i did this for you (a track-by-track encounter with limp bizkit’s “gold cobra”)
so i learned a while ago that limp bizkit was releasing a brand-new album in the year of our lord 2011 and that struck me as incredibly ridiculous so of course i started following fred durst on twitter and getting hella excited in the most ironic way possible (hooray for america)
during the build-up to the album’s release and inevitable failure, durst spent a lot of time talking about how it was a “return to the glory days” like that was an intentional choice and not the result of never ever listening to a rap song that didn’t also feature a guitar solo and a video with skateboards in it.
anyway, through the magic of spotify, i can now listen to “Gold Cobra” without even wasting the time downloading a stolen copy so, in the name of all things that are holy and good, i have pledged to a friend that i will listen to this monumental piece of music from start to finish and share my impressions
“Introbra”
i dunno if anybody gets this or not but, you see, the title of this track is a combination of the words “intro” and “cobra.” these guys are way more clever than anybody gives them credit for. that is like ONE WORD. made up of two completely different words. seriously guys, you have to respect that.
the song itself is not really a song, it is a lot of feedback and a bassline over and over and a ton of simultaneous layers of people talking about “scary stuff” and also what sounds like the band yelling “HOOTIE HOO” in the background because it sounds way cooler when white guys in board shorts do it instead of Juvenile.
“Bring it Back”
you might think ‘bring it back’ here is a reference to the tradition of dj’s spinning old tracks and back-spinning the record to the top of the break but that’s obviously not the case since limp bizkit’s hip hop frame of reference begins and ends with the judgement night soundtrack. instead, this tune appears to be about ‘bringing back’ the glory days of the late nineties, when the goatees were manicured, the board shorts were colorful, and americans were clamoring for the street knowledge of guys named “fred” and “chester”.
there is a whole lot of ultra-distorted guitar here, in case you forgot what it sounds like, and tons of those squealy guitar harmonics, in case you forget you’re listening to a rock band. there is also a drum machine set to ‘hyphy’ and it’s going “hella retarded” but not in the way you might think.
at one point in the song, durst raps “tell me where the ‘good ones’ are at” and, after careful examination, i have figured out that he’s referring to black guys like method man that will stoop to rapping alongside his porky-and-dorky ass.
“Gold Cobra”
guys, here is the thing. i could sit here and try to tell you how goofy this shit is but i think, in this case, it works better if you just check out the words of mr. durst himself:
[AD-LIBS]
Yeah. Uh. Yeah. Check this. Yeah. C’mon. Check this. Fuck you.
Wakin’ up, aggravated
Stupid shit, man i hate it
Bitches lyin’, bitches cryin’
Suicidal, get in line (ed: i have no fucking idea what this means)
Gettin’ mine, bouncin’ freaks
Losin’ sleep, countin’ sheep
Absolute, cashin’ loot
Man in black packin’ heat
okay, so, a couple of things worth noticing here:
- i think it’s worth mentioning, right up front, that this was written by a grown-ass man and not an angry teenager.
- this alleged rap song features the exact same cadence as ‘we didn’t start the fire.’
- fred durst has never, ever, ever, EVER “packed heat” in his life. the wearing black i can believe, but i don’t think fred durst is packing heat any more than kreayshawn keeps that ‘work’ in her trunk.
“Shark Attack”
limp bizkit, i have your number. i have figured out the clever reason you named this song “shark attack.” it’s because the intro of the song is a synth bass doing the “DUM DUM DUM DUM” cello riff from “Jaws”. somebody played this at practice for fred and he got really stoked and started writing lyrics about shark attacks.
in case you forgot that these guys were “bringing it back”, the first lyric in this song is “ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE DAYS” so you can have a little ‘break stuff’ flashback and maybe rape some ladies at woodstock ‘99 or set a speaker tower on fire.
also this tune marks the first appearance of the word “homie” on this record, a trend which i’m sure will repeat frequently throughout, but which is always amusing the first time it’s encountered. durst has a very recognizable way of saying ‘homie’ and he always sounds a little bit apologetic for not knowing a better word.
realtalk: there’s a series of lines that starts with “i’ve had enough drama” and as soon as i heard it i started counting the lines it took before he got to “obama” and, sure enough, there it is, three lines later. keepin it street-level right here.
“Shotgun”
this song is about how everybody in fred durst’s neighborhood has a shotgun. that’s probably a good idea. you need something to defend whatever porn house you’ve leased to live in for the summer while you trawl strip clubs and record ostensible ‘rap’ albums.
as a side note: i admit to being woefully unfamiliar with limp bizkit’s earlier material, so can somebody let me know whether they’ve always been this reliant on gun talk? i swear i’ve heard more references to firearms here already than on the entire waka flocka record.
