WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT FRED DURST.

so there was kind of a vacancy for the artist to represent like the bro who wants to drink a few beers and push mosh at the summer music festivals [Music] what's up everybody i'm finn mckenty this is the punk rock nba and let me start by asking you a simple question if i showed you a picture of this and this what is the first thing that comes to your mind i'm willing to bet that it is fred durst and fred durst is one of those people that everybody seems to hate and yet his accomplishments in music speak for themselves limp bizkit were the biggest band in new metal he was the biggest star in the genre so the big question is if everybody hates fred durst so much and he's such a talentless hack why is he so damn successful is it possible that maybe he's been playing 4d chess this whole time while the rest of us are just over here playing checkers i think it might be and i will explain exactly why in this video but first i wanted to mention that i have teamed up with jared olanji who you may know from the every vocalist and pop punk video among other things for some new merch which i think is pretty cool there's a link to that in the description and also i want to thank rage shadow legends for sponsoring this video as you probably know rage shadow legends is turn-based rpg that's among the very deepest most complex mobile games around there's over 500 champions to collect each with their own skill tree personally what i like the most is how much you can geek out on equipping your champions and optimizing them my personal favorite champion is hex weaver she's a dark elf that i've had since the beginning and within the last couple of weeks they've actually added quite a few updates first they just added champion fragments these are pieces of champions you can then use to summon specific champions there's a special event running right now to get the amazing crela witch arm and it ends on august 28th so don't wait around there's also a new bazaar where you can load up on high value items with the gold bars you win in the tag arena and they just extended the daily login rewards for 270 days with free champions available just for logging in you can find me in game under the name prnba and if you're quick enough maybe you can join my clan just go to the video description click on the special links and if you're a new player you'll get a hundred thousand silver and one free champion called channeler but note this reward is only available for the next 30 days and all this treasure will be waiting for you right here so good luck and i'll see you there and with that out of the way let's get into it like being a rock star and like it's this is just great i mean it's it's just the best thing ever first of all for anybody who maybe wasn't around then or forgot exactly how big lint biscuit were and what a huge star fred durst was let me give you a quick recap they've sold over 40 million albums three of their five albums hit the billboard top ten and despite being absolutely despised by pretty much every critic ever they've actually won a shitload of awards over the years and back in the late 90s and early 2000s fred durst was just everywhere like he was pretty much a mainstream pop star up there with like justin timberlake and madonna his famous duet with christina aguilera is a great example that he was constantly on trl he was even in the gossip headlines sometimes for supposedly dating or hooking up with britney spears i still don't know whether that is true or not but kind of doesn't really matter the fact that it was even rumored put him in a certain tier of like celebrity status he made cameos and huge mainstream movies like zoolander in their performance at woodstock 99 with the guy crowd surfing on the door and all that stuff is one of the most iconic moments in that whole generation of rock there may be someone i'm forgetting here if so let me know in the comments but i think he was kind of the last really mainstream star to come out of the metal scene so how did it happen how did fred durst a relatively like normal looking kind of average guy from jacksonville florida go from playing in a local band to being a massive mainstream mtv star in just a few years the answer is simple because he knows how to play the game and let me explain what i mean by that i think the common perception of fred durst is that he's this like douchey knucklehead bro and a red hat that's kind of dumb just walks around like he thinks he's god's gift to the world but i think that is way way off from reality i think that he is actually a very intelligent analytical guy who chose to play the part of that red hat knucklehead bro in limb biscuit just the same way as like tom hardy played the part of venom and spider-man or whatever you bit somebody's head off and you might be saying whoa finn you were giving this guy way too much credit you are reaching but i'm really not i mean he pretty much says that in this interview if it's music that i do and i'm in limp bizkit i own that that's a side of me but if it's film it's different than the biscuit it is from me anyway so why would he do that why would he choose to adopt this persona of like that red hat wearing bro it's because he understands what the vast majority of musicians just don't that the single most valuable thing in the music industry is attention in fact i think if we were to be more honest we would call it the attention industry because that's really what it's about not the music because remember the music business is just that it's a business they are here for one thing and one thing only and that is to make money to sell records and streams and merch and tickets and vip at the end of the day the music is just a product i know that that sounds gross and crass to a lot of you and i completely understand