“Cocaine, Speed, and Gallons of Jack Daniel’s”: The Last Rock ‘n’ Roll Superstars Were … Korn?

The hook of Steven Hyden’s feature on Korn’s seminal 1998 album Follow the Leader (of which I owned a copy, even though I listened to maybe just three songs, including ‘Freak on Leash’) is that the quartet, helmed by Jonathan Davis, are the last true rock-and-rollers: Mounds of cocaine, sex in the recording booth, and millions spent honing and perfecting sound quality. But what makes this article utterly fascinating is the examination of nu metal’s stupefying rise, and how the genre subsumed pop music in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a rejoinder to the oleaginous tunes that dominated the top 40 charts.