Most Influential Artists of 1996 in 2021

I love Herbert. What music in 2021 do you hear that was influenced by Herbert's music?

Bone Thugs
Mariah Carey
Shania Twain

Oval definitely, Thrill Jockey released Systemisch and 94diskont in the US in 1996 and the influence of those albums has been a constant throughout the following two decades, arguably among the most influential electronic music of the 90s

Theo Parrish and Moodymann both had records out in '96 and their influence has also been a p constant presence, particularly throughout the 10s

I Care Because You Do came out in '96 and I'm guessing has a degree of influence wrt recent breakcore revival stuff (though according to RYM the foundational album there is Christoph de Babalon's If You're Into It, I'm Out of It which came out the following year)

Not necessarily influential in 2021, so veering off topic here I guess - These albums were released in 1996 and are considered one of the best of their career:

Belle & Sebastian - if your feeling sinister
Stereolab - emperor tomato ketchup
Dj shadow - endtroducing
UGK - ridin dirty
Ground Zero - 革命京劇 (Revolutionary Pekinese Opera) Ver.1.28
Tortoise - millions now living will never die
Aphex Twin - Richard D James
Ras Kass - soul on ice
Burzum - filosofem
Ryoji Ikeda - +/-
Current 93 - all the pretty little horses
2pac - all eyez on me
Dr Octagon - s/t
Beck - Odelay
Everything but the Girl - walking wounded
Cibo Matto - Viva La Woman
Fugees - The Score
Fiona Apple - Tidal

And that’s all that I can think of right now

Oh wait

Cardigans - first band on the moon
red house painters - songs for a blue guitar
Sun city girls - dantes inferno
Busta Rhymes - the coming
Cat power - what would the community think? (It’s one of her best albums and I wont hear otherwise)

"Crossroads" is the first triplet rapping I can remember.

i mean "Tha Crossroads"

Arto Lindsay - mundo civilizado
Fountains of Wayne - s/t
Jamiroquai - traveling without moving
Cake - fashion nugget
Lamb - s/t
Tricky - nearly god and pre-millenium tension
Tool - Aenima
Aaliyah - one in a million
Sublime - s/t

Actually a pretty busy year now that I think about it… I haven’t started looking into singles yet.

Donna Lewis - I love you always forever was massive this year iirc

Sneaker Pimps - 6 underground also released this year

Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite

Are these all artists who are influential in 2021 or is this just a list of stuff from 1996?

I think the latter at this point

Foxy Brown

I hear Z100 play way too many piano ballads lately so... Jewel "Foolish Games"

Jordan was wondering about 'artists in 1996 that shaped the next 25 years of music' which is a more interesting question than who in 96 is influential specifically right now in anno 2021 which probably hardly anyone tbh

Ok well I still think the 5 I listed satisfy both questions.

I actually do think Maxwell’s debut was influential (and continues to be?), fwiw

(it def. influenced my roommate Matt to smoke out and hook up)

Bone Thugs otm

We could also start listing 2021 artists that owe an influence to 1996 specifically and it doesn't sound like it'd make the question any easier. Nobody has dated to pair artists or releases yet.
Or maybe just mid/late 90s trends that can be still be heard now ?

Tricky is a really interesting one in that he's one prominent, successful and critically acclaimed artist who virtually no one tried to consciously copy, and who initially seemed like an outlier but whose influence (particularly his approach to vocals) has filtered through into contemporary music in a really diffuse and interesting way. When Billie Eilish cited something off Nearly God as an influence there was a real penny drop moment but I think it had been quietly rumbling on for a few years.

Maybe slightly later in his career but the influence of someone like Elliot Smith is directly audible in the music of people like Phoebe Bridgers. That's a significantly less diffuse one.

In terms of the original thread premise the person who most immediately comes to mind is someone like Todd Edwards, who was turning heads in very specific circles by the mid-90s but whose sound and techniques have impacted right across the contemporary gene pool including artists who would never directly vote him as an influence.

good call on Todd Edwards, similar to Oval insofar as both popularised production techniques that are widely used (ubiquitous in the case of Edwards) by contemporary producers who may be unaware of their exact genesis

Billie Eilish is influenced by trip hop… artists like Tricky, Esthero can be heard in her sound.

She makes a case for trip hop from around this period to be influential to a big artist in 2021.

I also hear Jamiroquai in the thousand of “funky” indiepop acts that have been sort of “boutique” music in the past couple of years.

I get that some of the artists mentioned here may have echoes in current artists, but it's hard to say that a lot of them shaped the last 25 years

Todd Edwards

The Spice Girls were probably more influential than most here

On that tip, the Backstreet Boys' debut (released ex-US in '96) kind of represents the beginning of the Max Martin Era.

the spice girls were an anachronism by y2k

https://www.timeout.com/london/news/dua-lipa-just-paid-tribute-to-the-spice-girls-with-her-performance-at-the-brits-2021-051121

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nme.com/news/music/beyonce-once-told-victoria-beckham-how-the-spice-girls-inspired-her-2935022%3famp

How about Mase as the godfather of mumble rap?

Three 6 Mafia is probably the best answer

xp Mase is another Class of ’97 artist, no (?)

I was just thinking about how puff and mase in particular were criticized around that time for a lack of lyricism, like could they even be called mcs? by conscious rap rockists, in a way that seems almost quaint these days, like axel rose complaining about nirvana in 1992.

What did TLC do in 1996? Crazy Sexy Cool was earlier and Fanmail was later.

Yeah, I guess you're right. They did win the best R&B album Grammy award in 1996, but the album came out late '94. Grammys were late to the party, I guess.

Billie Eilish is influenced by trip hop… artists like Tricky, Esthero can be heard in her sound.