why i'm not saying you shouldn't feel that way i'm just saying that this is the way that the industry works whether you like it or not and the prerequisite for all of that is attention because you can't sell somebody an album until they know it exists right and therefore what the industry values more than anything else is people who know how to get attention this is why takashi 69 has a career it's not because he's a great musician and i would say that is exactly where fred durst fits in i'm sure he would agree that he is not the world's best musician by any means but what he is really [ __ ] good at is getting attention and specifically he understands that oftentimes the fastest route to fame is being disliked and so for that reason i don't think it's a coincidence at all that he was the most hated person of metal i think that was his game plan from day one going back to the very beginning of the band and again i'm not making this up like these are his own words about naming the band the name is there to turn people's heads away a lot of people pick up the disc and go limp bizkit oh they must suck those are the people that we don't even want listening to our music other names that were considered by durst included [ __ ] disco split dick slit [ __ ] piglet and blood fart do you think he's ever like sitting at home at night going man i wish i would have called the band split dick slit i've made a huge mistake lit biscuit is not the best name for a band and what you see is that that was on purpose and why would they do that because what he understood is that being hated or disliked is not the worst thing that can happen to an artist the worst thing that can happen to you is being ignored if you're a creator of any kind and you know what i'm talking about just that feeling of putting all your time and energy into like making this thing putting it out into the world and then crickets nobody gives a [ __ ] they don't love it they don't hate it they just don't care it is a horrible feeling right i mean that was me for the first almost year of this channel i made like a hundred videos that nobody gave a [ __ ] and it felt terrible if people hate your work well at least that means they care right so whether you love or hate fred durst it really kind of doesn't matter either way if he is living in your head rent free he's winning [Music] which brings us to the red hat bro persona if you turn back the clock to the 90s alternative rock was still at the top of the charts pantera had three top 10 albums bands like red hot chili peppers and rage against the machine were massive but by the end of the 90s it was kind of ready for a changing of the guard pantera had started to wind down as like personal problems and drugs and stuff took a toll on the band red hot chili peppers had started to go pop [Music] so there was kind of a vacancy for the artist to represent like the bro who wants to listen to some heavy [ __ ] drink a few beers and push mosh at the summer music festivals and that left a perfect opening for fred durst to come in and fill that slot and by the end of the 90s he was that guy and lit biscuit was that band he was that like belligerent white dude with a big mouth just told everybody to [ __ ] off said whatever he wanted and pissed off all the critics and snobs along the way kind of reminds me of like the guys who i had run into in high school at a bus stop that all of a sudden out of the blue would like get in your face and be like what the [ __ ] are you looking at you'd be like uh nothing i'm just waiting for the bus they're like yeah that's what i thought [ __ ] he was sort of like the platonic ideal of that bro like he wasn't as edgy and extreme as pantera had become he had a little bit of that cool hip-hop swagger but he wasn't like an actual street dude who was catching bodies or anything he was just that like universal bro that exists everywhere whether you live in like san bernardino or dayton or orlando like you know that guy but is that really who fred durst is is he really that guy i don't think he is i mean listen to this interview i don't love any any movies that would resemble what limp bizkit sounds like or or looks like or feels like and that's just not what i respond to and cinematically does that sound like your typical loudmouth dude bro who would start a fight at a bus stop to you and remember around this time he was also a senior vice president at interscope records doing a r where he signed bands like stained and puddle of mud and whether you like those bands or not they were definitely very successful on a commercial level and you don't just give out svp jobs to like random dumbass dude bros off the street you can think what you want about his taste in music and about lint biscuit but the guy clearly had a sharp sense for business and what would sell now i'm not saying that the dude bro persona is like totally fake or manufactured or anything like that because i don't think it is i think that guy is one part of who fred durst is but only one part and i don't think that's fake i mean we all do this right like you're one person to your boss another person to your mom and another person again to like your friends when you're out on the town and you had a couple drinks does that make you fake no it just means that we're multifaceted when we show different sides of ourselves depending on the situation i think he just understood that when it comes to creating a personal brand for yourself which at the end of the day is what celebrities do there's no room for nuance like people just want you to be one thing for example like gordon ramsay is the chef that yells at people simon cowell is the guy that crushes people's dreams on american idol and i'm sure if you know those guys personally there's a lot more to them than that sure gordon ramsay just doesn't run around all