Sound Obsession

Welcome to Part 6 of my “100 Favorite Albums of the 1990’s” list! This part covers the summer of '96 through the fall of '96, leading into my senior year of high school. Urb , Muzik , and Mixmag now joined The Source and Rap Pages on my regular reading list and I attended some of my first stadium and amphitheater festivals that summer. HFStival, at DC's RFK Stadium, showcased bands like Foo Fighters, Cracker, Afghan Whigs, and Garbage, while Smokin' Grooves, at Bristow, VA's Nissan Pavilion, featured A Tribe Called Quest, Cypress Hill, Fugees, and Busta Rhymes. That fall I also stumbled on a new late-night video series on MTV called Amp, similar in spirit to 120 Minutes but instead of alternative rock it focused on electronic music and instead of human VJs hosting there was simply onscreen text and abstract CGI interstitials, giving the show the eerie impression of an intergalactic transmission. In ...

Welcome to Part 5 of my “100 Favorite Albums of the 1990’s” list! This part covers late fall of '95 to spring of '96 - my junior year of high school. During this time I was still deep into hip-hop, but my musical horizons were expanding quickly. 1996 ushered in a frenzy of musical exploration and discovery - 22 of my favorite albums of the 90's were released in 1996. It was a great year. By then, I had a driver’s license, which expanded my musical hunting grounds beyond suburban bus routes. I'd borrow my older brother's car (thanks!) to make trips to record shops across the DC metro area, including the HMV in Georgetown where a serendipitous conversation with a staffer there led to some great recommendations, including a jungle music compilation called This is Jungle Sky released in early ‘95 by Liquid Sky, the record label offshoot of the NYC emporium of the same name, which served as an axis for the Mid-Atlantic rave and underground club scene in the early t...

Welcome back to my “100 Favorite Albums of the 1990’s” list! I didn’t think it’d take me five years to get to Part 4, but here we are. As a reminder, this 100-album list is broken into ten parts comprised of ten albums apiece, ordered by release date. Some parts might represent one year's worth of music, others might represent several years. Two rules still apply - First, I must have acquired the album in the year of its original release, inclusive of a retroactive four months into the previous year (corresponding with a fall school semester). Second, each album must have made a real impact on me in the timeframe of its initial release. Part 4 covers the time between the fall of 1994 and the fall of 1995 - the entirety of my sophomore year and fall semester of my junior year of high school. At this point, I was beginning to step away from American alt-rock and grunge and moving onto electronic music, Britpop, and falling deep into hip-hop music . . . At first, it was the popular G-...