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-funk sound of West Coast hip-hop, favored by my friend group at the time, but toward the latter half of ’95 I was digging on my own, riding the bus to record shops in town, reading The Source and Rap Pages, and watching Rap City on BET. The boom-bap sound of East Coast hip-hop quickly became my favorite.
Arguably still within the “golden age” of the genre, there was so much to explore. Not only was I picking up incredible new albums but catching up on stuff I'd neglected from years prior - groundbreaking albums from artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, Black Moon, Smif-N-Wessun, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Common, the Roots and many more. Some classic albums from these artists didn't make my list based on my first rule (outlined above), but they were equally impactful to me at the time. I hadn't listened to a few of these albums in years, sometimes decades, so it's been a ton of fun revisiting.
Veruca Salt: American Thighs (9/27/94)
By late ’94 the stifling fog of grunge seemed to be lifting, making way for new kinds of music to infiltrate my world, but a few new albums in the genre still demanded my attention. Veruca Salt's debut album, American Thighs, was one of them. With its blend of pop hooks, harmonized female vocals, and buzzing wall of guitars, the band picked up where the Breeders and Juliana Hatfield left off - simply great songs with a great sound. I had this one on heavy rotation in the fall of '94 between sessions of Donkey Kong Country on the Super NES, and still listen to it with frequency today.
Method Man: Tical (11/15/94)
I first saw Method Man rapping alongside Mary J. Blige in the video for his hit single "All I Need," which aired nonstop on BET's Rap City. I loved that track, which, unbeknownst to me, was actually a remix, so I was surprised to hear the dark, blunted, original version on Method Man's debut album, Tical, without Blige's soulful vocal on the hook. Despite that initial disappointment, Tical offered so much more - my first steps into the fantastic, expansive world of the Wu-Tang Clan, the Staten Island-based hip-hop collective that would dominate my hi-fi and headphones for the rest of the decade.
2Pac: Me Against The World (3/14/95)
West Coast hip-hop, with its braggart lyricism and swaggering G-funk production, dominated the rap world in the early 90's and Tupac was its rising star. For a short time in the spring and summer of '95, Me Against the World was my soundtrack to skipping class with the crew, evading school resource officers, lunchtime trips to the mall for Taco Bell, and mean-mugging rival school kids. Absolute silliness considering our baby-soft suburban reality. Suffice it to say, I don't listen to this album much these days, but props are still due.
Ol' Dirty Bastard: Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version (3/28/95)
With four RZA-produced solo artist albums released in less than a year, '95 was an absolute feast for fans of the Wu-Tang Clan, but ODB's debut album, Return to the 36 Chambers (The Dirty Version), probably wasn't the group's finest hour. Despite featuring some eternal bangers like "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" and "Brooklyn Zoo", the album was undercooked, overlong, and stifled by too many grotesque skits. ODB was Wu-Tang's resident jester, so it's fitting that my friends and I loved the album's absurd juvenile humor at the time, but it’s a rough listen these days.
Mobb Deep: The Infamous (4/25/95)
Mobb Deep's sophomore album, The Infamous, was in constant rotation on my hi-fi in the fall and winter of '95. With ice-cold production courtesy of the Queens rap duo's own Havoc, the album's ominous tone, spartan rhythms, and nihilistic rhymes were unmatched. Nas, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and Q-Tip also made guest appearances on the mic, with the latter engineering the entire album and producing three tracks. There's no overstating it: The Infamous is an undisputed classic of 90's East Coast hip-hop and remains one of my favorite and most replayed albums of all time.
Foo Fighters: Foo Fighters (7/4/95)
Foo Fighters' self-titled debut album came out of left field in '95. This was, in fact, Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl's solo project - especially surprising considering Kurt Cobain had died barely a year prior. Who knew Grohl could also play guitar, bass, sing, and write music? He did it all, composing and recording every part on the album. Foo Fighters shared DNA with previous grunge albums but, with its pop harmonies and catchy hooks, lacked the morose pretentiousness. It was light at the end of a dark tunnel and exactly what I needed from rock music at the time.
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony: E. 1999 Eternal (7/25/95)
Bone Thugs' highly anticipated sophomore album, E. 1999 Eternal, was the other key hip-hop album soundtracking my wannabe gangsta shenanigans in the summer of '95. This one fell off my radar in subsequent years, but on re-inspection, there's still a lot to enjoy here. The album didn't sound like anything else at the time or since - with its eerie, unsettling G-funk production and speedy sing-song rap flow volleyed between five group members. Bone Thugs bucked the sonic trends of the day and blazed their own trail to critical and commercial success.
Raekwon: Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (8/1/95)
Having missed the Wu-Tang Clan's debut album on its initial release a couple years earlier, I had some catching up to do in '95. With nine core members flexing next-level mic skills, the lore was deep and labyrinthian, reaching far beyond ‘70s kung-fu flick references. This time drawing inspiration from Scorsese and De Palma gangster movies, Raekwon's debut album, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, was the group's first masterpiece since their debut. With RZA on production and Ghostface Killah in tow, the album was layered and dense, revealing surprises on repeat listen even today.
Blur: The Great Escape (9/11/95)
By the end of ’95, I was starting to look beyond American shores for musical inspiration. Upon reading a magazine article about Blur and the burgeoning Britpop scene, I picked up their latest album - aptly titled The Great Escape. I'd never heard anything like it before - big, layered studio production, horns, strings, keys, serpentine pop composition, cockney-accented vocals, and wry lyrical subject matter. It was thousands of miles away from American alt-rock and grunge, and I loved it. My sights were now set across the pond. What else was going on over there musically?
Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness (10/24/95)
How could the Pumpkins top their breakout album, Siamese Dream, from a couple years prior? Do something bigger, louder, quitter, uglier, prettier, and longer, of course. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was an album of extremes and arguably the last great rock album of the grunge era. It was a sprawling double album that ricocheted between prog-rock, hard rock, soft rock, and baroque pop, leaning hard into all of Billy Corgan's unrestrained musical impulses and, to me, it served as an explosive grand finale to American alt-rock dominance in the 90’s.
100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 1 of 10 (1990 - 1992)
100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 2 of 10 (1992 - 1993)
100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 3 of 10 (1993 - 1994)
Coming Soon - 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 5 of 10 (1995 - 1996)
Coming Soon - 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 6 of 10 (1996)
Coming Soon - 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 7 of 10 (1996 - 1997)
Coming Soon - 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 8 of 10 (1997)
Coming Soon - 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 9 of 10 (1997 - 1998)
Coming Soon - 100 Favorite Albums of the 1990s: Part 10 of 10 (1998 - 1999)
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