Red Hot Chili Peppers

Essential Albums

  • Californication (Remastered)
    Californication (Remastered)
    Californication (Remastered)

    In a way, the Red Hot Chili Peppers didn’t truly find their voice until their 17th year as a band. Ever since the band formed in the early 1980s, the members of the Peppers had tempered their unhinged funk-metal madness with breezy, melodic, introspective anthems (many of which would end up as the Peppers’ biggest singles). On the group’s seventh album, 1999’s Californication, those slowed-down numbers became the primary focus. Wayward guitarist John Frusciante had recently rejoined the group after nearly a decade-long absence, and his signature curlicues and lyrical solos immediately rocket Californication to airier, more pastoral regions. And singer Anthony Kiedis leaves the more macho and lascivious elements of his personality behind, fully stepping into his role as the existential poet of Los Angeles: part punk philosopher, part New Age hedonist, part wizened survivor. As a result, Californication became the group’s best-selling album worldwide, while forging a blueprint that would bear fruit for the rest of the Peppers’ storied career. This is the moment—and the album—in which the Red Hot Chili Peppers secured their position as one of the few rock bands that could reliably fill arenas in the 21st century. Three of the album’s singles—“Scar Tissue,” “Otherside,” and “Californication,” all of which topped the American modern rock charts—are indicative of this more mature, contemplative Peppers. “Otherside” is a sparkling, melancholy song that asks “How long will I slide?”, while the upwards-spiraling “Scar Tissue” finds Kiedis confronting the negative impact of sarcasm as a defense mechanism. After years of treating Hollywood like an idyllic incubator for weirdos, the Peppers poignantly explore the town’s darker side on the title track, revealing the dream factory as a place where hopes are dashed, skin is scalpelled, and innocence is lost. And tracks like “Porcelain” and acoustic album-closer “Road Trippin’” push the Peppers toward the tender alt-rock ballads of bands like The Smashing Pumpkins. Of course, Californication isn’t all struggle and weariness, as evidenced by vintage Pepper funk-rock ragers like the celebratory opener “Around the World” and the horny “Get on Top” (inspired by Frusciante digging the rhythms of Public Enemy). But it’s the more somber moments on Californication that turned the record into a smash—and led to a pivotal turning point in the Chili Peppers’ career. It’s the album that rescued the band from the underwhelming commercial performance of 1995’s One Hot Minute, and paved their way towards the Rock Hall, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the Super Bowl. California may break your heart, but Californication is the moment where stars become icons.

  • Blood Sugar Sex Magik
    Blood Sugar Sex Magik
    Blood Sugar Sex Magik

    The joy of 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik is hearing a band break through and become something new. Nothing they’d done previously is as sensitive as “I Could Have Lied” or as beautiful as “Under the Bridge.” Nothing is as genuinely heavy as “Suck My Kiss” and “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” or as political as “The Power of Equality,” which, according to Anthony Kiedis, prompted producer Rick Rubin to say he preferred songs about cars and girls (which Kiedis gave him in “The Greeting Song”). You can still hear their foundations in punk and rap (“The Power of Equality”), but you can also hear the romance of the Beat poets (“Breaking the Girl”) and the kind of Californian classic-rock ideals—free love, the expansion of consciousness, earnest poetry—that make the band feel as much like stewards of the ’60s as products of the ’80s (“Sir Psycho Sexy”). It’s that balance—between the crude and the contemplative, the direct and the obscure, the jock jam and the art song—that makes Blood Sugar Sex Magik not just one of the definitive albums of the 1990s, but one that helped push alternative rock into the mainstream. Compared to Nirvana (whose Nevermind came out the same day), they were as Hollywood as Guns N’ Roses; compared to Guns N’ Roses, they represented a vision of hard rock that paved the way for not just rap metal, but a universe of heavy, guitar-based music that felt mainstream in reach but still underground in nature. “Lowbrow but I rock a little know-how,” Kiedis sings on “Give It Away.” It’s a good line. But it’s also a mission statement: With Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the Red Hot Chili Peppers made weightlifting music you can think with.

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About Red Hot Chili Peppers

Alt-rock icons Red Hot Chili Peppers embody all that is sunny and seedy about L.A. The band—frontman Anthony Kiedis, bassist Michael “Flea” Balzary, guitarist Hillel Slovak, and drummer Jack Irons—baked that dichotomy into their sound from the moment they came together in 1983. Fusing Black Flag’s furious punk and Parliament’s horny funk, RHCP combined berserker bass-slapping energy and absurdist humor, making them college radio’s resident court jesters throughout the ’80s. Slovak’s death from a heroin overdose in 1988—and Irons’ subsequent depression-induced exit—forever altered the band’s DNA. But the arrival of muscular drummer Chad Smith and wunderkind guitarist John Frusciante helped 1989’s hard-rocking Mother’s Milk quickly reach Gold-record status, and, as the alternative revolution raged, RHCP emerged as kings of the mosh pit with 1991’s Blood Sugar Sex Magik. That album revealed the melancholic nuances of Flea’s and Frusciante’s playing, providing Kiedis with an emotional outlet to reckon with his troubled past on the blockbuster ballad “Under the Bridge.”  Blood Sugar Sex Magik’s multi-Platinum success drove Frusciante into a period of seclusion, during which the band soldiered on with Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro. But Frusciante returned for 1999’s massively successful Californication, which twisted the band’s funk-rock template into a sobering, sophisticated collection of cautionary tales, led by “Scar Tissue” and the title track. RHCP retained a chart-topping, festival-headlining reign well into the 21st century, with guitarist Josh Klinghoffer lending his talents to the band after Frusciante again spent time away. But after Frusciante rejoined once more in 2019, his work on a pair of 2022 albums, Unlimited Love and Return of the Dream Canteen, underscored that his artful style is the Peppers’ special spice.

ORIGIN
Los Angeles, CA, United States
FORMED
1983
GENRE
Alternative

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