The Offspring Conspiracy of One (Vinyl LP) * * *

Conspiracy of One, the first Offspring album of the 21st Century, was the fourth album from the game-changing punk group to be certified Platinum, a feat completed only a month after its release on November 14, 2000. The Offspring's first collaboration with producer Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine), it captures both the So-Cal band's trademark locomotive pop-punk ("Come Out Swinging", the 99-second "All Along") and their genre-crossing experiments (the bridge of mid-tempo "Special Delivery" borrows the ooga-chaka from Blue Swede's 1974 version of "Hooked on a Feeling"). The album is best known for its lead single, "Original Prankster," a song that broke the Billboard Top 100 and hit No.2 on the U.S. Alternative Airplay charts. The album's follow-up single, "Want You Bad," could be heard in the film American Pie 2 and the video game Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller. 20th-anniversary edition featuring the bonus track, "Huck It," previously only heard in a 2000 video album by the same name.