To say Limp Bizkit's "Show Me What You Got" has the most horrifying lyrics of any song in the history of recorded music is pretty bold. You've heard "Afternoon Delight," right? I mean, it may not even be the worst collection of words to music done by that particular band. Who, you may or may not know,
have a new album coming out. So yeah...I'm feeling bold.
"Show Me What You Got" is a knuckle-dragger near the end of the Bizkit's depressingly wildly-popular 1999 album,
Significant Other. Alleged singer/certain douchenozzle Fred Durst curses us with a cavalcade of crappy sentences that, for the most part, are not set to blunt force trauma faux-metal. (And oh thank you, band, for being so unintrusive during the verses!) It's a "shout-out" to all the fine folks who aided and abetted the crime of Limp Bizkit's continued existence, and I have wanted it dead for over a decade now. "Show Me What You Got" is a sociopath's idea of a tribute. Or a moron's.
Lyric by lyric breakdown. I'm gonna kill this thing once and for all.
Keepin' it real
As meaningless back in '99 as it is now. "I'm keepin' it real" is what assholes say to deny their asshole-ness to themselves. 'Cause they're assholes.
World wide baby
Limp Bizkit's in the house
So bring it on
Dependence on the cliche is a hallmark of the small mind.
I'd like to dedicate this song to you
For makin' my dreams come true
For the millennium
Durst pronounces "millennium" in the dumbest way, like for a few years I thought he was saying "For the mellow neon."
Are you ready?
Then get the fuck up
Where you at Jacksonville
Rochester, Louisville
Jacksonville is where LB are originally from. Louisville is from where my mother hails. So you tell me. Tell me why you rhymed "ville" with "ville," you asshole, tell me now!
Columbia, Hartford
Milwaukee, and Lewiston, Maine?
Wait wait, what the fuck does "Maine" rhyme with? I mean in this context? Also, Milwaukee is the worst major city in America. I wanted to grab all the cutesy, Packers-friendly dairy for sale at the airport and smash it underfoot whilst screaming "Fuck yo' cheese, crackers!"
Where you at Providence, Nashville
Memphis, Lauderdale
Portland, Orlando, Chicago, and Frisco?
I saw Sonic Youth live in 3 of those cities!
I left my heart in Austin with Mary Campbell
I have no idea who the fuck that is.
Got lost in Boston lookin' for the tea party
10 points for elementary school Social Studies retention! (This was years before the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party adopted "Tea Party" to describe their merry band of hate-ridden and bloodthirsty cretins.)
And again...where is the rhyming part in those last two lines?
Met a child molester in Worchester
Remember this!
Need a Kleenex every time I'm leavin' Phoenix
Bad as that is, just remember: he coulda gone with "penis."
I get silly when I play in Philly
Limp Bizkit committee down in Kansas City
SIGH. Real loud, real long, my sighs are just keepin' it real in the house tonight everybody say "ho" with your hands in the air.
Never know what I'm in fer when I'm play in Denver
"Fer," he just said. You are only allowed to say that if your name is Cletus and you have recently helped your lady birth a baby using pliers, dental floss, duct tape and gravy.
Hard rock don't stop down in Vegas
Ya know, 'cause of the cafe!
In Cincinnati the girls call me "Daddy"
Horrifying. Those women also gave him syphilis. Which they contracted from their actual fathers.
And I probably ain't leavin' the next time I'm in Cleveland
Found my lucky coin in Des Moines
You do not now, nor did you ever, possess a lucky coin! That is something only pre-teen boys in places south of the Mason Dixon line ever did. And it stopped being a thing after 1964.
And spit on a boy named Tina in Pasadena
Now. This, in proper context, might be the worst line of the whole song, and thus, the worst lyric in music history. I asked you, dear reader, to remember the earlier "Met a child molester in Worchester." This is why.
Fred Durst just casually mentions meeting a fucking kiddie rapist, but makes sure to tell us he hurled expectorate at a transsexual. THE TRANSSEXUAL IS THE ONE THAT GOT HIM UPSET.
We get the swing from New Orleans
Bullshit. This song is a pair of busted fake titties, no beads for Limp Bizkit.
Ft Worth and Dallas
We toast when we're tippin' up the chalice
Just for the 99% of their audience who didn't know what a chalice was, or what purpose it served.
Tulsa, St. Louis, Sacto, Mesa, Norfolk, Lawrence, Minneapolis
STOP THIS
St. Paul, North Hampton, Detroit, Omaha, New York, LA
What can I say, I can't name'm all
The infuriating thing is, that you tried.