the time screaming at everybody i ask the [ __ ] questions you give the [ __ ] answers but as far as their publicly facing brand is concerned they're just that guy and knowing that he chose that like chad dudebro part of himself to be his brand and fully committed to that the same way as any corporation would commit to their brand like mcdonald's has the golden arches and the red and the yellow and they don't just wake up one day and be like i'm sick of the red and yellow let's be purple and green today that's not how you build a brand you pick a thing and you stick to it and to continue that analogy i actually think his red hat is a great example of this it's a simple little thing but just like i said at the beginning of the video think about how closely tied he is to that hat he owned the red hat as part of his personal brand just the same way as mcdonald's owns the golden arches it may seem ridiculous but honestly something as simple as that can be a really important part of a great personal brand for example like haley williams or her orange hair or jonathan davis's adidas tracksuits or anthony fantano's flannels so i don't think the hat thing was an accident at all i think he was very aware of how powerful that can be and it was a conscious piece of brand building on his part look at the video for break stuff for example which he directed the entire premise of the video is people dressed like him and acting like him the whole video is basically like reinforcing his brand as like that dude bro with the red hat and speaking of directing i think a lot of people aren't aware that he actually has a pretty legit background as a film director he directed most of the limp biscuit videos as well as videos for artists like corn and stain and dwight yoakam he's done like three or four feature films with legit hollywood stars in them like jesse eisenberg and ice cube and john travolta and even a few commercials for companies like eharmony now i'm not saying he's the next steven spielberg i haven't watched it in the movies but from the trailers they look you know pretty average and they did not get great reviews but you don't get to make a movie with john travolta or ice cube if you completely suck so the point here is not that he's like the world's best director it's just that the guy clearly understands character and narrative and how to tell a story and i think he essentially thought of his persona in limp bizkit as the character and the band as the movie if that makes sense and i think he also knows where he's not super strong which is on the musical side of things [Music] with all due respect to him i'm sure he would agree that he is not a great musician himself but he does have a great ear for talent that's why he was able to discover bands like stained and puddle of mud and why he was able to find and recruit some really exceptional musicians to be in lit biscuit west borland is a super innovative creative guy that i think was kind of the driving force behind the music of lint biscuit and then you've got sam rivers and john otto who are one of the absolute tightest rhythm sections in the genre i'm not a huge limb biscuit fan but i could listen to john otto play drums all day he kind of reminds me of mike mir of suicidal tendencies who again is not a great musician himself but throughout the history the band has always had just absolutely top tier people in his band so his role is not necessarily to be the musical talent himself but to be the curator who brings together great musical talent which brings us to the second big key to his success his ability to work the media the guy is great at this like i said earlier he was everywhere back then the covers of magazines award shows tv news segments like half the shows on mtv on any given day if you hated fred durst the late 90s and early 2000s were not a fun time for you and i think that's a huge part of what made him such a big star just that absolute media saturation his face in mainstream media all the time and why did the media give him so many of those opportunities well it's not because he's some great exciting electrifying speaker and it's not because he's freakishly beautiful like justin bieber or something so why for one because he understands something that most musicians don't that if you want to be in the news you have to do something newsworthy a lot of baby bands don't understand this like they put out a press release announcing that they've put out their debut ep and then they wonder why nobody's picking it up and writing about it but if you think about it with all due respect why would anybody write about it some no-name band putting out their debut ep is not news fred durst understood that and learned how to create things that were newsworthy you can almost think of him as like the new metal growth hacker because he was just consistently doing things that enabled him and the band to plug into this media machine for example i think it was on ozfest that their stage set was this giant toilet that they would come out of to kind of play on the fact that everybody hated them and thought they were [ __ ] or the thing that put them on the map in the first place which was their cover of faith by george michael [Applause] you remember that song faith some band did like a metal cover of it you gotta check it out this is a very well known tactic now like every [ __ ] band on the planet tries to get famous on the back of like a metal cover of a pop song but back then it was pretty much unheard of i'm not sure if they were the very first ones to do it but they're the first ones that i can think of and it worked that cover is what got them their first original little bit of traction that they were able to turn into the rest of their career another thing they did that was very ahead of their time is features getting other artists to be in