Limp Bizkit is an American nude metal band from Jacksonville, Florida. A great representative of nude metal due to its mix of rap and metal, the band nevertheless defines its music as being "pimp-rock". In 2010, Limp Bizkit has 35 million albums sold worldwide. The name of the group is a distortion of Limp Biscuit (literally "Soft Biscuit").
Limp Bizkit was created in 1994 in Jacksonville, Florida, by Fred Durst, a police son, and Sam Rivers. Sam introduces Fred his cousin John Otto who takes the role of drummer. Rob Waters is recruited as a guitarist. The group released in the course of the next year a first cassette demo entitled Mental Aquaducts. Rob Waters leaves the group soon after. Terry Balsamo (future Cold then Evanescence) will take the position of guitarist for some time before going away. Wes Borland will eventually be the guitarist of the band.
When Korn moved to Jacksonville in 1995, the band's bassist, Fieldy, was tattooed by Durst, who earned his life as a tattoo artist, and a friendship was born between the two. At the next group tour in the area, Fieldy leaves with a model that he finds so impressive, that it gives to the director Ross Robinson. Thanks mainly to word of mouth, the band is chosen to play the first part of the House of Pain farewell tour featuring Deftones.
In the course of the year 1996, they record a second demo whose pieces will be used as a basis for their future first album. Shortly after, DJ Lethal (House of Pain) will complete the training.
Their first album, Three Dollar Bill, Yall $ , was released in 1997. The band released three singles, including Counterfeit , Sour and a bare metal version of Faith , a song by George Michael. This first album is a mix of rap, metal and punk oscillating with the grunge in terms of sound quality (saturation of riffs and accentuation of the "dirty" sounds of the guitar and the bass: Sour , Pollution ...). The album met with little success in its first year of commercialization (only 250,000 copies sold)>. But thanks to a major tour in the first part of Primus, Faith No More and Deftones, then headlining, sales of the album will take off the following year, with the single Faith who will meet with an honorable success, and participate in launching the movement naked metal in the late 1990s. After participating in the Family Values tour with Korn, Limp Bizkit returns to the studio.
