During the grunge explosion of the 1990s, the music video for "Sex Type Thing" is usually denoted as the single factor that drove Stone Temple Pilots into the scene.

The video itself hosts a very dark motif, showing the band performing in a dungeon chamber, with singer Scott Weiland having bleached his hair blond, interspersed between clips of a dancer swinging on a chain and a woman in a prom dress surrounded by a ring of fire who then is being menaced before she rips her clothes off.

[4] Upon the success of "Sex Type Thing", controversies regarding the song's lyrics emerged while STP was on tour opening for Megadeth.

Weiland found himself in the position of defending "Sex Type Thing" to individuals who took the first-person approach he used in the song literally.

In a 1993 interview with Rolling Stone, Weiland expressed his frustration with the song's reception by saying "It was, 'All right, the "Cop Killer" controversy's dead, let's try to find something else'...I never thought that people would ever seriously think that I was an advocate of date rape.