Experimental musicians don't usually become major rock stars. But the world fell in love with Beck in 1994 because of "Loser," a song that sounded like nothing else on the time. It's a decidedly low-fi, DIY rap song, with a slide guitar riff, a self-deprecating bilingual chorus, dialogue samples, and bizarre lyrics like "dog food skulls and the beefcake pantyhose." Amazingly, "Loser" hit #10 on the pop chart, and Beck's long career was truly underway.
And to think, none of it would've been possible if Beck, an obscure Los Angeles indie/folkie hadn't spent an afternoon in the early '90s jamming with a stranger. Beck's friend Tom Rothrock was starting up an independent label called Bong Load Records. "Tom had called up and said, 'Hey I know this guy who does hip-hop beats and stuff. I said, 'Oh yeah, well sometimes I rap between songs and get people from the audience to do the beat-box thing into the mike,'" Beck told Option in 1994 (via SongFacts). Beck said the guy, Carl Stephenson, seemed "unimpressed" until he busted out the song's slide guitar riff. Rothrock's friend put a drum beat over it, and Beck brainstormed some lyrics. "When he played it back, I thought, 'Man, I'm the worst rapper in the world — I'm just a loser.'" Now they had a title for the song, which was entirely written and recorded in just six hours.
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