When Brad Nowell, Eric Wilson, and Bud Gaugh started playing garage punk music at Long Beach, California clubs in the late 1980s, the trio would never fathom how far the legacy known as Sublime would take them. The brief but long-lived career of Sublime began as punk rock music with a reggae influence, and grew to become a defining element in Cali punk ‘90s music alongside Green Day and Offspring, attracting a carefree surf/skate beach crowd from every coast.

Sublime's debut album 40 Oz. to Freedom was released in 1992, four years after the band started playing live shows. Although it was rocking live shows with record sales, Sublime's success didn't start to fully catch on until radio stations got hold of the single "Date Rape" from the album, almost two years after 40 Oz. to Freedom was released. Sublime's follow-up album was 1994's Robbin' the Hood, which fared well with college radio stations and set the band up for the blowout success they had with their next album Sublime. Released in 1996, the album contains Sublime classics "What I Got," "Wrong Way," and "Santeria," arguably the band's all-time most popular three songs.

Sublime's self-titled third album propelled the band's members into the world of the music gods, but their fame was incredibly short-lived, as three weeks before its release the band's lead singer Nowell died of a heroin overdose in San Francisco. Sublime disbanded at that time, but continued to release posthumous albums; Friends, both released in 1998. Greatest hits albums Greatest Hits in 1999, 20th Century Masters in 2002, and Gold in 2005 sum up the great success Sublime stumbled upon through two decades of punk revival music.