Significantly Othered: Limp Bizkit and the Politics of Nu Metal “Otherness”

Abstract

In this article, I explore how nu metal was problematically situated as an “Other” in response to heavy metal’s supposed crisis of identity at the turn of the millennium. Using Limp Bizkit as a central case study, I consider how the fragmented state of metal and market growth of hip hop in the mid 1990s provided the preconditions for nu metal to flourish commercially; how Limp Bizkit were marketed in response to this growth; and finally, how their reception, demise, and eventual reprisal are caught up within heavy metal’s anxieties over generic purity and the racialized terrain of the music of “Others.”.