Enginerd, that about sums it up. I am looking at it as a whole whole organism rather than the influence of the individual organs. If that analogy makes sense. I am also looking at what the artists create as if it has staying power, there really isn’t much out there from the last 20 years or so that has had it. Thus, the particular influence of one or two people who may or may not have dramatically changed the field is a moot point if the end product through countless iterations doesn’t stay around.
“Walk this Way” and the later Anthrax-Public Enemy collaboration “Bring the Noise” were novelties – much like the “Judgment Night” soundtrack. It was only in the second half of the 1990s, IMHO, that real rock-rap fusion really took off. The difference is that before then it was collaborations of two genres; the fusion brought them together in single musical groups. But at this point I’d say rap has overtaken rock as the predominant musical genre in American popular music.
Ska and the brief swing phase were just periodic recurrences of musical styles long past, which rear their heads from time to time. Boy bands are nothing new to the 1990s either. And, the OP mentioned covers as well; performers have been doing these since long before the 90s.
So, what is the difference between hip-hop and gansta rap and other forms of rap, anyway? Seriously, I’d like to know what the distinctions are since I honestly do not know the difference and (in my admittedly narrow view of rap music) it all sounds the same to me.
I know, I know! Hip-hop is about sex, Gangsta rap is about violence.
Good point, however this type of saccharine boy-band/teen-idol music has been around for decades. Think Supremes, Jackson 5, Shawn Cassidy, Ricky Nelson…hell, even Elvis Presley was a glorified teen idol. 
The music itself may have changed, but the image is basically the same, and that’s all this type of music has going for it anyway.
You’ve got to be shitting me. No** Korn** yet?
Korn is solely responsible for all of the nu-metal we hear on the radio today. Yeah yeah, I know the metal elitists will be in here telling me how such-and-such were doing it before Korn, but the reality is that Korn brought it to the masses and has influenced pretty much all “metal” on the radio right now and for the last 7 or 8 years at least.
I would almost go as far as to say that they made as big of an impact on pop music as Nirvana did. Actually nu-metal has outlasted grunge…
Thank you Thank you Thank you.
It is nice to see someone else who understands this concept. RunDMC/Aerosmith didn’t start anything. Neither did Anthrax/PE. Both great songs, but they didn’t start any changes in music. Neither did FNM IMHO, but that one can be argued. I think the real rap/rock push started with Limp Shitstick. I hate to give Fred any credit for anything, but unfortunately it is true. Korn had nothing to do with rap/rock as people always claim.
The dance/electronic music movement is arguably the most important one to come out of the 90’s.
IMO Trance toones were the perfect antidote to all that hackneyed rock’n’roll ‘
’
More of an end of the 80s, early 90s thing - after the whole Milli Vanilli lip- syncing-their-way-to-a-Grammy incident, I noticed a great number of ‘Unplugged’ albums being recorded. Acoustic guitars were everywhere and every rock band would do at least one ballad that was ‘unplugged’.
Off the top of my head, when I think of the 90s, I think of:
Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morrissette
OK Computer - Radiohead
Achtung Baby - U2
Out of Time - REM
Nevermind - Nirvana
Blood Sugar Sex Magix - Red Hot Chilli Peppers
Little Earthquakes - Tori Amos
Dummy - Portishead
A Different Class - Pulp
What’s the Story, Morning Glory - Oasis
Odelay - Beck
Mezzanine - Massive Attack
Tori Amos and Fiona Apple probably helped set the stage for the slew of female artists now who sing and song write and play the piano.
IMHO, there are more women famous for singing, songwriting and playing guitar than the piano. Which reminds me of another significant, but short-lived ‘movement’ - Lilith Fair, which saw the likes of Sarah MacLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Shawn Colvin, Indigo Girls and lesser known acts like Abra Moore getting more airplay.
I see it more as a revival of the brief female singer-songwriter thing that happened during the late 80s with Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, Edie Brickell and Michelle Shocked. Maybe it’ll be revived again at the end of this decade. I don’t quite see it happening with Avril Lavigne and the other young female rock stars now.
Grunge, hip-hop, gangsta-rap, techno-pop, pop, they all seemed to steal from the seventies and eighties to me. Perhaps I’m too hard on rap music, but the early nineties stuff sampled so much early music that it kinda nulled itself out as anything original.
And certainly the pop and techno-pop stuff took liberally from the seventies basket as well.
The band that sums up the nineties for me (and did it in one album no less!) is The Presidents of the United States of America.
That album of the same name did it all.
Foo Fighters.
