The 1990s

Lucas                                                                                        U.S History

Daumas

                                                1990s

Situation

The 1990s was considered as a decade of relative peace and prosperity because of the fall of the Soviet Union, ending the decades-long Cold War, and the rise of the Internet in a radical new era of communication, business and entertainment.

Even though, people were still impacted by many things such as the Gulf War in the early ‘90s, the growth of a multiculturalism and the beginning of terrorism with many high jacking planes, bombings (World Trade Center) that made the whole country felt unsafe.

At this time, Bill Clinton started an information revolution, impacting the economy, and the nation had to deal with the Paul Jones Scandal, directly connected to the President of the United States.

Some issues of race were still present, and many riots happened in Los Angeles in 1992 because of the Rodney King affair, due to years of rising tensions between the LAPD and the city’s African Americans.

Throughout this decade, the musical industry kept growing and became even more varied, reflecting people’s thoughts about what was going on in the society at this time.

Music

The 1990s saw the continuation of many music’s styles created in the ’60-70s, and the growth of new ones such as Hip-Hop style which continued to be highly successful in the decade, with its “Golden Age”^[1].

Among the famous Hip-Hop music songs at this time, “California Love” released in 1995 by Tupac and Dr. Dre, is often remembered as a classic one because of its sample and music video highly represented on MTV. The song is considered as the celebration of the California Hip-Hop lifestyle, talking about money, the activity and creativity the two rappers constantly encounter, but it also warns about the gang violence, crime and social ills, things that people could definitely see in the society^[2]. This music contains a sample taken from Joe Cocker (Woman to Woman)^[3] and many synthesized vocals created from a vocoder, the whole song is mixed by one of the best producers on the West Coast at this time, Dr. Dre.

Throughout the growth of this style on the West Coast, many artists from the East Coast were also making Hip-Hop music, mainly inspired from jazz samples in the ‘60s. Puff Daddy released in 1997, “I’ll Be missing You”, a song featuring Faith Evans. This music is a tribute of Puff to his friend The Notorious B.I.G, less than three months after Biggie’s death in Los Angeles. The beat is sampled from the Police song “Every Breath You Take”, followed with the chorus sung by Faith Evans, an R&B artist.

At this time, by watching the evolution of Hip-Hop music and finding common things between two music styles as well, many songs contained diverse elements. A good example is “Loser”, an alternative Rock music dropped by Beck in 1992, where people could hear the impact of Folk, Rock and Hip-Hop on this song. Besides the sentiment that Beck’s a slacker and a loser, the lyrics are mostly nonsensical and improvised during the record^[4]. “Loser” revolves around several recurring musical elements such as a slide guitar riff, Stephenson’s sitar, the bassline and a tremolo guitar part, played along the chorus of the singer.

During the 1990s, although Hip-Hop music was growing, a new style known as Grunge, emerged as a bridge between mainstream 1980s heavy metal—hard rock and postpunk alternative rock^[5]. The Grunge was first used to describe murky-guitar bands such as Nirvana, who made “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in 1991. The song is interpreted as a teen revolution anthem, an interpretation reinforced by a crazy music video, based on the concept of a school concert which ends in anarchy and riot. Besides its meaning, the song combines guitar distortion, anguished vocals, and many shifts in volume and dynamics moving from quiet to loud several times.

Throughout its evolution, Grunge music mainly took its roots from the Heavy Metal, a music’s style that was still developed since the 1960s. Metallica was a famous band at this time and made “Enter Sandman” in 1991. Besides following the theme of childhood fear in nightmares, the song is considered as a “wall of guitars”^[6]. Heavy guitar solos, heavy use of tom-tom drums and distorted guitars all come along the loud vocals of the singer, even more reinforced with a scared music video combining images of a child having nightmares with shots of the band playing the song.

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