She makes a case for trip hop from around this period to be influential to a big artist in 2021.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, 15 October 2021 15:28 (three days ago) link

Reach imo. Billie eilish is more influenced by xxxtentacion than trip hop

it's a reach that I endorse!

Neurosis Through Silver in Blood was kind of a blueprint for what the Pitchfork-reading kids would call post-metal.

Blut aus Nord released their debut Memoria Vetusta in 1996, which also can be argued as being innovate atmospherically.

Ulver's first album Bergtatt came out in 1995 but I am pretty sure people were still listening the next year (and definitely that band paved the way for a whole lot of stuff).

Only after typing the above did it dawn in me that that was a very formative year for a lot of things that define a lot of metal these days (certainly a lot of the metal that I personally enjoy).

Meanwhile, Kool Keith unleashed Dr. Octagon upon the planet... Surely that counts for something.

Entroducing influenced 25 years of This American Life segments

I hear Z100 play way too many piano ballads lately so... Jewel "Foolish Games"

― billstevejim, Friday, October 15, 2021 4:50 AM (three days ago)

I wouldn't normally be pedantic about this but I just recently learned that despite appearing on her 1995 debut, "Foolish Games" and "You Were Meant for Me" weren't released as a single until 1997 (after "Who Will Save Your Soul" became a hit, belatedly). This explains why I had mentally filed "Hands" from the second album alongside those singles from the first, despite the 3 year gap separating their respective albums.

Reach imo. Billie eilish is more influenced by xxxtentacion than trip hop

― xheugy eddy (D-40)

http://www.mtv.com/news/3119037/pop-goes-industrial-nu-metal/

MTV agrees with me!

But just months into 2019, a new trend has emerged, with some pop artists tapping into sonic corners more unexpected than typical millennium-pop nostalgia: trip-hop, nu-metal, industrial, and breakbeat hardcore. In January, Billie Eilish, one of the singer-songwriters positioned at the top of pop's new class, released "bury a friend." The song was a spooky, unsettling slice of weirdo electronica that found the 17-year-old drifting from the ethereal alt-hip-hop of previous hits "Ocean Eyes" and "Bellyache," and leaning into dark trip-hop territory, resurrecting the slow, cerebral lurch of Massive Attack's "Inertia Creeps" (off their 1998 opus, Mezzanine) and the eerie wobble of Tricky's "Strugglin'" (off 1995's Maxinquaye).

Her trip-hop-inspired lean continued heavily on her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (released March 29), manifesting in the skittering melancholy of "xanny," the eerie dreariness of "goodbye," and the ambient, stormy sorrow of "listen before i go." Eilish also veered into heavier electronic industrial avenues on tracks like "ilomilo," a song preoccupied with death, and "you should see me in a crown," an explosive and diabolical dance-floor slammer with a pit-in-your-stomach beat.

When Billie Eilish cited something off Nearly God as an influence there was a real penny drop moment

would love a source for this if you have/remember it matt bc i believe it more than deej does

yea my question is, is this a writer saying "this reminds me of trip hop" or is this billie eilish actually drawing on trip hop

Does an influence have to be direct, with no intermediary artists in the chain?

Billie Eilish fell in love with trip-hop after she heard it the place where the true heads get their fix: in the lobby of a hotel

i.e. where I've heard Massive Attack for 20 years

she does literally sing about a hotel lobby in one of her new songs!

Tricky has mentioned Billie Eilish in a few interviews but is skeptical that she is directly influenced by him:

Recently, someone posted a picture of me from 25 years ago, and the guy said, “Wow it’s funny, Tricky looked like this 25 years ago and all rappers look like that now.” Another person posted a Billie Eilish song and said, “Basically Tricky.” And I thought, “What the fuck does that mean?” So, I heard the song, and I thought it was quite funny, because she might not even know who I am. Some people are influenced by me through other people. The guy from The xx said that he’d been influenced by me, and Billie Eilish could have been influenced by them and not even know who I am. It’s quite weird.

but see, if she was influenced by the xx in that scenario, that's still Tricky "shaping the next 25 years," right?

(also, who knows what kind of dusty crate-digger shit her bro is into; but he counts here, as well...)

things just rule and most are never understood

Well I guess what Eddie Vedder has over his contemporaries in Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains in terms of legacy is that he is still alive.

He even (prophetically) sang that!

Mark Arm is pretty good at dodging Vedder's assassins

This is King Buzzo erasure

I wish smashing pumpkins seemed more influential esp adore era but I don’t feel like they are really? I think the music has aged pretty well but idk about influential

I love AIC but to me they're mostly a throwback to 70s rock/Sabbath and not so much a blueprint for alt rock the 25 years afterwards? Of the major grunge bands I'd probably say they were the best but musically the least "influential".

idk i think they can lay claim to sludge metal

baroness, mastodon, they love aic and you can tell

At thirty years old, the impact and influence of Facelift shows no sign of slowing. Its trademark sound is indelible — traces of it can be found in the DNA of sludge metal and nu metal. The latter would also pick up distortion techniques to add extra grit and texture to their sound.

The combination of hard rock dirge and drawn out vocals is evident in music by Godsmack (who took their name directly from an AIC song title) Dilly Dally, Windhand, and Deftones. The same blend of ethereal vocals and guitar distortion layered over oppressive bass can also be found in dark, folky music by Emma Ruth Rundle and Chelsea Wolfe.

The angst-ridden, brutally honest lyrical themes made accessible in Facelift have become so hardwired into certain genres of metal that it’s hard to imagine what that music might be like without them.

I always associate Sludge Metal mostly with the Melvins/Eyehategod bloodline more than AIC but yeah now you mention it, there's definitely an influence there.

back when i worked in a club's booking office, they used to call sludge metal "butt rock"