Top 50 of the Nineties Part 5 (10-1)

10. A Tribe Called Quest-Midnight Marauders (Jive, 1993)

A whittled-down version of The Low-End Theory, Midnight Marauders is, aside from the obvious craft of MCs Q-Tip and Phife, a clear victory for unheralded DJ Ali-Shaheed Muhammad, who, over the course of this loose conceptual work, concocted some of the head-noddinest beats in hip-hop’s canon. Opening with the (somehow not annoying) female “tour guide,” Marauders launches into the one-two punch of “Stir it Up (Steve Biko)” and the irresistable organ-hop of “Award Tour.” Then, on to Phife’s career highlight, the brooding, stand-up bass driven “8 Million Stories,” featuring the memorable verse “Stressed out more than one could ever be/Forever trying to clear the sample for my new LP/With all these trials and tribulations yo I’ve been affected/And to top it off, Starks got ejected.” The second half is no letdown, as tracks 7 through 10 slide seamlessly into one another: the tinkling electric piano on “We Can Get Down,” the slinky, dirty “Electric Relaxation,” the Meters-copping “Clap Your Hands” and whip-cracking “Oh My God,” sampling fellow Native Tongue Busta Rhymes’ lyric from The Low End Theory’s “Scenario.” The rhythm is tighter on this record than it had been before or would be for the Tribe, making it feel much shorter than its 51 minute runtime–which is definitely not a problem, because a record with beats like this is made to be repeated.
9. Spoon-A Series of Sneaks (Elektra, 1996)

Still, even after the band’s last three releases, this dark, moody post-post-punk masterpiece is my favorite Spoon album. This collection of songs is Britt Daniel’s darkest, with obtuse lyrics summoning an overwhelmng sense of anxious anticipation perfectly suited to the music, a jagged minimalist interplay between guitar and drums. Daniel’s voice has matured, but still bears a warm resemblance to both Jonathan Richman and Elvis Costello, with a healthy amount of Texas grit. The songs sit next to one another as a fractious array of brief glances, nervy contemplation and obscured views of what’s to come. There’s an unrestrained propulsion to songs “30 Gallon Tank” and “Car Radio” that renders repeated, yelped offers to “c’mon” a dicey but intriguing proposition. Disconsolate slivers “Chloroform” and “The Minor Tough” are introspective moments created by unexplained forces, leading to perceptions like: “They’re standing up the block and down the street/And they’ll be out all night/As I’m out in the car/It comes to me/They’re breaking up inside.” Album highlight “Metal Detektor” is a slow, contemplative zoom into a frozen moment, tinted by the ache of unrealized ambition. It would take Spoon five years to fully recover from their unceremonious dumping from Elektra (Merge’s re-release of this record contains two great songs about it), and by that point, the band’s core sound as represented here will have morphed into something completely different. A Series of Sneaks stands alone in Spoon’s discography–as artful, broken shards of songs.

8. Ween-Chocolate and Cheese (Elektra, 1994)

The first album where Ween (and I mean this without sarcasm) began to take themselves seriously as musicians and appropriators. Their sense of humor is still the driving force behind their music, but is now given massive ironic punch by association with a variety of “serious” styles, and vice-versa. Let’s begin with “Freedom of ‘76,” a smooth, Philly-soul ode to the birthplace of liberty, sung in a syrupy falsetto and featuring the line “Mannequin was filmed at Woolworth’s/Boyz II Men still keepin’ up the beat, yeah.” Elsewhere, the seemingly untouchable is touched where it shouldn’t be–the cringe-inducing but hilarious “Spinal Meningitis Got Me Down” is sung from the perspective of a child, asking in the highest of voices, “Why they wanna see my spine, mommy?”, and live favorite “The H.I.V. Song” repeats the words “H.I.V.” and “AIDS” over repetitive circus music–this is not music to be taken literally. But when they rock out, they do it remarkably well, with the overdubbed guitar triumph of “Roses are Free,” opener “Take Me Away,” classic “Voodoo Lady” and Eastern-flecked “I Can’t Put My Finger On It.” The unqualified highpoint of the album, however, is the epic spaghetti western revenge fable “Buenos Tardes Amigo,” sung in full Speedy Gonzalez character with a deathly seriousness. Like Beck without the pretension, or Steely Dan’s Becker and Fagen after huffing gasoline, Chocolate and Cheese is a barely contained riot, a musically solid if ideologically retarded pastiche of style that forms a mind-bendingly coherent whole.
7. R.E.M.-Out of Time (Warner Bros., 1991)

