I've made some bad musical decisions in my life, but never caving into the temptation of buying this album - or any Chili Peppers album - isn't one of them. If I had any revelation upon listening to this it's that I can't place all of the blame solely on the vocals of Anthony Kiedis. His voice has always, always bugged the crap out of me (yes, before it was cool to hate him) and I always wondered if they would be better with a different signer. But now I have the opinion that I probably wouldn't like this band no matter who was singing for them. I know Frusciante seems to get a pass because he does some cool stuff on the guitar, has a solo career, was a junkie, etc. But more times than not anything funk-adjacent on this record makes me cringe before Kiedis even opens his mouth. So, there's blame to go around. I liked "Breaking the Girl" and, surprisingly, "Give it Away." Whatever's happening on those two songs at least feels like the band is in unison. But the rest is a complete pass for me. And maybe I told this story already, but I saw them headline Lolapalooza 1992 (right after Ministry, which is just wild to think about) and... I had fun! So, I'm not too cool to dislike this band entirely, but I am too cool to like them on record. If I'm going to be subjected to silliness, I suppose it works much better on me visually in the same way I don't want to listen to a Benny Hill record, I want to see that shit.