Make Yourself is the third studio album by American rock band Incubus. It was released on October 26, 1999, through Epic and Immortal Records. The album received double platinum certification by the RIAA and produced three charting singles—"Pardon Me", "Stellar", and "Drive"—all of which reached the top three on Billboards Alternative Songs chart, with the latter topping the chart and also becoming the band's sole top ten hit to date on the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at No. 9.
The album is the first to be recorded with new turntablist Chris Kilmore, who joined in February 1998 and replaced DJ Lyfe.
Writing and recording
The songs for the album were written following an exhausting tour for their full-length major label debut S.C.I.E.N.C.E.. Touring for S.C.I.E.N.C.E. began in mid-1997, once they had finished recording it, and covered the entirety of 1998, with the band playing over 300 shows that year alone. Brandon Boyd reflected in a 2020 Kerrang! article, "when we got home, we started coming up with ideas and gave ourselves eight weeks to write the record and in those eight weeks, all the songs that appear on the album came out." For Make Yourself, turntablist Chris Kilmore intended to use a scratch record of sounds he had recorded over the years. However, it took two and a half weeks for Kilmore to get this record made, which led to him not being present for the early portions of the writing process. However, guitarist Mike Einziger did note in 2020 that the band wanted to make the album more mature and less "zany" than earlier works such as S.C.I.E.N.C.E.. In 2020, he stated there was a "genuine creative desire to step up our artistry. We really wanted to become great songwriters [and] graduate from the zany music we spent our high school years writing." In this same interview, he said when they started writing Make Yourself, he felt as though the band had naturally come "to the end of an era" with their music, saying this mirrored how they felt when they started writing If Not Now, When?.
Tensions arose between band members during the making of the album, which led to them briefly entering group therapy. In a 2000 interview, Boyd said that when "Pardon Me" was written, he was also dealing with the deaths of a family member and a friend, in addition to these relationship troubles. He said that he was "being bombarded by life" at the time, and that this inspired the song's lyrical themes. The lyrics to "Stellar" were inspired by Boyd's new girlfriend Jo, who he met during the making of the album. with Boyd saying in 2020, "it was a very different kind of love than the love I experienced as a teenager. It felt much more expansive, hence the 'meet me in outer space' imagery."
Composition
Make Yourself has been labelled as an alternative metal, nu metal, alternative rock, and funk rock
Touring
To support Make Yourself, the band and Buckethead opened for Primus on their Antipop tour in 1999, including at a millennium show on December 31, 1999. Early the following year, they performed at the SnoCore Tour with System of a Down and Mr. Bungle (who broke up shortly afterwards). The members of Incubus have since spoken of their pleasure at getting to play with Primus and Mr. Bungle, two artists whom they cite as influences. Mr. Bungle were met with a hostile crowd reception at some of the shows with Incubus and System of a Down. Mr. Bungle's bassist Trevor Dunn remarked in 2013 that "we were sort of the grandpas of the tour", adding that his band dressed up as the Village People at these shows in an attempt to anger the "metal kids" in the audience. Brandon Boyd later reflected in 2018, "Mr. Bungle was hugely influential to both of our bands, and they were playing second, like before Incubus and System of a Down." He added, "Mike Patton would be a real rabble rouser, and say horrible things to the audience. We would be on the side of stage cheering, fanboys."
Following this, Incubus went on an American tour with 311, which lasted from late April 2000 to the beginning of July 2000. From August to early September 2000, the band performed at that year's edition of Ozzfest. It was their second appearance at the festival, having earlier appeared at the 1998 edition. On October 12, 2000, the band performed the single "Stellar" on the Late Show with David Letterman. They had also performed the song on an August 2, 2000 episode of the Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn. Between October and November 2000, Incubus and Taproot supported Deftones on their "Back to School" tour for the album White Pony.
Release and commercial response
Shortly after the album's release, a death metal band from Louisiana called Incubus changed their name. Now known as Opprobrium, they had released two critically acclaimed albums in 1988 and 1990, titled Serpent Temptation and Beyond the Unknown, and were not aware of the Californian Incubus prior to the release of Make Yourself. The name change was voluntarily made in order to avoid confusion and any potential conflicts between the two bands. Serpent Temptation and Beyond the Unknown were sometimes incorrectly labelled as being early releases from the Californian Incubus, and Opprobrium eventually reissued these albums under their new name. A British hard rock/heavy metal band called Incubus had also released an album in 1984 titled To the Devil a Daughter, which was sometimes attributed to the Californian Incubus.
The first single "Pardon Me" was initially released to radio stations as an acoustic song, which led to the album version becoming popular as well. The EP also featured additional material, including the song "Crowded Elevator", which was recorded during the Make Yourself sessions. "Crowded Elevator" had earlier appeared on the soundtrack album for the horror film Scream 3, which was released in January 2000.
By the time Make Yourselfs final and most popular single "Drive" was released in November 2000, the band had already sold a million copies, with Einziger recalling in 2020 that, "'Pardon Me' was a big deal for us, 'Stellar' was the second song that came out and a big deal on MTV, and then when 'Drive' came out it really pushed everything over the top." Regarding their success around this time, Boyd remembered in 2020, "the most stark change was that all of a sudden women were coming to our concerts so when people would cheer after a song, the pitch went up considerably."
