Make Yourself is the third studio album by American rock band Incubus. It was released on October 26, 1999, through Epic Records 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 of the Billboard 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 number nine.
The album is the first to be recorded with new turntablist Chris Kilmore, who replaced DJ Lyfe.
Composition
Style and genres
Make Yourself has been described as an alternative metal, alternative rock, nu metal, and funk rock album. Slant Magazine claimed in 2001 that Incubus "blur the perceptions between metal and alt-rock" on the album.
Writing and recording
Most of the songs for the album were written following an exhausting tour for their full length major label debut album S.C.I.E.N.C.E.. Vocalist Brandon Boyd reflected in 2019, "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." In a 1999 interview, Boyd mentioned that the song "Nowhere Fast" originated through improvisational live jams, remarking "we've been exploring drum-'n'-bass here and there on stage, playing little improvisational ditties in between real songs from the records. José would start playing a drum-'n'-bass he'd made up, I'd play my didgeridoo to it, and [it] started forming out of live things like that."
While the album has since been considered to have a more accessible sound than their previous works, Boyd claimed in 2019 that "we didn’t actually say out loud to each other that we needed to write a more commercial record; we just wrote in the same way we knew how to write and Make Yourself is what came out." However, guitarist Mike Einziger did note in 2019 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.. 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." Tensions arose between band members during the recording, which led to them briefly entering group therapy. Boyd reflected on the tension in a 2001 interview with Spin, saying that "when we're making music together, it's like five men making love — in a very platonic sense. It's very erotic because your spirits are intermingling, you're becoming one. It's also why it can get so heated. You're tapping into this electricity that's very primal."
When the album was being recorded at NRG in North Hollywood, turntablist Chris Kilmore had his own DJ setup in the hallway. He adds, "there were a bunch of other bands there. 311 was there a lot of the time, and Jurassic 5 was there a lot of the time. And because I had that turntable setup in the hallway, I was always out there practicing and trying stuff." The day the instrumental song "Battlestar Scralatchtica" was recorded, Brandon Boyd was missing because he had a dentist appointment. Kilmore states, "we weren’t going to waste a day. So we wrote a cool little track. I was out in the hallway scratching, and Nu-Mark and Cut Chemist walked by. I was like, 'Hey. Do you guys want to scratch on this track we just did?'. We went in, laid it down, and that’s how 'Battlestar Scralatchtica' came about."
Release and touring
Shortly after the album's release, a thrash metal/death metal band from Louisiana called Incubus changed their name. The band, now known as Opprobrium, had released two critically acclaimed albums in 1988 and 1990, and were not aware of this 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.