Rated R by Queens of the Stone Age

Rated R, Queens of the Stone Age's second album, hit on June 6, 2000, the band's first for Interscope Records and the one that finally broke them out of the desert. Josh Homme's post-Kyuss outfit now had Nick Oliveri on bass and sharing the mic, Mark Lanegan turning up as a guest singer, Dave Catching and drummer Gene Trautmann in the ranks, and Chris Goss producing.

It's stoner rock with the fat trimmed off: riffs that hypnotize instead of plod, grooves that lock in and won't let go, and a sense of humor as dry as the Palm Desert scene it came from. "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" and "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" were the singles, and the second one dragged them into the mainstream. It even went gold in Britain. On vinyl it goes by Rated X.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.