16, Hot 100)īy the spring of 1999, Brandy was riding high on the momentum of a combined 15 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 with “The Boy Is Mine” and “Have You Ever.” But “Almost Doesn’t Count,” fifth single off her blockbuster Never Say Never set, finds the then-20-year-old multi-hyphenate giving a more nuanced take on a failed relationship. For a song that’s broadly remembered as a bitter jeremiad, the perspective offered by MCs Stic.man and M-1 is actually pretty magnanimous - in the first verse, M-1 promotes honesty and the belief that the system of listeners will regulate the bullshit: “If you a liar-liar, pants on fire, wolf-crier, agent with a wire/ I’m gon’ know it when I play it.” Of course, that it’s aged well means that everything still applies, in particular Stic.man’s sobering final lines: “I just stay awake/ This real hip-hop, and it don’t stop ’til we get the po-po off the block.” - ROSS SCARANOĩ1. Immortalized as the low end-heavy intro music for the title star on Chappelle’s Show, Florida-New York duo dead prez’ signature single “Hip Hop” has aged beautifully.
WEBMUSICMP3 1999 SERIES
The band added keyboardist James Dewees after its scrappier original recording (for the Sub Pop singles series in early ’99) and his swirling synthesizers on the album version push co-frontman Jim Suptic’s brink-of-a-breakdown choruses to power-pop glory. - CHRIS PAYNEĩ2. You could argue 1999 was the last year emo was completely underground: Dashboard Confessional hadn’t yet debuted and Jimmy Eat World’s Bleed American was still two years away. But if you were pitching a trend piece on the genre’s ascendance in 1999 - the year Seventeen printed its now-Internet-famous How-To-Emo guide - you were most definitely highlighting Kansas City’s Get Up Kids, who’d released their magnum opus Something To Write Home About that fall, with “Ten Minutes” its hooky centerpiece. The Get Up Kids, “Ten Minutes” (Did not chart) After securing big features ( Blackstreet, Dru Hill, Jay himself) for each of her Ill Na Na singles, “Hot Spot” was the first solo single for Brown - but when she closes out the chorus with “This is our world, me and my girls,” the track changes to a crew cut, a perfect ladies’ night anthem. Brown co-wrote the banger with Jay-Z, and together they set flexes like “My coat is ostrich, flow is the hottest/ You ain’t got dough, you can’t go with the Fox bitch” to a bright and scratchy beat from producers Irv Gotti (of Murder Inc. The low chart showing of “Hot Spot” doesn’t do it justice - this song, from the rapper’s Billboard 200-topping second album Chyna Doll, still slaps. That chauvinistic streak still hasn’t broken in popular music to this day, but unfortunately that’s the way the cookie crumbles. - BIANCA GRACIE But 20 years ago, the oft-maligned genre feels more like a refreshing shift that cleared out the last remaining vestiges of grunge - thanks to smashes like Limp Bizkit’s “Nookie.” Lifted from the band’s sophomore album Significant Other, the single showcased frontman Fred Durst’s petty misogyny, not-so-tightly concealed by the obnoxiously undeniable groove. Let’s face it: the nu-metal era that rattled the late ‘90s and early ‘00s was weird as hell.
Kelly says he persuaded Maxwell to drop his ambition to record the Life soundtrack’s title cut in favor of this quiet storm jam - and we are all better for it. If fans of the neo-soul prince’s first album Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite thought sophomore LP Embrya lacked direction, “Fortunate” steadied the course, as a swooping falsetto run bursts forth seconds after pressing play, and envelops the listener in a lush, intimate vocal verse. But the song hangs on its unique one-word title to simply and completely describe the mood Maxwell creates: Plenty of singers have been “blessed” or “lucky” throughout pop history only one remains fortunate. Over time, it’s become a staple at mile-marker events, from campfire sing-alongs to send offs of any sort - meaning that in an ironic twist, “Remember” very well could now be an ode to itself. The lyrics to Sarah McLachlan’s gently timeless piano ballad - a surprise hit off her live Mirrorball set, four years after its initial debut on the Brothers McMullen soundtrack - so perfectly capture the concept of saying “so long” and moving on that one can’t hear it without visualizing a montage of playing behind it.
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