their song like if you look at significant other they have a ton of features on that album jonathan davis from corn scott weiland from stone temple pilots aaron lewis abstained method man fred also featured on a lot of other artists like run dmc for example and every one of those is something for the media to talk about rap and rock collide when legendary rapper method man does the song with limb biscuit let me hit your pictures shut the [ __ ] up again this is something that bands do now all the time but back in 1999 that was pretty much unheard of so again i think give fred and limb biscuit a lot of credit for pioneering this trend and i think it worked fred durst and limp biscuit got a very disproportional amount of media coverage back then as compared to their peers like say corn or pod and i think that was instrumental to their success but don't you forget you're in the zone so shut the [ __ ] up so to sum it all up and answer the original question of why is fred durst the biggest star in new metal despite also being like the most hated guy in the whole genre and far from the best musician because he understands how the game is played he understands how to create a polarizing persona pull together a team of amazing musicians that are strong where he's weak and work the media to get himself and his band in the public eye again and again and again he understands the attention economy and here's the one thing i really want you to think about especially if you're one of the people that hates fred durst or for that matter hates like the kardashians or jake paul or any of these other kind of obnoxious [ __ ] that are super famous basically for being obnoxious [ __ ] around the way that fred durst used the fact that people hated him and his band to their advantage because i think it actually says a lot about why our society is in the place that it's in right now there's something in psychology called negativity bias which essentially refers to the idea that we respond to and retain negative information more than we do positive information and from an evolutionary perspective this makes sense like it's more important for you to remember where the saber-tooth tiger lives so he doesn't eat you than it is to remember how good an apple tastes that served us well in the year 50 000 bc or whatever when we're living in caves but it does not serve us so well today in a modern society in the age of social media because it creates a system in which people are incentivized to be [ __ ] basically like why do takashi 69 and jake paul act the way that they do like obnoxious idiots because when they act that way people pay attention to them people click on their videos which means that they make more money so why wouldn't they act that way what would happen if all of a sudden jake paul or six nine decided to act like mature reasonable calm adults their careers should be over and why does so much of the so-called news media produce like shitty rage baiting fake news click bait instead of actual journalism because that's what people click on and they've got a business to run again that's what they're incentivized to do and i can speak to that from personal experience too on my channel pretty much any video with a negative title for example like top 10 worst fandoms in rock and metal is always going to do the best negative videos almost always do better than positive ones and i don't really like that because i don't want to put negative energy out into the world but it's kind of hard not to go there because it works and if i don't do it someone else will and i've got bills to pay so if you're one of these people that finds fred durst or any of these other people like jake paul or the kardashians or whatever obnoxious and you roll your eyes like why do we let these people become celebrities why say don't blame them they're just giving the people what they want don't hate the player hate the game alright my friends that does it for this video on fred durst as always i would love to know what you think in the comments and let me know who else you would like me to talk about in this series also i wanted to remind you about the new merch we just dropped with jared elanji i'm a big fan of the pantera rip there's a link to that in the description also if you haven't checked out the punk rock mba podcast i would love it if you would there's a new episode on monday this is where i sit down with musicians and artists and creators of any other kind talk about how they were able to turn their passion into their living and as always i want to thank the people who support us on patreon especially the people who support us at the true cult level or above patrons get access to every episode of the podcast a week early there's a patron only private discord server that i'm in all the time there's an opportunity to have me review your band or your youtube channel or your design portfolio or any other thing that you want to get in front of me and get my feedback on so if that sounds interesting you can check that out at the link in the description and with that i'm gonna sign off for now but i will see you next time

Channel: The Punk Rock MBA

Views: 277,643

Rating: 4.854413 out of 5

Keywords: fred durst limp bizkit, fred durst, limp bizkit, nu metal, wes borland, fred durst (musical artist), limp bizkit break stuff, john otto limp bizkit, sam rivers limp bizkit, limp bizkit my way, fred durst (celebrity), fred durst britney spears, christina aguilera, method man, jonathan davis korn, the fanatic john travolta, longshots ice cube, mtv trl, woodstock 99 limp bizkit, limp bizkit faith, finn mckenty, punk rock mba

Id: JcY3ej7PLD8

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Subtotalpoet]

Watched this at lunch today, he made some great points. Probably the most credit Fred durst will ever get for being ahead of the curve.