WTF Happened to Fred Durst?

Last Updated on October 17, 2023

If you came of age in the late nineties/early 2000s, you knew Limp Bizkit. You may have loved them or hated them – they were that kind of band…but whatever the case, you for sure knew who they were. Led by frontman Fred Durst, they were the faces of mainstream Nu Metal at a time when the genre was taking off. The band definitely never got the respect of a band like Korn or Rage Against the Machine – for a good reason probably. While Rage was all about non-conformity, Limp Bizkit’s lyrics were more about breaking stuff (to the point that one of their best-known songs is literally called “Break Stuff”), which led to the band getting a lot of ire from critics and even within the industry. Who could ever forget the sight of Fred Durst accepting an MTV award while Rage’s Tim Commerford climbed the show’s set in protest of Limp beating them for Best Rock Video?

As the decade went on, Nu Metal began to fall out of fashion, and so did Limp Bizkit. They were never able to recapture the zeitgeist the way they did around 2000, but to his credit, Fred Durst branched out in interesting ways. He became a movie director, helping to discover Jesse Eisenberg with The Education of Charlie Banks, directing the decent enough Ice Cube vehicle The Longshots, and making a John Travolta horror movie called The Fanatic, which is either incredible or one of the worst movies ever depending on who you talk to (like his music, Durst’s movies are divisive). In this episode of WTF Happened to this Celebrity, we examine Durst’s rise to fame with Limp Bizkit, the controversial fall from grace and his attempts at a comeback.

Do you think Limp Bizkit deserves the hate they get? Let us know in the comments!