Pitchfork: The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 20-01

i think theres some history rewriting going on if ppl think juicy is a canon biggie song only in retrospect or something

It depends on where you were when the canon was being compiled.

first off, none of my friends listened to the Strokes, J0rdan...in fact I don't think I hung out with people who listened to the Strokes until prolley 2004-2005, by then of course they were past their prime: so it goes...

I told my good friend/recent neighbor that I only heard Juicy for the first time a few days ago and he nodded, unsurprised, noting that I was white and that I never went out. I'm sure he was reaffirming in his head that Biggie was neither obscure nor European nor active musically in the 70s (as per his usual dogging on me...)

It depends on where you were when the canon was being compiled.

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, September 14, 2010 6:32 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

i guess if you werent listening to the 'rap canon' when the 'rap record in question' was being released then you might somehow have missed one of its 'biggest artists' 'biggest songs'

not sure why i went all out w the scare quotes there

OK so now we're arguing about what kind of bros we befriended ten or fifteen years ago.

it seems totally reasonable to think that there are tons and tons of people (young people, old people, people in between) who still haven't heard juicy

arguments like this are totally infuriating because people conflate "EVERYONE IN MY HIGH SCHOOL" with "everyone that I actually hung out/talked to in high school"

and then when I introduced the word "diverse" to describe my high school, I meant "including a huge cross-section of cowboys and skaters who didn't give two fucks about biggie" people immediately started using diverse to mean "lots of blacks and latinos went to my high school"

Also, remember that entire reign of BIG, from the premiere of "Juicy" through his death occured WHILE I was in high school, so these weren't yet "rap classics," they were "songs on the radio"

ie, like J0rdan said, it might be an age thing

my hs was about 2% black. :/

ppl mostly listened to like...limp bizkit and eminem, except for the younger kids who all seemed to listen to emo

'Twas something Mike D said to Tabitha Soren when she tip-toed around "post-Nirvana Alternative Nation thingy", Whines.

― cee-oh-tee-tee, Tuesday, September 14, 2010 3:02 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

Ha, yep. Whenever grunge comes up I almost always get a little "You must be talkin' about GARUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNGE" earworm from that clip. God knows how many years later it is now. Damn you, Mike D!

even the fucking nerds sitting around listening to talking heads at the age of 12 knew what "it was all a dream/ i used to read 'word up' magaine" is from is what i'm saying

that's like the most iconic line rap music, or so i thought

Stereotypes of a white indie male misunderstood
And it's still all good

and then when I introduced the word "diverse" to describe my high school, I meant "including a huge cross-section of cowboys and skaters who didn't give two fucks about biggie" people immediately started using diverse to mean "lots of blacks and latinos went to my high school"

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, September 14, 2010 7:26 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is not what i meant weirdo. at my h.s. white ppl were really really into rap too .... u couldnt throw a wallaby w/out hitting a white dude who bought 'wu tang forever' the day it was released

and at my college, white frat dudes all listened to / knew biggie songs!! esp juicy!! as did ... everyone?? its a totally standard obvious rap classic

it was a single! with a video! from one of the most well known rappers of the nineties! his first crossover hit!

man, you really travel in some circles full of not exceptionally diverse white people then

is that it? are we all the same to you, deej?

at my h.s. most of the white ppl were not really really into rap and those that were were really really westcoast-centric. more likely to talk up brotha lynch than biggie.

j0rdan's post is weirding me out tho. i never even heard of talking heads til i was in college (although i knew "genius of love" at that time)

i was mad into Talking Heads in like 7th grade

man, you really travel in some circles full of not exceptionally diverse white people then

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, September 14, 2010 7:46 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how does that compute? yr 'pulling a whiney' itt

i don't remember hearing biggie on the radio at all until "hypnotize", although i do remember seeing "big poppa" on mtv at the time. only east coast rap i remember hearing on the radio here at all from like 94-late 96 (coincidence w/ tupac's death or no?) is ll cool j.

whiney has a point, dude. i knew tons of white ppl in hs that didn't f/w rap.

i know those ppl exist -- obv they lived in caves w/ jaymc until they were rescued by girl talk in 2006 -- i was just responding to his weirdo interpretation that i was telling everybody how many black & latino ppl were at my high school

with my headphones slammin playin iron maiden
sleepin in the lobby of the days inn

^ most iconic line in rap music

u couldnt throw a wallaby w/out hitting a white dude who bought 'wu tang forever' the day it was released

A school full of white Wu-bangers and wallabys...I'm going to assume this school's class of 2010 is being filmed in 3D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XI1AJWnt7s

i know those ppl exist -- obv they lived in caves w/ jaymc until they were rescued by girl talk in 2006

Hey I never heard "Carry on My Wayward Son" before Night Ripper either!

