Sam Rivers, founding bassist of nu-metal powerhouse Limp Bizkit, died on October 18. He was 48. The band confirmed the news on social media, though no cause of death was disclosed. “Today we lost our brother. Our bandmate. Our heartbeat,” they wrote on Instagram. “Sam Rivers wasn’t just our bass player — he was pure magic. The pulse beneath every song, the calm in the chaos, the soul in the sound.”
Rivers was a driving force in shaping the band’s sound, blending menacing grooves and funk-driven rhythms that anchored Fred Durst’s tongue-in-cheek delivery and Wes Borland’s explosive guitar riffs. Together, they blurred lines between rap, rock, and funk and built a sound that came to define late-‘90s nu-metal: loud, abrasive, and unashamedly confrontational.
Limp Bizkit’s 1997 debut, Three Dollar Bill, Y’all, put them on the map, but it was 1999’s Significant Other that pushed them into the mainstream, led by the hit singles “Break Stuff” and “Nookie.” A year later, the multi-platinum Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water debuted with record-breaking sales, cementing their place in rock history; the album including tracks like “My Generation,” “Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle),” and “My Way.”
In 2021, Limp Bizkit released their latest album, Still Sucks — a reminder that the band, and Rivers’ influence, still resonate decades later.
