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Follow the Leader (Korn album)

1998 studio album by Korn

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ256447 ↗
Source-derived summary

Follow the Leader (stylized as FOLLOW the LEADEЯ) is the third studio album by American nu metal band Korn. It was released on August 18, 1998, through both Immortal and Epic Records. This was their first album not produced by Ross Robinson, instead being produced by Steve Thompson and Toby Wright.

The album peaked at number one on four national charts, including the US Billboard 200 with 268,000 units sold in its first week of release. Follow the Leader is the band's most commercially successful album, being certified five-times Platinum by the RIAA. Its singles, "Got the Life" and "Freak on a Leash", both charted on more than three charts, and their music videos are considered to be the first music videos retired from MTV, most notably the MTV show Total Request Live. The album generally received positive reviews by critics; AllMusic saying the album is "an effective follow-up to [Korn's] first two alt-metal landmarks." It is often regarded as the album that launched nu metal into mainstream ubiquity. In 2018, readers of Revolver voted it as the third-greatest nu metal album of all time. In 2025, Rae Lemeshow-Barooshian of Loudwire included the album in her list of "the top 50 nu-metal albums of all time", ranking it eighth.

The Family Values Tour promoted the album, along with its five singles. The song "Freak on a Leash" was nominated for nine MTV Video Music Awards, and won for the Best Rock Video award, as well as Best Editing.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Follow the Leader (Korn album)” as 1998 studio album by Korn. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Follow, Leader and Korn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1998, 2018, 2025—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1998-08-18. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Follow, Leader and Korn providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Follow the Leader (Korn album)”, the useful work is to connect “1998 studio album by Korn” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q256447. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998, 2018 and 2025.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Follow the Leader (Korn album) primary sources, Follow the Leader (Korn album) archive and Follow research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Follow the Leader (Korn album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.