My favorite Cobain quote: “Even the guys in the safety patrol called me ‘f-t. Kurt Cobain was always a wickedly funny little shit. Punk rockers are opinionated little shits who care too much about what does and doesn’t suck and get by on a wicked sense of humor. Releases by OutKast, Beck, Lauryn Hill, the Beastie Boys, Radiohead, and the Chemical Brothers-among others in the pages that follow-have pointed rock, hip-hop, and pop toward a mighty freaky future. Still, looking back over the decade, things look good for the ’00s. Of course, it can take a few years for a record’s legacy to become clear, and many albums sound better in hindsight, even Stone Temple Pilots’ Purple. And for all their sound and fury, neither Korn nor Limp Rizkit made records with Nirvana’s burning soul or Rage Against the Machine’s missionary zeal. For all their mackin’, neither Puffy nor Jay-Z made LPs that touched the committed passion of Fear of a Black Planet or the musical ambition of The Low End Theory. We just called the golden eras as we saw ’em. You may also note that our roster skews a bit toward records from the early ’90s, especially for rock and hip-hop. Tupac Shakur, Ani DiFranco, Jane’s Addiction, and other artists whom we love for a million reasons, but who didn’t make what we felt was a genuinely great record in the ’90s, remain in our hearts-but not on the list.Īlso Read Green Day, Eddie Vedder to Headline Arizona’s 2023 Innings Festival Other times, the perfectly cooked beat the brilliantly raw (PJ Harvey’s To Bring You My Love over Rid of Me). Sometimes a record’s knock-you-off-your-Skechers impact helped it tip the scales over more refined craft (Nirvana’s Nevermind topping In Utero). Suffice it to say that, after much heated discussion and countless veiled insults, it came down to the factors of both remarkable artistry and cultural shock value. What, then, you ask, constitutes “greatest”? Don’t even start. That ours should be more valid than yours is debatable. When you’re measuring the music this decade is offering to history-the sounds we partied with, copulated to, fought about, and wept over-everyone has an opinion. Pronouncing the 90 greatest albums of the ’90s is a somewhat presumptuous thing to do.
We heard that a lot during the time we spent preparing this issue. This article originally appeared in the September 1999 issue of SPIN.
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