The major label push for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, BloodSugarSexMagik (BSSM) was the fifth studio album of the California funksters and till date, their second biggest selling record after 2002’s Californication. The personnel involved on the cult album would go on to become legends in their own rights. BSSM was produced by Rick Rubin and engineered by Brendan ’Brien (producer for bands like Incubus and Velvet Revolver), while the official photographer was Gus Van Sant.

With Rubin at the helm, the Chilis found a perfect blend of funk, skate-punk and hip-hop on this record, moving on to a more melodic approach and a more polished sound. The ideas work so well that even at its running time of 74 minutes, BSSM never seems stretched. As a critic noted at the time, with five hits — Give It Away, Under The Bridge, Suck My Kiss, Breaking The Girl and If You Have To Ask — BSSM was the greatest album the Chilis made.

Produced at the height of their personal affliction with drug abuse and other excesses, BSSM takes sex, drugs and rock ’’ roll head-on. In sections, the funk celebrates just the making of such music — on the title track, Give It Away, Funky Monks and Suck My Kiss.

Interestingly, this spirit was furthest from the Chilis when they recorded BSSM in 1990. The band had just lost founding guitarist Hillel Slovak to heroin overdose, and surfer-frontman/primary songwriter Anthony Kiedis and newly-drafted guitarist John Frusciante weren’t too far from the edge themselves. Enter producer Rick Rubin — then best known as the man who ‘made’ the Beastie Boys. Rubin stripped down the arena-rock aspirations of the band (as hinted at in Mother’s Milk, their previous release), brought out the lean blues-funk from the rhythm section of bassist Flea and drummer Chad Smith and mean riffs from Frusciante and made Kiedis sing on tracks like Breaking The Girl and Under The Bridge. The pop sensibility of the Chilis was certainly on an upward curve — a listen to I Could Have Lied or Breaking The Girl a decade later re-establishes that notion.

Probably because of its twin motifs of anguish and sex, BSSM has been an abiding coming-of-age album for two generations of young adults.

It’s a direct mirror to the world of sex, drugs and rock ’’ roll, but at the same time it depicts the lonely Nineties in its own way. The songs only get darker with One Hit Minute, the follow-up.