The album featured the singles "California Über Alles", "Holiday in Cambodia", "Kill the Poor", and "Too Drunk to Fuck". The album has been the best selling and mainly the most critically acclaimed album by the band. Allmusic rated the album 5 out of 5 stars.[1]
Accomplishments
Spin (5/01, p. 112) ranked the album #46 on their list of "50 Most Essential Punk Records".[2]
Q (5/02 SE, p. 136) ranked the 4 out of 5 stars and included it in their "100 Best Punk Albums" list.
Uncut (p. 120) ranked it 4 out of 5 stars and said "Dead Kennedys could echo both the weirdness of Beefheart and the sort of spectral pop that came off Spector's production line. Still fresh. No rot."
Alternative Press (11/00, p. 144) included the album in their "10 Essential Political-Revolution Albums" and said "...Biafra takes on the monied classes and the government, and the songs become almost too intricate for punk. Massively influential."
Magnet (p. 90) said that "Dead Kennedys brought a horror-show vibe to punk that remains more unsettling than the Misfits' comic-book core and battier than My Chemical Romance's make-up."
Kerrang! (p. 52) called the album "[O]ne of the finest slabs of rant 'n' roll ever made."
Mojo (p. 114) rated the album 4 out of 5 stars and said "[T]he shrill, nervy majesty of FRUIT remains unblemished." They also ranked the album #9 in their "Top 50 Punk Albums" and said "Singer Jello Biafra's vitriolic, merciless verbal lambasting set to a musical backdrop of fervid punk." (3/03, p. 76)