Also never heard "Don't Stop Believin'" until the movie Monster in 2003. FYI.

xp i did but only because my workplace played a classic rock station

I'll notate when I first heard the songs in Pitchfork's top 20:

Wu-Tang Clan - "Protect Ya Neck": Don't remember ever hearing this, but it looks like I downloaded it when it made the Pitchfork 500 a couple years ago and listened to it once then. 2008.

Pulp - "Common People": My guess would be 1997 or '98. One of my best friends in college was a girl who was born in England and still very much an Anglophile, and I'm reasonably certain she owned Different Class.

My Bloody Valentine - "Only Shallow": 1999. And the reason I know with such certainty is that there was a campus-band festival on the quad, and a friend of mine assembled a few of us to play in an ad hoc band, and we covered this.

Björk - "Hyperballad" - 1997. Knew people that bought Homogenic the day it came out.

Aaliyah - "Are You That Somebody?" - 2003 or '04. Almost certainly downloaded after having read about the song on ILM.

Beck - "Loser" - 1994. Heard it on Q101.

Neutral Milk Hotel - "Holland, 1945" - Tough to say. I bought NMH's On Avery Island in Jan. '97 because I'd read a good review in Magnet or whatever, but I didn't much like the album, so I never bothered with In the Aeroplane. Only a few years later did I realize that it become this huge cult classic. I own the album now but only because I think someone included it on an mp3 CD with a bunch of other tracks they gave to me. Sometime in the mid-00s, although when 0:02-0:05 was sampled on Night Ripper, I didn't recognize it.

Daft Punk - "Da Funk" - Possibly 2002. I was performing a one-man show at a small theater in Chicago, and one day, the producer-director showed up early and put on Homework while we were getting things ready. I remember giving him shit about it, since at the time I had an unfortunate kneejerk reaction toward anything resembling house music. He shrugged and said, "I dunno, it's actually really good." I'm pretty sure he got into the album when he was on study abroad in France. I bought it used two or three years later.

Depeche Mode - "Enjoy the Silence" - 1990. Heard this shit on the radio in 7th grade. My friend Jon was a big Depeche Mode fan, IIRC.

Mazzy Star - "Fade Into You" - 1994. Fairly sure this was played on Q101.

Aphex Twin - "Windowlicker" - 1999 or 2000. My roommate Eric in college was a big Warp records nerd, and he'd play the video for this on his computer. Not sure if it was embedded on the CD or if he'd downloaded it or what. I thought it was hilarious and awesome.

The Notorious B.I.G. - "Juicy" - 2007? Maybe before, who knows.

Pavement - "Gold Soundz" - My friend Chris bought me Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain for Christmas 1995.

Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - 1992. Hmmmm, I don't remember it being played much on the radio stations I listened to (mostly top 40 and "urban"), but I have a hazy memory of having heard it not long after it was released and being intimidated by its dark moody noise but also surprisingly impressed.

Dr. Dre [ft. Snoop Doggy Dogg] - "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang" - 1993. Most likely on WGCI, the "urban" station.

DJ Shadow - "Midnight in a Perfect World" - 1996 or 1997. Chris bought this not long after it came out, and I think I dubbed it off him during winter break of freshman year. But I'm not sure I entirely trust that memory, since I also vaguely recall him not liking the album and me buying the CD off him, along with a Dirty Three record.

Radiohead - "Paranoid Android" - 2001. Probably I overheard it in college; one of my roommates was a fan. But even though I'd certainly heard "Creep" and "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Optimistic," I didn't actually get into Radiohead until 2001. After college I was hanging out a lot with my friend Matt, who had an enormous music collection and very catholic tastes, and I began to realize that my tastes had lately refined to the point where they were becoming a dead end. Since a few other friends of ours were Radiohead fans, I decided they were a band I should really check out. I'm pretty sure Matt burned me the CD.

Belle and Sebastian - "The State I Am In" - 2001. I'd heard The Boy with the Arab Strap and If You're Feeling Sinister in 1998-99 and Fold Your Hands, Child, You Walk Like a Peasant upon its release in 2000, but I don't remember having heard Tigermilk before 2001 or so. I might have dubbed it from my friend Colin.

Weezer - "Say It Ain't So" - 1995. On Q101, undoubtedly.

