Red Hot Chili Peppers - One Hot Minute

At the time of its release, One Hot Minute was viewed as the beginning of a new direction for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Guitarist John Frusciante had departed and former Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro joined the ranks after some false starts with short-lived replacements. Band chemistry here isn't quite up to past standards. Navarro stretches out throughout the album, imbuing tunes with a heavy dose of hard rock and psychedelia and providing a stark contrast from Frusciante's dexterous noodling. Tracks such as "Warped" and "Aeroplane" display a band prone to exploring a less frenetic hard rock, while "Shallow Be Thy Game" sounds like the old band. Frusciante eventually returned to the fold, so this 1995 collection now stands as a curious intermission for the Peppers. --Rob O'Connor Amazon.com

Very surprising album

Now, to set the record straight, I only started listening to RHCP's music after Californication and I was weaned on hits like GET ON TOP and DON'T STOP. The poppy (for lack of a better word) sound of their music from that album onwards were what got me hearing them in the first place. I never knew what albums like One Hot Minute and Blood Sugar Sex Magik sounded like. So I thought why not start on some of them.

So there I was, listening to One Hot Minute and I thought it really sucked. I was convinced it sucked because it sounded so different from their latter albums. I also knew the hype of this album before I plunged in, Dave Navvaro taking over as lead guitarist and all that, so I was prepared to hate it alot.

But I started listening more. Then I started listening more after that. The sounds really weren't bad after a few listenings. Then as I listened to my favorites again (Coffee Shop, My friends, Aeroplane, Walkabout), I began thinking that this album might just be the best I've heard from the group. What a turnaround!

The pace of the songs are sort of slower to my relatively untrained ear and the sounds are darker and sadder like they said, but the catchy guitar rhythms started surfacing in the songs and me, being a guitar player who likes catchy riffs, really found myself swinging to the unique beats of this album. They were that good.

Make no mistake, this album is very different from Californication and upwards, but I guarantee you will find yourself liking the sounds nevertheless.

Now, I don't even recall me liking CAN'T STOP and GET ON TOP. That's a great testament to the greatness of this album. November 24, 2008

Better Than Expected

Listening to this album for the first time in literally 13 years, I am shocked at how much I enjoy it. I remember liking this early on in High School, but as with a lot of things I enjoyed back then, I imagined it not holding up over the years. Plus, since then, I've stopped enjoying Blood Sugar Sex Magik, their most famous and (at least on Rate Your Music) most highly rated album.

This album has little of the funk that ended up boring me with Blood Sugar Sex Magik, just enough to keep the sound interesting. Instead, it has a lot of the fuzzy guitars that were prevalent in mid-90's Alternative music. The songs are quirky, the sound changes from track to track, and the album is almost heavy at times. It has an enjoyable experimental feel to it.

I was intending to listen to this album as a trip down memory lane, but I think I'm going to put it on a semi-regular rotation. October 19, 2008

The Best RHCP Album

I really don't care much for the people behind the music, but the music itself.

Looking at it that way, this is probably the best of the Chili Peppers catalog. It's a wonderful, fluid, albeit slightly chaotic mix of funk, metal, jazz, progressive, psychedelia, gothic, and punk, filled with thick grooves from Flea, textured guitar from Navarro, powerful drumming from Smith, and suave to aggressive vocals from Kiedis.

A true, bold experimental record, and the epicenter of a mixed reaction amongst the Chili Peppers fan base, it is still a good album to listen to and worth the listen. It's nice detour from the typical, predictable songwriting pattern that they follow with Frusciante, and this album shows how creative the instrumentalist can be in how the utilize their knowledge and talent at their respective instruments, and how well Kiedis can write very thought-provoking, nostalgic, personal lyrics that are more than just verbal expressions of the sound. April 28, 2008

i will give it 5 just for the fact it only has a 4 star rating.

I think this is a great album.not there best but there most rocking!so i give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.the only song i cant stand is pea,why bother putting a song like that on an album?I say this album is half rock and half funk. March 2, 2008

Painful struggle within the members in RHCP!

One Hot Minute is a disc I really wanted to like. The collection is diverse and at times exciting. Also, I wanted to see how Dave Navarro would fit into the RHCP style. Unfortunately the whole package is uneven, sometimes underdone, and forced. There was obvious tension between Dave and the rest of the Chili Peppers. It took them over a year to record this mess of an album. One Hot Minute still has some very compelling material to make it at least worth owning. Warped kicks it off in a more Jane's Addiction style with old school metal riffs and Flea's funky bass. Anthony does a good enough job to keep the song from failing. Warped is a four minute assult until it slows down to it's conclusion, a very bold song to start. Then aeroplane gives us a hummable chorus which was why this was a hit song. Deep kick is less focused but I really like it since it has grown on me. This song deals with the past experiences on the band's regret of heroin addiction. They may regret doing the drugs, but they aren't apologizing for it. Then their best track My Friends is depressing but simply beautiful. Then things turn for the worse with the generic hard rock of Coffee Shop followed by filler like Pea and One Big Mob. Walk About starts off intersting enough but then it disappears completely from my memory. Tearjerker is a good song but rather sappy, and only can listen to it occasionally. Then the half-baked title track struggles for over six minutes. Falling from Grace somehow gives trancey wah wahs followed by nice playing from Dave during the chorus. Shallow be thy name is just as stale as a song gets, nothing redeeming about it. Then the album closes with the beautiful Transcending, one of my personal favorites. One Hot Minute is definitely not a very good release, nor is it a lost cause. December 21, 2007

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