So somebody
Anybody,
Everybody
Get the fuck up!
Show me what you got
Whooo ha
Show me what you got
Hey ladies
Guarantee Durst got all three Beastie Boys tattooed somewhere on his wretched pudding body after Adam Yauch passed.
Who's hot who's not
Who? Who?
He says "Who?" in this strangled yell that brings to mind a pit bull choking on a kitten. I mean what non-Cincinnati woman is supposed to be turned on by that?
I can't help but believe in these friends
These bands
These stories
And the places that I've been
Yes, yes, you've already mentioned the places! So I'm assuming the friends are to come?
I thank God, mom & dad,
Adrianna,for the love I feel inside
Even as a slant rhyme, "dad" and "inside" is stretching it further than Cincinnati vagina.
Jordan, my phat ass band
Without 'em I'd be nothin' but a pumpkin shoved inside a can
I don't want to know what inspired that metaphor. If I wanna be really generous, I'll re-imagine it as a Billy Corgan diss. I mean it's just crude enough. But otherwise…a really big fruit shoved into a really small metal container. I guess that's not exactly desirable but…why not go for something a bit more humanizing? Or even just human?
Without the fans there wouldn't be no show
Double negative. Also, fuck you and fuck them.
And if that was really so, than life would really blow
To The Firm, you always got my back
The Firm were LB's management. One of whom got knocked up and down some stairs by Sharon Osbourne, or so the rumor went. I choose to believe the rumor.
Korn for the love and the swappin' of the tracks
My brother Cory d,
My man terry date
We brought it to the plate and you made it sound great
Hilarious! And not only for rhyming three simple words over two lines, but because no you didn't and no he didn't.
Scott Weiland the melody man
If you can't sing it nobody can
Ayo Pavarotti, hit a falsetto off this big Bizkit dick, bitch! Man/can, cat/hat/, that's phat!
Wu Tang Clan, skills from the method
The worlds best mc kills on this record
That was a compound rhyme…I'm kinda shocked. Well, broken clocks…
Slim Shady, crazy ass cracker
Eminem visited the Bizkit during sessions for Significant Other and dropped uninspired lyrics to a Loverboy-sampling piece of dead skin called "Turn Me Loose." It did not make the album because it sucked, at least by Fred Durst's standards. As opposed to the rest of the album, which more or less sucked by normal standards.
Staind, a brand new drug for your brain
I'm on the outside/And I'm lookin' in/I can see through youuu/See the real you…
Did I get the song entrenched in your head? GOOD.
Les Claypool, for actin' like a fool
And all of the bands for the demos that were cool
This is why Fred Durst sucks, no one in any popular band thinks the demos they get from aspirational fans are useful as anything other than a coaster/frisbee/implement for insertion when in Cincinnati. But Fred Durst would. He'd just be moved to fucking tears, I'd bet, and all excited for the future of rock!
I'm so grateful for this life of mine
Clearly.
The ones I didn't thank
I will some other time
No, not a third verse!
Now i just want somebody
Anybody
Everybody
Get the fuck up!
Show me what you got
Yeeee ha
Show me what you got
Hey ladies
Who's hot who's not
Who? who?
Who's hot who's not
Who's………..hot?
I've been around this world and then some
Gah! The music has picked up! Please don't name any more cities, Maryland and D.C. have evaded infamy and I wanna keep it that way!
Dum ditty dum kid where you comin' from?
I'm going to kill you.
I went from the garage
To steppin' on these stages
Outrageous rhymes left my mind and soon became contagious
He rhymed "stages" with "contagious." I'm so out I just came back in. This is what happens when bands aren't democracies. Yeah, they'll be around for a longer period, but the music will be much worse.
An mc with bad habits I am
He's Freddy D the ball-cap man.
I see a mic then I grab it
Scary aint it?
No. That's how microphones work.
Comin' raw with no corrections
Savin' all perfections
For what I do with my erections
So dream on!
Yeah, now that's the scary part. Basically dude is saying he fucks immaculately. Like all hail his wang, in excelsis deo. And that's the menstrual clump on the adipose sundae. The vision of Fred Durst's thrusting hairy sweaty ass. Yeah, dream on to that. One day you too can be an ugly talentless hick banging insecure broads with foreheads wide enough to land planes on...to your own music, even! One day you too can pay vastly more talented rappers to mumble with you on a song! 'MURICA!
But I doubt you'll ever write lyrics shittier than the ones to "Show Me What You Got."