OutKast - "Spottieottedopalicious" - 2007 maybe? Whenever I bought Aquemini. (This is why I wish I'd been able to preserve iTunes metadata when I upgraded my computer two years ago.)

im not sure if this is the right thread for this but i just want to make sure everyone knows that i have several black friends

Aaliyah - "Are You That Somebody?" - 2003 or '04. Almost certainly downloaded after having read about the song on ILM.

ok, i'm with deej, you really do live under a rock

I'm actually more surprised about "Paranoid Android" taking till '01! Esp. considering "Hyperballad" and "Common People" were already familiar

ah wait missed the "probably overheard it in college" part

hahaha in a "who am i to be speaking" moment, i just realized i never heard any of the songs on this list by white people during the 90s (although i was familiar with "loser" from friends playing weird al's "alternative polka"). i still haven't heard seven of them.

not one of these, aside from nirvana/weezer, ever got airplay back then did they? i just remember the 90's as a whole lot of eminem and offspring.

alright ban kelpolaris

songs on this i've never heard

dj shadow
bjork
depeche mode
mazzy star
aphex twin
pavement (before i looked it up because it won the poll)

I've made no bones about the fact that I didn't listen to commercial pop music at all between like 1994 and 2002!

In the summer of '98, when "Are You That Somebody?" came out, I had a weekly internship at Minty Fresh Records and listening to stuff on the label, like the Aluminum Group and Komeda. I was still thick in the midst of a crush on both Stereolab and Tortoise. The only radio stations I fucked with were the college station in Kalamazoo, and the AAA and alt-rock stations in Chicago. I didn't have cable. I heard "Flagpole Sitta" because it was used in the commercials for Disturbing Behavior. I heard "Criminal" on Q101 while driving to the northern suburbs to jam with friends from college. I heard "One Week." One of the CDs I bought right before the end of my sophomore year was Gastr del Sol's Camoufleur. I read Pitchforkmedia.com for the first time when I was looking for reviews of that album. I borrowed David Grubbs and Steve Reich albums from my friend Colin. I listened to Sonic Youth's A Thousand Leaves, even though I thought it was a step down from Washing Machine. I made awesome synth jams on a Korg I borrowed from the head honcho at Minty Fresh. I saw a ton of indie movies, like Whatever and Your Friends and Neighbors and The Opposite of Sex and Buffalo '66 and Henry Fool and Slums of Beverly Hills, but I never saw Dr. Dolittle. Never heard "The Boy Is Mine," either.

...but I'm losing my edge!

j0rdan listen to Enjoy The Silence on YouTube, I'm like 100% certain youve heard it

I'll cop to never having heard that Belle & Sebastian song

for a period in the late 90s following a severe head injury the sound of my refrigerator humming at night sounded exactly like the mazzy star song listed here

i first heard "smells like teen spirit" vacationing in belgium in 2002. it was playing over a german-language commercial for the hyundai accent.

i have never heard the björk, depche mode or outkast singles &, quite frankly, hope i never will.

during my senior year of high school in 2001 my roommate alexander lost his virginity to beck's loser. consequently he would play it on repeat while studying for ap chem finals. he was also a big aphex twin fan but claimed that, with the important exception of the 1st 30 minutes of "selected ambient works vol. II", nothing aphex twin ever recorded could be played during sex.

i 1st heard nothing but a g thang during a fifth grade presentation on the effects of air pollution. it played over a montage of fish killed by acid rain.

as far as i cant tell the belle & sebastian and aaliyah singles are situationist pranks executed by the editors of pitchfork. no such songs have ever existed, nor should they.

the radiohead song was used in the short lived cbs situation comedy "the naked lens" starring rhea pherlman and téa leoni. i 1st heard it in a commercial for a high-end swiss watch brand.

the pulp song was played regularly in british taxi cabs when i was living in london while my stepfather oversaw a bank merger there. this was ~1997/8. i cannot pinpoint the moment i heard it any more exactly.

i bought and still own "in an aeroplane over the sea" on compact disc. however i have never listened to it & the disc remains in its original shrinkwrap. i 1st heard holland 1945 @ an indie dance night at stanford.

as for the rest i probably first heard them during a brief and rather foolish infatuation with shortwave radio when i was 12.

i've never heard that nirvana song. should i check it out on youtube?

j0rdan listen to Enjoy The Silence on YouTube, I'm like 100% certain youve heard it

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, September 15, 2010 12:09 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

haha was just coming down here to post this -- its def wayyy too dancey & uhhh awesome for him not to be into

imo any respectable cut copy fan shd really know that jam

i might've heard this before but it doesn't ring any bells

it is really good tho