Since U Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson / Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day / 1985 - Bowling For Soup / Accidentally in Love - Counting Crows / I'm Not Okay (I Promise) - My Chemical Romance / Somebody Told Me - The Killers / The Reason - Hoobastank / Hollaback Girl - Gwen Stefani / Yeah! - Usher / Lose My Breath - Destiny's Child
I'm not a perfect person
There's many things I wish I didn't do
But I continue learning
I never meant to do those things to you
And so, I have to say before I go
That I just want you to know
I've found a reason for me
To change who I used to be
[Image description: a collage of photos of the 10 musicians and musical groups featured in this poll. In order from left to right, top to bottom: Usher with Lil Jon and Ludacris, Usher, Alicia Keys, Maroon 5, OutKast, Hoobastank, Mario Winans, OutKast, Ciara, Terror Squad. End description]
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*Sorry 2004 by Ruben Studdard plays softly in the background*
Now we're really starting to see the hold the South will have on the sound of rap and hip-hop in the 2000's. Just about every region that isn't the East Coast (and let's be real: New York specifically) had to fight to get their style of rap to be taken seriously. And when the East vs. West debate was reaching it's peak in the 90's, the South was treated like the third party option. I've linked to an article about André 3000's famous speech at the 1995 Source Awards, a moment that is marked by many as a turning point in southern hip-top.
Now in the 2000's, the impact of southern rap can no longer be questioned. This is partially due to the rising popularity of crunk, which has really taken off this decade. With Yeah! and Goodies, crunk was able to find a wider audience by fusing the genre with R&B (Crunk&B). This was also the year Billboard started publishing its ringtone charts, which was set to be published in late 2004. The ringtone era turned out to be bolstered greatly by this shift in the sound of popular music, as a majority of the songs making this chart would be rap.
But crunk was far from the only style of rap coming out of the south. Especially with the presence of iconic southern hip-hop act, OutKast. With the release of their double album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, André 3000 and Big Boi were not only able to experiment with different sounds and genres, but this album (these albums?) also introduced them to an even larger audience.
In Spotify I re-created some of the mix CD’s I used to make back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Here’s a playlist of my “Spring Music CD 2002”
I couldn’t find the same versions of some of the songs. Like there’s a live acoustic version of The Warmth by Incubus on the CD, that I had downloaded from Limewire or Napster, and it’s not on Spotify, and the acoustic version of Plush by Stone Temple Pilots is a different version than the acoustic one I had on the CD, but it’s still a good one. It’s awesome that the demo version of No Such Thing by John Mayer is on Spotify because that’s the version I have on the CD.