Favorite tracks: “Suck My Kiss”, “Sir Psychosexy”, “Power of Equality”, “The Righteous & the Wicked”.
The essential (in my opinion) Red Hot Chili Peppers album is, for me, a few things:
- One of the first albums I heard with good bass playing (I ‘grew up’ in the age after Metallica had mixed bass guitar entirely out of their albums and many others followed suit)
- One of the first albums I heard that was great from end to end and where many of the songs flowed into each other as if played live, meant to fit together, or like they weren’t even separate songs
- Extremely teenage and horny, of which I was both when I first heard it
It’s an album that has aged well for me. It was an excellent album when I first heard it, and is still an excellent album when I listen to it today.
There are other nice qualities too: Rick Rubin’s production work. When it’s not extremely horny, it has some good lyrics. It’s rooted in the RHCP musical predecessors with intelligent awareness, not than blind copying. They are seeing further by standing on the shoulders of George Clinton, not just sitting on his shoulders for a free ride. It’s just good funk.
