprised me is how hardened we have become in our view of the band and how long they have persevered. For twenty five years now, we have assumed that Limp Bizkit was beneath contempt. Meanwhile, those same five guys -- Fred, Wes, Sam, John and DJ Lethal -- have, for the most part, stayed true.

When you are twenty-eight, as Fred Durst was at the dawn of his fame, you are probably old enough to understand the distance between signifier and signified -- that what you say and how it is received are never the same thing. But there was always something wide-eyed about Fred Durst. His thesis has been simple: “I was hurt and so I needed some place to put those feelings and so I made music and millions of fans related and that is a good thing.” The antithesis, of course, is that those feelings were disproportionate, misogynistic and violent. The “I’m not crying you’re crying” and “the jokes not on me it's on you” have been tired for years. It’s exhausting for anyone who cares -- fans, critics, journalists, documentarians. But maybe especially for Fred Durst, who stands in the crosshairs, and Wes Borland, who’s gone to great lengths to undo his stardom. 

Having watched and re-watched those Woodstock 99 docs, I became genuinely curious about Limp Bizkit for the first time in my life. I wondered if, in middle age, Durst’s pose had changed at all. And also, if mine had. It seemed to me that the answers to the mystery -- the appeal of the closed case -- resided somewhere in “Still Sucks.” The sixth studio album from Limp Bizkit took nearly a decade to complete and has been compared to “Chinese Democracy,” except without the high hopes and great expectations. Its first single was released in 2013 -- eight years before the album came out -- and then, in the end, was not even included on the album. “Still Sucks” was a joke without a punchline. Until, eventually, it arrived. 

Although it's occasionally heavy, “Still Sucks'' is not especially a “Nu Metal” album. Even when it is heavy, it's more NIN than Korn or Slipknot. But, also, it has several Pop Emo moments and several Old School Hip Hop tracks. Middle-aged Limp Bizkit sounds as though they were influenced by The Beastie Boys, Conor Oberst and Justin Timberlake, not Jonathan Davis, Serj Tankian and Maynard Keenan. The album was evidently a massively labored, fraught recording process, full of scrapped sessions and second guessing. In that it's wildly eclectic, it does seem to span time and genre. But, sonically, it survived as one piece. Somehow, “Still Sucks” does not sound fragmented or distracted. In fact, it sounds downright contemporary. 

As the album opens, Limp Bizkit stands their ground. The first two tracks -- “Out of Style” and "Dirty Rotten Bizkit" -- are familiar and expected. Wall shaking, bone crunching guitar with Lethal scratching records and Durst beatboxing. The former is more Nu than Metal, while the latter sticks with the heavy riff and tapers the screeching. What both songs have in common, however, is that they are sonically frenetic and lyrically self-aware. Durst endeavors to keep things jokey and positive, steering clear of obvious traps and constantly reminding us: “We get it -- we suck.” 

Though clearly -- painfully -- self-aware, Durst still clings to his victim status. The guy who once sang “why’s everybody always pickin on me” (on “Full Nelson”) can’t seem to let it go. On “Love the Hate,” he tries his best to troll his trolls:

He the worst white rapper that'll ever be (Haha)

Sure as fuck ain't no Eminem

Looks like he's got Drake's pubes on his chin

It’s two minutes of self-loathing and self-parody. Moreover, it’s among the least interesting songs on the album. Whenever Durst seems consumed by critics, the album buckles. "You Bring Out the Worst in Me" wants to be haunting revenge Metal, but sounds like a kid who got pinched and then has a meltdown that’s tenfold his own hurt. “Empty Hole” — a slow, heavy plodder, like Staind but without a good singer — falls into a similar trap. He’s hurt and he wants to hurt her back…more.

