I love Biggie Smalls.  Because I’m an intellectual white guy from Brooklyn, of course I can’t help but compare him to Bob Dylan.  Both were poets, soothsayers, shamans, uncompromising truth speakers, but more then all that, artists of endless talent.  But unlike Bob, Biggie was gunned down when he was only 24 years old.  An absolute travesty.  Biggie was a genius, and his early demise was a massive hit to youth culture.  His universal appeal,  his perfect flow, and his unflinching need to speak truth to power, could have risen him to untold heights of cultural and even political significance.  With all that said, all we are left with is a taste of his magic, a mere glimmer of his ability to effortlessly achieve these things.

I’m a New Yorker.  I happen to work right by the World Trade Center.  I’ve walked by it nearly everyday for the past 3 years.  Biggie too, was a New Yorker, one of the greatest New Yorkers ever, and on September 11th, I always think of his immortal line from “Juicy,” “Now I’m in the limelight cause I rhyme tight, time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade…”  The line of course was a reference to the 93 bombing, but given Biggie’s ability to so frequently hit the truth on insane levels of profundity, its no surprise that a throwaway line such as this would resonate so deeply years later in one of his most personal and vulnerable songs.  So here it is, on 9/11/10, Biggie’s “Juicy,” one of the greatest songs about the man, and about New York City.

Aside from the Stefan Urquelle episodes on Family Matters, the only other chance Jaleel White had to break free from the nerdy insanity of the Steve Urkel character, was his role in this classic, made-for-TV movie, Camp Cucamonga. And it was a good thing, too, because this movie had a certain rap song- a certian, hilarious rap song- which you can watch below… 

There was no decade quite like the 90s. Politically, economically, whatever. But nowhere was this more evident than in the music that was made during those years. In all genres, new styles rapidly emerged and evolved. Of it all, there was one genre that meant more to me than any of the others. I’m talking, of course, about rock music.

Growing up in New Jersey as a white, middle-class male, I easily identified with the ethos of rock. The rebellion, the angst, the idealism- born out of the 50s, these sentiments were still alive in the 90s, finding its form in newer and noisier ways. The stylings of 90s rock were wide ranged- grunge, britpop, pop punk, indie, rap rock- some were good, some were bad, some were forgotten to adulthood. Yet even though our tastes evolve after adolescence, the appeal of nostalgia can just be too hard to igore.

I’m calling this series “Rock By The 90s”. Each week, I plan to post a new article on a different subgenre of 90s rock, and the specific bands and songs that characterized each movement. By the end, I hope to have extensively recounted all things 90s rock.

But first, to tell the FULL story of 90s rock, we need to go back a little bit further in time. I’m talking ALL the way back…to…

The late 80s.

GLAM METAL

As the 80s came to a close, MTV had already begun to suck. No, not as badly as today- for one thing, they still played videos- but videos primarily of hair bands. Yup, in the late 80s, hair metal was the king of rock. And with it, an all-pervading, image conscious commercialism had become the status quo. Bands such as Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Motley Crue and Poison murdered our ears with sonic monstrosities, and burned our eyeballs with their high maintenance hair and flamboyant outfits.

But as the decade of the 90s began, glam metal started to be seen as excessive, both in its power ballads and its volumized hair, and the genre began to fall in to decline. Maybe the biggest indictment of this music was a scene from the documentary, ”The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years”, involving the guitarist from the band W.A.S.P., as he excessively abuses alcohol. (more…)