At first, the Red Hot Chili Peppers were not good. Neither of their first two albums make it into this top 10, and with good reason—for their first half-decade, the band were mostly focused on producing a fundamentally unpalatable brand of funk that was probably quite fun to play but absolutely no good at all to listen to.
Their third album (featured here in the no. 10 spot) was better, mostly just by virtue of being a watered-down version of the first two. But on fourth album Mother’s Milk, guitarist John Frusciante got involved, and everything began to change. Not immediately—they had to work out their new sound, and there were some missteps and ill-advised circling-backs along the way—but in retrospect, they can now claim to have originated and developed a sound that was completely original and also, eventually, actually really good to listen to.
Those funk roots were still there, but they were tempered by a melodic sympathy and a gentleness that either evaded or did not interest them on earlier records. Their lyrics, still often largely nonsensical, had a more considered and musical quality to them. And instead of using all of the quite considerable reserves of energy available to them all the time, they learned to ease the foot off the throttle sometimes, and produced some beautifully dynamic work in the process.
But what’s the best of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ best? And on which one do they sing about California the most? Answers (to the former questions, not so much the latter) below.
10) The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (1987)
The first Chili Peppers album to see a modicum of commercial success after the flat reception of their first two is also the only one to feature all of the band’s original members playing on every song—guitarist Hillel Slovak would die of a heroin overdose the following year, and drummer Jack Irons would quit soon after, appalled by what success was apparently doing to those around him, and be replaced by Chad Smith. The Uplift Mofo Party Plan manages a few moments of interest— “Behind the Sun” is a somewhat intriguing (if ultimately quite annoying) blend of funk and 80s synth-pop—but ultimately, “Fight Like a Brave”, with its Guns N’ Roses-tribute-act atmosphere, is the best representation of where the band were at this point. That is to say, still only half-emerged from the scuzzy LA rock scene that birthed them.