One misstep (I know it was vogue at the time, but did opener “Radio Song” need KRS-One?) aside, Out of Time is R.E.M.’s best record since Fables of the Reconstruction, and remains the band’s best post-Warner Brothers effort. The mood swings wildly over the album, beginning with the dual Southern Gothic laments “Losing My Religion” and the gorgeous “Half a World Away” to the turtlenecked coffeeshop vibe of “Low” and Mike Mills’ two offerings “Texarkana” and “Near Wild Heaven” providing a wide-eyed sunny vibe throughout the record. The late album show-stopper is “Country Feedback,” a dirge that simultaneously reflects their earlier work and forecasts later songs like “E-Bow the Letter.” “Losing My Religion” remains one of my all-time favorite singles, and thinking of it sweeping the VMAs, complete with Michael Stipe removing t-shirts left and right, promoting one cause after another until they all faded together, makes me yearn for the days when MTV…well, you know.
6. Nine Inch Nails-The Downward Spiral (Interscope, 1994)

The best metal album of the decade, and the best industrial album of all-time. The pinnacle of a career logically proceeding toward this end, The Downward Spiral maximizes Trent Reznor’s appeal to a generation of disenfranchised youth–a blunt to the point of ham-handed approach to lyricism, a perfect balance of growling, screaming electric guitars with a loud, discordant, pummeling electronic undercurrent, and, exclusive to this record , an aura of disconcerting theatricality created through startling dynamic shifts, both musically and tonally. This is one of the finest and widest-ranging collection of songs offered on any rock album during the decade, from the pounding, distorted “Mr. Self-Distruct,” “March of the Pigs” and “Big Man With A Gun” to the Front-242/KMFDM march of “Heresy” and the majestic “Ruiner,” to the minor, elegant “Hurt” (the video for which was taped at a concert I attended) and the brooding Charles Manson-themed “Piggy” (the record was recorded in Sharon Tate’s house). Legions of metal and industrial bands have spent entire careers trying to release an album half as good as this.

5. Portishead-Dummy (Go!, 1994)

The greatest aspect of the best trip-hop (and I’m only thinking of Massive Attack and Portishead here) is that it at once balances the timeless and modern. The sultry, siren-voiced Beth Gibbons is obviously the centerpiece of this group, providing a majestic counter to the skittering, brooding gloominess around her. The skillful deployment of espionage-themed samples and clever steering around the latest technological wizardry renders this record as relevant now as it was eleven years ago, as if Shirley Bassey were singing for a backing band consisting of David Axelrod, Silver Apples and Grandmaster Flash. Dummy’s singularity lies in the fact that it could have been released at any time in the last 30 years and still been regarded as current.

4. Digable Planets-Reachin (A New Refutation of Time and Space) (Pendulum, 1993)

The epitome of the frequently attempted and often succesful hybrid between jazz and hip-hop, the Digable Planets were able to cohere the two, along with many other influences, seamlessly, to the point of creating something completely new in the process. A Tribe Called Quest and Souls of Mischief were still dominated by the hip-hop idiom, and Guru’s Jazzmatazz went the other way, but Reachin’ incorporated elements of fusion, bebop, cool jazz, funk and psychedelia, with a distinctly east coast bohemian flair, standing as a remarkable and untoppable work. There’s not a weak point on this record–the loping, stand-up basslines dissolving into coffee-shop banter between numbers, giving the album the feel of a one-off performance from a interplanetary trio of MCs (or “Insects”), only able to pick up Art Blakey and Sonny Rollins transmissions on their UFO in-dash.

3. Flaming Lips-The Soft Bulletin (Warner Bros., 1999)

Recorded when core member Steven Drozd was in the throes of heroin addiction, The Soft Bulletin is an overpowering, brightly colored symphonic testament to life, death, and the dark, existential forces beyond our control. This is producer Dave Fridmann’s finest hour, as he was able to sculpt from The Flaming Lips’ astronomical ambition (see Zaireeka) a comparatively robust, warm, and most importantly, focused record that sounds like it was recorded in Heaven–loud, thundering percussion, expansive yet airy strings and brass, and the strained, wounded timbre of Wayne Coyne’s voice. Thematically, Bulletin expertly balances the plaintive with the sublime, to best effect on “Waiting for a Superman” and the lush, elegaic “Feeling Yourself Disintegrate”:

Love in our life is just too valuable
Oh, to feel for even a second without it
But life without death is just impossible
Oh, to realize something is ending within us
Feeling yourself disintegrate