Aside from “divorce albums” and, obviously, “diss tracks,” it’s hard to imagine music so fully consumed with its critics as “Still Sucks.” Durst spends half the record trying to cut off haters at the pass, pre-empting insults, exposing hypocrisy and swimming in snark all so that he cannot be attacked or worse -- genuinely hurt. Given his function in our culture, I understand it. On the other hand, when he’s not on the defense or the attack, he sounds — well — good.

“Dad Vibes,” the album’s first single, is a crude beat and some scratching under Durst’s Mos Def/Q-Tip impressions. It’s miles away from Nu Metal or Rap Rock. It’s just a silly track and an excuse for Durst to dress up in a wig and mustache and pretend that he’s Nathanial Hörnblowér. That being said, he has come a long way as an emcee. The best moments on “Still Sucks” are the ones that heavily borrow from The Beastie Boys. “Turn it Up Bitch” is a two note, bass through the bong, old school Hip Hop track that plugs “Ill Communication” into an Xbox. And “Snacky Poo” is straight “Pauls Boutique,” though less accomplished. It’s got inside jokes, disses, samples and prank phone calls.

When Durst chooses to sing, which he does surprisingly often here, the results are mixed. “Don’t Change” is a mostly acoustic cover of an excellent, not-acoustic INXS song. The original is so good, that the basic melody and structure are hard to ruin. But Michael Hutchence was an elite frontman, while Durst is more like a C- karaoke singer on this one. He fares better on “Barnacle,” which is a trite Punk Metal number about parasites and hangers on. Durst tempers the auto-tune and lets his vocal limitations communicate the hurt of the song. It’s not bad.

On “Goodbye,” though, Durst mostly, finally, redeems himself. The acoustic guitar, maracas and Neptune-ish beats are dead ringers for early aughts JT. Yes -- Limp Bizkit sounds a good deal like Justin Timberlake here. There’s no falsetto. Vocally, Durst is more adequate than good. But there are water metaphors (like “Cry Me a River”), a slippery rhythm and a sensitive, vulnerable vibe. Honestly, it’s the sort of thing my kids would hear on TikTok or Youtube and start singing along to. 

“Still Sucks” is as much a Fred Durst album as it is a Limp Bizkit album. Wes Borland is still prominent — and essential — but the scales have obviously tipped towards the front man. With that shift comes more nostalgia, more self awareness and more Hip Hop, but less fury, less Metal and less artifice. This is absolutely not an album that will change lives, like “Significant Other” once did. And it’s not an album that will change many perspectives, mostly because Durst is not saying anything new and, even if he were, I’m not sure who would be listening. But, in spite of its title, “Still Sucks” is an album flirting with the idea of change. He may be stuck in his own narrative and he may never be released, but you can literally hear Durst trying to find a new voice.

In truth, he’s been trying for decades. After his unexpected success and after Britney and Cristina and the feuds with Eminem and Creed and ICP and Marilyn Manson, Durst took two steps back. He continued to fuck up. He intentionally drove his car into a couple. He got divorced and remarried a bunch. He became Russia’s “useful idiot” after their annexation of Crimea. But, he also directed three, actual feature films. None are especially beloved. That might even be a generous assessment. But each film had a different take on Durst’s platonic characters — victims, bullies and underdogs. He’s not done telling his story — even if his story has already been told. Even if nobody wants to hear it.

As to what it all says about Durst -- whether he was an actor or provocateur or victim or assailant -- the answer is probably “yes.” With the benefit of time, and given the state of masculinity and populism, Limp Bizkit have become no more likable, but perhaps more understandable. At the same time, it’s hard to think of Limp Bizkit as the cause of anything -- including Woodstock 99. This is not to suggest that they are not, on some level, responsible. And it doesn’t justify the shittiness of some of their music or the ignorance of their pose. But, in middle age, they seem more like a dumb joke that was swept up into a sea of dumber and angrier and more hateful jokes. At first, they thought it was all just stupid fun and sweaty moshing and crowd surfing. But, the waves got too big. Eventually, it was a tsunami. And it swallowed them up and spit them back out.

by Matty Wishnow