10 Best Red Hot Chili Peppers Albums
2. Californication
Very narrowly missing out on the top spot is Californication, recorded after Frusciante returned to the band after his messy hiatus from the RHCP line-up throughout the mid '90s. The entire band having endured tumultuous times throughout the decade, Californication marked easily the group's most personal work up to that point.
Keidis peaks as a lyricist here, offering rare moments of maturity on Scar Tissue and the album's title track - destruction leads to a very rough road but it also breeds creation - as well as on intensely personal tracks Otherside and This Velvet Glove. Porcelain is a downtempo, tender, lilting lullaby of a song bookended by slightly more traditional latter day Chili Peppers fare in Easily and Emit Remmus.
Everything good about the Chili Peppers exists on this album, though so do some of their more egregious flaws; mainly Keidis and his bizarre tendencies as a lyricist. Despite Keidis having some of his strongest performances as a songwriter, ‘To fingerpaint is not a sin/I put my middle finger in’ and ‘Up to my ass in alligators/Lets get it on with the alligator haters’ on Purple Stain, are unforgiveable offences against the English language. And it is moments like this that just prevent Californication from hitting the top spot.