Concurrently, the album serves as an encomium to those sacrificing their personal health for the good of others’, on “Race for the Prize” and brash, thunderous “The Gash.” Two of the best moments are just that–moments–elevated to celestial status through subsequent revelation. “The Spark that Bled” opens with the lyric, “I accidentally touched my head/And noticed that I had been bleeding/For how long I didn’t know,” leading to a realization of the sanctity of the present, and the urgent yet hopeless need for reaction:

And it seemed to cause a chain reaction
It had momentum, it was gaining traction
It was all the rage, it was all the fashion
The outreached hands had resigned themselves
To holding onto something that they never had
Later, album highlight “Suddenly Everything Has Changed” delicately transforms the quotidian into the remarkable: “Driving home, the sky accelerates/And the clouds all form a geometric shape/And it goes fast/You think of the past/Suddenly, everything has changed.” The Soft Bulletin, to its eternal credit, re-imagined the beatific possibilities of “psychedelic” music, creating a timeless, yet very modern update on Brian Wilson’s “teenage symphony to God.”

2. The Pharcyde-Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (Delicious Vinyl, 1992)
I’ve realized the appearance of some generic trends that make themselves known through the process of compiling rankings based on a seemingly arbitrary criterion of ten-year chunks of time. It’s that, for me, the nineties were my hip-hop decade. Just as the eighties were defined by “underground”/indie rock, the seventies by punk, and the current decade shaping up to be a reemergence of pop, I’ve found that the nineties represented the true “golden age” of the musical form. The early part of the decade was marked by a gritty, hyper-violent, at times misogynist strand of hip-hop called, popularly, “gangsta.” It’s best and most progressive-minded practicioners are featured throughout this list, as are several representatives of the other salient form of the music–an introspective, jazz-based alternative to the mainstream, a style that sounds as fresh today as it did then. A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets and Souls of Mischief can all fall into this category, but no group synthesized the music, lyrics, production value and innovation more than The Pharcyde, on their fascinating debut, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. Seven years before Eminem, Fatlip, Imani, Bootie Brown and Slim Kid Tre synthesized the hopes and fears, the successes and failures of Black youth culture into a sprawling, kaleidoscopic, hilarious hip-hop circus. Jazz (especially organ) was the basis of the music, but only as an opportunity to transform it into a hurdy-gurdy-style “step right up” welcome on to the carousel. Progressive politics permeate this record, but are presented with a casual flair that underscores the omnipresence of the current racial divide, especially in post-Rodney King Los Angeles. “Officer” begins with a revamped Chuck D line, and proceeds tothe singalong “Please/Don’t pull me over, Mr. Officer/Don’t pull me over Mr. Officer, please,” ending with a stammering, Chuck Berry-style neologism “I’m discomboberated!” More upfront critique is offered on two actually worthwhile skits, a rarity on hip-hop of any era, “It’s Jigaboo Time” and “If I Were President.” The bizarre ride features it’s moments of inspired frivolity, of course, and the Pharcyde proves this to be their strong suit, with the brass-driven, Brand New Heavies inspired “Soulflower” ending with the line “If Magic can admit he got AIDS/Fuck it, I got herpes!”, “Ya Mama” a gut-busting dozens game (”Ya mama looks like she been in the dryer wit’ some rocks”), and album-opening “Oh Shit” consisting of a series of embarassing revelations leading to an utterance of the titular phrase: “Looked at her shoes and her feets was real long/Then it hit me, oh please god no/Don’t let this ho turn out to be a john doe/He pulled a fast one on me yo/I guess that’s one of those things that make you go…” The self-deprecation that was all too rare in hip-hop of that period was taken to its sublime, remarkable extreme on two tracks that alone would have registered this record in at least the top twenty of this list. “Passing Me By” comes first, featuring one of hip-hop’s best and most recognizeable samples (from Quincy Jones’ fusion cover of “Summer in the City), and a stark, unrefined sentimentality that any musical or art form would do well to attempt. A series of ruminations on unrequited love, the song features one of the best lyrics ever to grace a hip-hop record:

The three 50’s ballad references at the end, the seamless lapse into imagined serenade in the middle, and the general sense of undeniably feeling conquered by overwhelming self-doubt is nothing less than remarkable. “Passin’ Me By” is then topped by next song “Otha Fish,” at the other end of the relationship spectrum–lamenting lost love, and reapproaching it to see if it ever truly existed. Two magnificent verses are topped by the third, my favorite hip-hop moment of all time:

Filed under: 90s  A Tribe Called Quest  autobiography  canon creation  Digable Planets  flaming lips  Nine Inch Nails  Portishead  R.E.M.  Radiohead  Spoon  The Pharcyde  Ween