Um…Actually…that one is too easy.
::Lets softball fly past him::
Bands like Faith No More, Tool, and Pantera very heavily influence the metal music coming out now. I recognize that the latter two bands are still releasing albums and playing out but their 90s material is what I wish to point out. Many new bands are derivative. There is a legacy effect there I assure you.
Ok 1st off…front 242 metal?! :eek:
Alright since that’s settled…industrial is very mucg alive and kicking eventhough it’s current form isn’t even close to the wax trax 90’s era of american guitar influenced industrial…but nevertheless it’s still there.
Gotta be the leaps and bounds made in electronic music over the past decade. At the end of the 80s, electronica consisted of the Chicago House and Detroit Techno scenes, and New Order (I’m simplifying).
By the end of the decade, big beat had reached a mass audience, drum-n-bass and garage were influencing hip-hop, Radiohead and Bjork were incorporating Jungle beats and computer noises into their tracks and everybody was using Pro-Tools. Electronica is interesting in this way; while it hasn’t had a huge commercial impact, particularly in the U.S., its influence can be seen in almost every form of modern music.
Nu-metal came on the scene five or six years after grunge and is already looking tired. Grunge, though tired, is still represented on commercial radio by the likes of Creed and Nickleback, and has experienced a revival due to the rash on new garage rock bands out.
It is doubtful that nu-metal would even exist without grunge. Nu-metal applies the themes and histrionics of grunge to its hip-hop meets metal musical stylings. I mean, come on, if Nirvana hadn’t come along, (gross generalisation) metal would still be about Women and Satan.
In line with this, I gotta say that the rejection of grunge by the colleagues of the OP is ridiculous. Grunge has influenced every form of rock music made since Nevermind came out, whether it’s Linkin Park, The Vines, Creed or Avril Lavigne.
I’d point to the slacker genre beginning in the nineties, with artists like Beck and the Lemonheads.
And of course, hip-hop, and particularly gangsta rap, cemented its place in musical history in the nineties. The nineties was the time when artists who had grown up listening to rap started to make their own rap records, as opposed to artists who had grown up on funk, punk or soul helping to create the genre.
The nineties were the decade of indie rock. Building on Sonic Youth and the Pixies, every town in America had an indie rock scene. While they didn’t always have huge sales, albums like Sunny Day Real Estate’s Diary and any of Built to Spill’s releases for instance are expressions of a huge underground bubbling beneath the surface of American culture.
And let us not forget Trip-hop, where Portishead and Massive Attack made not only stunningly beautiful music, but allowed the most unlikely people to enjoy hip-hop beats by marrying them to dark orchestral stabs, laid back samples and keyboard blips. If you cannot acknowledge the artistic worth, simply remember that these compositions will be residing on chill-out albums for the next hundred years or so.
I have Front 242 on the industrial branch of rock with heavy metal influences, yes. They had a similar sound to Ministry and Nine Inch Nails both of which are metal influenced industrial. I am wondering what you are actually talking about.
Dude, you’ve obviously NEVER listened to any of their albums, otherwise you’d know they’ve only used “guitars” on Up Evil…everything else is all electronic…
I’m surprised…what I view to be the most influential bands of the '90’s have largely not been noted thus far.
I will not deny the pervasiveness of rap music and its ability to endure. I avoided that for years…and I’m barely a year removed from recognizing it as a legitimate art form. However, I feel the true pioneers of the genre had mostly died out by the time the '90’s came along…Rum DMC, The 2 Live Crew, NWA, etc were the most influential rappers.
With rock music, though, there has been no band more influential than Pearl Jam and Metallica. Almost all of what is on the radio today sounds like one or the other. Grunge did not die with Kurt Cobain as it was born with Eddie Vedder. Most anyone can sing along with the chorus of Even Flow…and Metallica was just another grunge band that was nearly a decade before its time (or, rather a speed metal band that evolved into a grunge band).
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are another influential band that has lost context as a result of one mega-hit and a bunch of minor hits. Without the breakthrough of “Under the Bridge” on such a strange album as Blood, Sex, Sugar, Majik, the world of ska might never have evolved.
Finally, the band Faith No More doesn’t get the credit it deserves for the landmark album The Real Thing. This is where the fusion of rap and metal actually began.
I find it odd that most of the musical traits that we find inherant int he '90’s actually originated in the '80’s.
What have the '90’s produced? Creed? Limp Bizkit? Snoop Dog? Eminem? Korn? Alannis Morissette? Britney Spears?
No thank you…I’d rather go back to the '80’s.