Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo almost took his music in a different direction, with the band’s original guitarist revealing the rocker nearly released a vegetarian-themed rap album.
Look, we’ve all seen some musicians with rather embarrassing musical pasts. Why, Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend doesn’t talk much about writing songs like ‘Pizza Party’ with L’Homme Run, and very rarely do we hear about Katy Perry’s stint as Katy Hudson.
However, considering how open the band have been about their story, it’s almost surprising that we’re still learning things about Weezer and their iconic frontman, Rivers Cuomo, including the fact he almost released an album full of vegetarian-themed songs.
With the band’s self-titled ‘Blue Album’ turning 25 earlier this year, Rolling Stone recently did a deep-dive into the record, speaking with some of the people involved in its creation.
Check out ‘Surf Wax America’ by Weezer’:
While we learn that Cuomo was in heavy metal outfits like Avant Garde (later known as Zoom), the piece also notes how the bespectacled rocker’s time in college led to him recording roughly 30 songs in an attempt to prove himself as a musician.
As original guitarist Jason Cropper explains though, it was during this period that Cuomo attempted to mimic his hip-hop idols like Public Enemy and Run-D.M.C., reportedly writing and recording an entire album about vegetarianism under the name Vegeterrorists.
“Rivers can drop mad beats and spit mad rhymes with the best,” Cropper explained. “And if I stayed in the band, we would’ve done records like that years ago.”
While we have seen Rivers Cuomo work with the likes of B.o.B, very little of the Weezer frontman’s rap career has made it out into the world.
However, if you managed to pick up his 2007 demo compilation Alone, you would have heard his frantic cover of Ice Cube’s ‘The Bomb’, giving us something of an insight into what could have been.
Check out Rivers Cuomo covering Ice Cube’s ‘The Bomb’:
