186. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Blood Sugar Sex Magik"

 


The Red Hot Chili Peppers can be a divisive band to write about because I'm sure there are a lot of people who love them but they're pretty terrible and that makes it hard.  You know that famous Nick Cave quote, right?  “I’m forever near a stereo saying, ‘What the fuck is this garbage?’ And the answer is always the Red Hot Chili Peppers.”

NEVERTHELESS, I must say that if you have to listen to an RHCP album this is probably the one, as I guess it shows some thought and range beyond their usual Flea slap-bass/Anthony Kiedis rap-singing/funk-punk thing.  Hell, I've been trying to figure out what's going on in "Give It Away" for almost 30 years:

What I got, you got to give it to your mama
What I got, you've got to give it to your papa
What I got, you got to give it to your daughter
You do a little dance and then you drink a little water
What I got, you gotta get it put it in you
What I got, you gotta get it put it in you
What I got, you gotta get it put it in you

What is it that the listener would not only have to give to their mama, their papa, and their daughter, and then put inside them?  A delicious apple pie, perhaps?  It gets more perplexing:

I realize I don't wanna be a miser
Confide with sly you'll be the wiser
Young blood is the lovin' upriser
How come everybody wanna keep it like the Kaiser?

I think it's admirable that Anthony doesn't want to be a miser, but I have no idea what "Confide with sly you'll be the wiser" OR "Young blood is the lovin' upriser" could possibly mean.  And I have to confess, "How come everybody wanna keep it like the Kaiser" is maybe one of my all-time favorite lyrics in rock.  Was the Kaiser famous for keeping things?  Is the "it" the Kaiser keeping the same thing you're giving to your family members and putting inside you?  This song is a little puzzle box, if the puzzle is "what rhymes with -iser?"

The album also contains "Under the Bridge," maybe the Peppers' biggest hit, a song about the loneliness and isolation of drug addiction.  Rick Rubin, who produced this record, famously found the lyrics while flipping through one of Kiedis's notebooks and suggested that he share it with the band.  It was earnest and heartfelt, completely out of step with RHCP's usual bigger dick energy swagger, but it cemented their place as MTV darlings and launched them into the 100-million-albums-sold stratosphere where they've hung out ever since.

Look, this is a fine party album for 20-something boneheads armed with a beer bong and a hash pipe, but the dark side of this post-adolescent sex obsession showed up in various allegations and convictions for sexual harassment and assault.  There's an ugly underside to Kiedis's let's-just-fuck ethos and a lot of women have been on the receiving end of it.  Sure, this album is a document of a certain time and place - LA in the early 90's - but it's also a reminder that the vapid, sniggering male culture behind it was toxic and damaging.  

Nirvana's Nevermind came out on the same day as this record, September 24, 1991.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Begrudgingly yes, but not here.  Maybe in the 400's.

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