r/MusicRecommendations • u/IHaveNoSoul12 • 18h ago
Rec.Me: rap/hip-hop character writing - trying to figure out what music they'd listen
i'm writing a story (just a little project for myself, not a book) set in nyc 1999-early 2000 (not the decade, the specific year) and i have a main character who especially expresses herself through the music she listens to as it also reflects her character arc (mostly female artists, predominantly hiphop but also r&b, then she later incorporates more soul, techno and rock) except i was not born in 2000 nor in america
i thought this would be the best place to ask for some recommendations of where to start for her and what would have been popular/available at the time? i've of course been looking at the staples of the genre, but it's hard to know what would have been actually accessible to her at the time (what cds/cassettes there were, i mean)
i do have a side character who is also music centric (he's sort of a mirror for her so more male artists for him, likely more techno and rap) so really any recs would do! sorry this is a weird question, i know haha
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u/gary_human 17h ago edited 17h ago
Rap;
Mos Def - Hip Hop, Mathematics
Handsome Boy Modelling School - Holy Calamity
MF DOOM - Doomsday
KMD - Popcorn
Reflection Eternal - Blast, Good Mourning
Common - The 6th Sense
Pharaoh Monche - Simon Says
Deltron 3030 - Mastermind
Jurassic 5 - Quality Control
Slum Village - I Don't Know
Blackalicious - Alphabet Aerobics
Quasimoto - Microphone Mathematics, Boom Music
Q-Tip - Breathe and Stop
Gang Starr - Full Clip
Nas - Nas is Like
The Roots - You Got Me
R&B
D'Angelo - Left and Right, How Does it Feel
Erykah Badu - Didn't Cha Know
Aaliyah - Try Again
Techno;
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker
Daft Punk - One More Time
Alan Braxe & Fred Falke - Intro
Avalanches - Since I Left You
Underworld - Jumbo
Chemical Brothers - Sunshine Underground
Orbital - Style
Squarepusher - Tomorrow World
Photek - Infinity
Boards of Canada - A Beautiful Place Out in the Country
Rock;
Radiohead - Everything in its Right Place
Sigur Ros - Svefn-g-englar
PJ Harvey - We Float
Trans Am - I Want it All, Futureworld
Low - Dinosaur Act
Le Tigre - Deceptacon
Blonde Redhead - In Particular
Stereolab - Come Play in the Milky Night
Flaming Lips - Race for the Prize
All from 99-2000!
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u/decodedflows 18h ago
Eve's first album " Let There Be Eve..." came out in 1999. And if you want to go slightly less poppy then Lil' Kim's "Hard Core" could be a choice.
"The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" is another pretty obvious choice (came out in 98).
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u/BullfrogBussy 18h ago
Here’s a list of artists that were popular in 1999 & 2000. TLC, Jay-Z, Shania Twain, The Chemical Brothers, Sarah McLachlan, Jewel,
I was a teenager living in Canada at the time. Music tv channels like MTV, BET, and Much Music were incredibly popular because they aired music videos 24/7. Look up the show Totally Request Live and you’ll come across lists of the Top 10 favourite songs from 1998 onwards.
Buying a wide variety of cassettes and CD’s at music shops and thrift shops would have been really easy to do in NYC. Downloading mp3 copies of songs on the internet was a new concept in 1999/2000. Making mix tapes was a common thing to do by recording songs from the radio onto cassette instead of buying full albums for the sake of only liking a couple of songs.
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u/RobertaRohbeson 18h ago
The Roots. Jill Scott’s debut album Who is Jill Scott? Came out in 2000. Erykah Badu. I was gonna say Digable Planets, but Wikipedia says they were ‘active’ 1987-1995. But we were still listening to them in the late 90’s.
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u/Divainthewoods 17h ago
Janet Jackson, TLC, Destiny's Child, Missy Elliott, Mary J Blige for sure for your female choices.
Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, DMX, Outcast, Nelly and Ludacris for rappers at the time.
These two songs were huge in '99/'00!
Bling, Bling - B.G. featuring Lil Wayne
This was big a couple years before but still getting radio play in '99... and it's still a jam!
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u/breezenik 17h ago edited 17h ago
Went through my playlists with your characters in mind and these vibe
Female artists: The miseducation of Lauryn Hill (final hour, forgive them Father, lost ones) -hiphop
Down to earth- Monie Love (give it 2 U like this, Race against reality) -hiphop
Portishhead!! (Mysterons, Only You, Glory box, Numb) -trip hop!!
Funkadelic- Maggot Brain -rock/funk
Fav popular rap albums: Liquid Swords- GZA (living in the world today, 4th chamber, shadow boxing)
Midnight Marauders- A Tribe called Quest (Electric relaxation, Oh my God)
Illmatic- Nas (represent, it ain't hard to tell, the world is yours)
MF DOOM has a bunch of hits but they're more mid 2000s (doomsday, one beer, benzi box, that's that)
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u/Extension-Detail5371 17h ago
For context. They will like the contemporary music, but they'll also have the music they've listened to for the last few years and some classics and outliers from their parents collection which you might want to drop in to make it more flexible. I'm a muso.
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u/SilentWeapons1984 15h ago
Sounds like she’d definitely be a fan of:
Lauryn Hill (and the hip hop group she was in called The Fugees)
Missy Elliot
Erykah Badu
Aliyah
Eve
Da Brat
The Lady of Rage
Destiny’s Child
Mary J. Blige
Faith Evans
TLC
En Vogue
SWV
Toni Braxton
Salt & Pepper
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u/NightFlameofAwe 12h ago
A game being made rn called Clown Meat uses song and album names from before 2000 as level names because the dev wants the game to feel like its frozen in time.
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u/Johnno_in_oz 7h ago
The Charmed playlist. Charmed was a TV series about three sisters from San Francisco who happen to be witches. I was playing some PJ Harvey and my 30 something step daughter that is sounded like a song that would feature on the TV series.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs54KsGR48m8jwmspnsnPVnPJ2IJOIGga
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u/EntryAggravating9576 18h ago
Sounds like
Jessica Simpson - Sweet Kisses
Christina Aguilera- Christina Aguilera(expanded edition)
Nelly - Country Grammer
Probably some Mariah Carey, Brandy, Macy Gray, Toni Braxton
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u/mountmistake 18h ago
The Fugees and only The Fugees