Freaky Styley [Vinyl]

by

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Red Hot Chili Peppers

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Somehow, the Peppers' collaboration with George Clinton has found a status as a sort of overlooked 'cult classic', but man, I just can't see why it's so loved. I guess you could say that it's the closest the band ever got to doing a pure funk album, since most of the band's efforts have more than enough trace of rock in them, with horns in the background and Flea's bass playing in perhaps its most prominent role ever. It's not even that I don't like this style either, but there should at least be a good amount of entertainment and groove power to it, and most of these tracks are just so by the numbers and as far from exciting as possible, plus there's the added annoyance of the band cramming in even more stupid filler than any of their other 80's albums (especially those pointless short tracks near the end), which is quite an accomplishment.

There's maybe only one truly awful song in the title track, an awfully simplistic and boring groove that just seems to repeat itself forever and ever with that 'screw em just to see the look on their face' line, but still, the opening two tracks ("Jungle Man" and "Hollywood") come out totally flat and unconvincing, particularly the latter's generic 'party' vibe and plodding tempo, the closing "Yertle The Turtle" has annoying spoken bits to go along with pretty much no melody or excitement (though at least "The Brother's Cup", dumb as it is, has some entertaining moments within). Oh, and there's also a whole bunch of absolutely useless brief filler tracks that serve no purpose except for being idiotic jokes and space fillers (particularly the inane "Sex Rap" and the directionless "Battle Ship").

The saving grace of this album, though, are the two fairly excellent highlights. The band didn't actually write "If You Want Me To Stay" and that phenomenally groovy bassline and vocal melody it has (credit that to Sly and the Family Stone), but it nonetheless possesses such a tight, incredible amount of presence that it's easily the best on the album. The other somewhat impressive song is the hilariously stupid "Catholic School Girls Rule", whose fast tempo, lyrics and chanting are so incredibly over the top and ridiculous that I can never resist it at all. Too bad it's so short at less than 2 minutes. But regardless of those, do not buy this album, since these two gems can be found on What Hits?!.