Reception
Make Yourself has received generally positive reviews from critics. Steve Huey of AllMusic wrote that "Make Yourself makes a bid for broader mainstream success while keeping the group rooted in a hybrid of familiar late '90s alt-metal (i.e., roaring guitars, white-noise sonic textures, and an undercurrent of electronics) and Chili Pepper funk-rock. Where S.C.I.E.N.C.E. sometimes veered abruptly between the two genres without really fusing them, Make Yourself finds the band settling more comfortably into its sound." He added, "Make Yourself just doesn't quite match up with their breakthrough release; 1997's S.C.I.E.N.C.E.. On this effort, Incubus seems more concerned with playing with sounds and differentiating themselves from Kid Rock than they do with making enjoyable music." In their November 1999 review, CMJ New Music Report also compared the album's vocals to Faith No More, and described the instrumentation as being a cross between the funk style of Primus and the "bloody new metal riffs" of Korn. They added that it is a "step away from the spastic, funkdafied metal of 1997's brilliant S.C.I.E.N.C.E. [but] definitely not a step down in quality." Adweek stated in April 2000 that Incubus had "finally made a mark", and that "their newest offering blends alternative metal with a little rap/rock thrown in for good measure." The Michigan Daily had a negative view of the band's new sound, giving the album only one out of five stars in October 1999. The review states that, "the group's once potent mix of funk, metal, hip-hop, soul and R&B was initially compared to 'Primus with a soul singer' and a '90s Red Hot Chili Peppers'. With the bland, radio friendly offering Make Yourself, it looks like Incubus is more likely to get compared to the likes of The Goo Goo Dolls and Sugar Ray." In December 1999, Daily Eastern News writer Al Dertz criticized the album for having less slap bass playing from Alex Katunich, adding that Incubus "once had equal influences of Faith No More, Primus and Rage Against the Machine brilliance" and have now "fallen into 311 mediocrity."
Make Yourself was also met with a mixed reaction from some fans of the band, due to its different sound. In a June 2000 interview with Spin, Brandon Boyd claimed, "when the album first came out, we got threatening letters from fans like 'You Sold Out'."
Legacy and accolades
The album is listed in the 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Colin Larkin wrote in his 2011 book The Encyclopedia of Popular Music that Make Yourself was "a far slicker affair than previous outings", adding that it "utilized the latest studio technology and a greater range of sounds." They wrote, "in ways moving away from their roots and definitively getting more anthemic and catchier with it, Make Yourself caught Incubus in a state of flux, but one in which they really found their feet. A little nu metal, a little alternative metal, a little funk, but altogether compelling." In 2021, it was named one of the 20 best metal albums of 1999 by Metal Hammer magazine. In a 2022 Louder Sound article, Brandon Boyd placed it fourth in his ranking of their studio albums. He stated, "It's not higher because it was a period of time that was gruelling. We were playing 9 or 10 shows a week: one in the morning and one in the evening, I learned to take naps on drum risers during soundchecks." Boyd also reflected in 2020 that, "all of the flags were blowing in a direction that was telling us we should’ve made another record like S.C.I.E.N.C.E. and that would’ve solidified our place in a small subgenre of rock and metal", adding "our intuitions were pulling us in a completely different direction and we trusted it. We ended up carving our own place in the world." In 2025, Rae Lemeshow-Barooshian of Loudwire included the album in her list of "the top 50 nu-metal albums of all time", ranking it twelfth.
Live performance
The first known performance of a Make Yourself song was at a March 4, 1999 concert at the Glass House in Pomona, California, which featured the live debut of "Nowhere Fast". All of the other songs from Make Yourself were performed live during the touring cycle in 1999 and 2000, with the exception of "Battlestar Scralatchtica", which is not known to have been performed until 2001 during the Morning View touring cycle. The band went on a tour of North America in 2019 to celebrate the album's 20th anniversary. In a 2019 interview, DJ Chris Kilmore stated, "for me personally, I actually really enjoy revisiting Make Yourself because my role in the band has expanded greatly into playing all kinds of keyboards and things like that. But when we were on Make Yourself, I just had two turntables. So I really get to showcase what I originally did in this band, which is really fun for me."
Track listing
Original release
Tour edition bonus disc
Personnel
Credits adapted from the album's liner notes.
Incubus
- Brandon Boyd – vocals, percussion
- Mike Einziger – guitar
- DJ Kilmore – turntables
- Dirk Lance – bass
- Jose Pasillas – drums
Additional personnel
- Dave Holdridge – cello on "Drive", "I Miss You", digital editing
- Cut Chemist – additional scratching on "Battlestar Scralatchtica"
- DJ Nu-Mark – additional scratching on "Battlestar Scralatchtica"
- Michael Baskette – engineer
- Evan Hollander – assisting engineer
- Matt Griffin – assisting engineer
- Stephen Marcussen — mastering at A&M
- Rick Will – mixing
- Scott Litt – mixing
Charts
Weekly charts
{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders"
|+Weekly chart performance for Make Yourself
! Chart (1999–2001)
! Peak<br />position
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Year-end charts
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|+2000 year-end chart performance for Make Yourself
! Chart (2000)
! Position
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! scope="row"| US Billboard 200
| 107
|}
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|+2001 year-end chart performance for Make Yourself
! Chart (2001)
! Position
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!scope="row"| Canadian Albums (Nielsen SoundScan)
| 166
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! scope="row"| US Billboard 200
| 90
|}
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"
|+2002 year-end chart performance for Make Yourself
!Chart (2002)
!Position
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!scope="row"|Canadian Alternative Albums (Nielsen SoundScan)
| 151
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!scope="row"|Canadian Metal Albums (Nielsen SoundScan)
| 75
|}