“Douche Bag”
guys, pay attention, cuz this is important: if you are a douche-bag, fred durst is gonna fuck you. fuck you up. also, “reality will leave you feeling terrible”, which is 100% true if you are an overweight guy in your mid-40’s that spends most of your days screaming awkwardly about fucking up douche bags.
also, to reinforce the previous point, durst talks a lot here about BLOWING PEOPLE AWAY and not metaphorically. if this dude keeps it up, Trick Trick is gonna steal his chain.
“Walking Away”
fred is singing here, and poorly, but he’s still far better at singing than rapping, which makes this the most listenable song on here so far. not that i would suggest anybody actually seek out this piece of shit and consume it, but if you were to do so, you’d realize how sad that previous statement is. it’s not hard to be the most listenable song on this record. prior to hearing this, i was convinced it was “Introbra.”
“Loser”
unfortunately not a beck cover but still revolves around the lyrics “i’m a loser.” this song is really slow and has doubled-up hi-hats and i get the distinct impression that this is an attempt to make a young money-style “love track” for rock kids. and it’s every bit as awful as that sounds.
this song has an actual guitar solo and it’s a doozy, the whole thing is played through some kind of harmonizer that creates a fake iron maiden second-guitar and sounds like it was ripped from the sunset strip circa 1988.
there is a weird thing i’ve noticed frequently on this record where the engineer takes what is apparently a ‘live drummer’ and edits the tracks and runs them through a ton of effects. The end result is ultra-quantized ‘live drums’ that sound like they came from a drum machine. which seems like a lot of trouble. buy an MPC you turkeys.
“Autotunage”
first off, this track begins with fred durst singing acapella through autotune and saying stuff like THIS SOUNDS WACK. HOW DO PEOPLE MAKE SONGS OUT OF THIS.
two things, fred. first, making fun of autotune in 2011 is not the hip iconoclastic move you are thinking it is. secondly, you make songs out of that by singing through it — something durst apparently missed since the meat-and-potatoes of this song comprises his usual tuneless rapping fed through a very subtle amount of pitch correction.
you can go to youtube right now and find the ‘t-pain setttings’ in like sixty different videos and it’s pretty obvious that is what they were going for with a song named ‘autotunage.’ it’s also kind of hilarious because autotune is actually kinda tricky to sing through — you have to eliminate vibrato completely from your voice or the pitch will jump around like the voice of a pubescent thirteen-year-old.
so the end result of this is that, after spending a full minute doing a ‘comedy sketch’ about how dumb autotune is and how it makes everything sound good with zero effort, durst and co. proceed to completely misuse the effect and make something that actually sounds awful. great look dudes.
“90.2.10”
this is a song that was obviously penned on the second day of the ninetieth month of two thousand and ten. JUST KIDDING. its actually a song about beverly hills 90210. JUST KIDDING AGAIN. its actually a song about how fred durst only invites “naked ladies makin out with each other” to his parties, which makes the women-to-men ratio “ninety to ten”. that time i’m not kidding. that is seriously what the song is about.
also durst name-drops raekwon? is there precedent for this? have they ever worked together? would raekwon have any reason whatsoever to go to one of little freddy’s jams other than the aforementioned naked ladies? i have a hard time believing this.
“Why Try?”
yeah, exactly. i feel the same way. don’t try. don’t do this again. nobody wants to hear this. there is no point to trying. at this point the only release will come with the sweet embrace of death.
“Killer in You”
this song starts out with some 808 drums which are usually a good thing but this time they don’t even get four bars into the song before a guitar starts squawking all over the place. and oh boy, the lyrics are some eminem-lite nonsense about serial killers “showing up with a gat” (there’s the gun chat again.)
“LEATHERFACE IS A PUSSY. HE DON’T COMPARE. I’LL HAVE YOU SHITTIN IN YOUR MOTHERFUCKIN’ UNDERWEAR”
and that’s that. the album ends with those 808 drums quickly fading out and that’s that. no “outroba” or anything. the ending of this record is like the end of the monty python movie where the cops show up and pull the plug on the procedure, except instead of the cops, it was probably whoever floated the money for this awful endeavor waking up from a fever dream and realizing the huge mistake he’s in the process of making. and, in that resounding silence, is a metaphor for the crushing emptiness of… oh fuck it, i can’t even joke around about this shit. this is an awful record.
FINAL VERDICT:
did any of you guys have a friend that was into, like, metal or whatever, and then got into rap and suddenly started talking in faux-ebonics and started wearing flat-brim 5950s and huge nike kicks and stuff like that on the regular? maybe he bought a couple snoop records but never really progressed beyond a surface-level appreciation of the genre and is sort of stuck in the opinions and the aesthetic of 1996? listening to this album is like being stuck in a conversation with that guy for 45 minutes
