Loose, sweaty and stranger than its reputation, the Chili Peppers' fifth album swaps the heavy metal riffing of Mother's Milk (1989) for space and actual songs. [[person:rick-rubin]] produced, and his instinct ran toward subtraction: Flea's bass sits forward and dry, Chad Smith drags behind the beat, and [[person:john-frusciante]] answers with thin, ringing guitar figures instead of distortion. The band moved into a rented Los Angeles mansion and cut the record while living in it.

Two singles carried it to the rest of the world. “Give It Away” is a chant over a one note bass hook, close to nothing on paper and hard to sit still through. “Under the Bridge” has [[person:anthony-kiedis]] writing about being alone in Los Angeles with a habit, sung with almost no swagger left in him. Around those two sit the acoustic waltz of “Breaking the Girl”, the smirking funk metal of “Suck My Kiss”, and the slow leer of “Sir Psycho Sexy”, where the lust, the drugs and the gallows jokes pile up at once.

This is the record that moved a cult funk band off the Los Angeles club circuit and into stadiums, and the last studio album Frusciante finished with them before he walked away in 1992. Start here if you want funk rock played with a real ear for tune, or if you know the two hits and have never sat with the other fifteen tracks.