Limp Bizkit have catapulted to global musical awareness this year with their astonishingly accomplished album 'Significant Other' which spent a very impressive 5 weeks at the top of the US billboard album chart. The extent of their success in 1999 has been reflected in every walk of the media, in numerous award nominations most recently in the alternative category of the American Music Awards and in their omnipresence on the Internet amongst the 75 most common search terms.

Front man Fred Durst has made endless headlines having been at the centre of the US media's crusade against the excesses of rock. Earlier in the year he was accused of kicking a bouncer in the face in defence of a fan at one of the band's notoriously high-energy performances. More recently Limp Bizkit was also at the heart of the controversy surrounding the rapes and attacks which marred the Woodstock festival, when media commentators accused their show of pushing temperatures to boiling point.

The album, 'Significant Other', fuses post-grunge rock with an authentic take on hip-hop music, right down to a collaboration with Gang Starr's DJ Premier and Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan. We caught up with the band at London's Hyde Park Hilton, where they emerged from a smoky hotel room to tell us about their forthcoming album project and the origins of their unique musical fusion.

Click on the above links to see excerpts from the interview and look out for Part 2 later in the week, in which the band discuss what it's like to be the target of a media witch-hunt.