100 Best Albums of the Nineties

20. Liz Phair, ‘Exile in Guyville’
In the immortal words of Mick Jagger, the change has come. Liz Phair took indie rock under her thumb with Exile in Guyville, firing off wisecracks, obscenities, pickup lines and confessions. She could crack you up and break your heart in the same song, sounding intimate without ever really giving her secrets away. Phair’s dry Peppermint Patty mumble fit into a swirl of watery guitar frazzle and percussion as the melodies swam around in your head all summer long. “Fuck and Run” is Phair’s greatest hit, but Exile is just one perfect song after another: the acoustic shiver of “Glory,” the bangled-out glimmer of “Never Said,” the wobbly jet-girl whoosh of “Stratford-on-Guy.”

19. Red Hot Chili Peppers, ‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’
It took the Chili Peppers seven years, four albums and a few rough turns of the personnel merry-go-round to perfect the savory schizophrenia captured on Blood Sugar Sex Magik, the Los Angeles band’s 1991 quadruple-platinum home run. Produced by Rick Rubin with the white-headbanger, hip-hop snap of James Brown on the Led Zeppelin II tip, Blood Sugar pingpongs between the precision swagger of “Give It Away” and “Suck My Kiss” and the luminous hurt of singer Anthony Kiedis’ Top Ten junkie blues, “Under the Bridge.” The alternating slap of extremes perfectly nails not only the giddy highs and drawn-out lows of life in a city built on illusions but also the Chili Peppers’ fight to beat their own worst excesses. An album of honest drama ”” and you can mosh to it.

18. R.E.M., ‘Automatic for the People’
Named after a slogan used in an Athens, Georgia, soul-food restaurant, Automatic for the People is a feast of Southern Gothic pop, combining the gossamer intricacies of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and the singalong wallop of the Beatles’ Abbey Road. The weirdness is warm and playful ”” “Star Me Kitten,” a delicious homage to 10cc’s “I’m Not in Love”; “Man on the Moon,” Michael Stipe’s buoyant tribute to the late comedian Andy Kaufman ”” and torch songs such as the Stax-with-strings jewel “Everybody Hurts” glow with hard-won optimism. At the height of alt-rock, former undergrounders R.E.M. tried to show that melody could be heavy too ”” and, in the process, made one of the finest American pop albums of the decade.

17. Jay-Z, ‘Reasonable Doubt’
“The studio was like a psychiatrist’s couch for me,” Jay-Z told Rolling Stone, and his debut is full of a hustler’s dreams and laments. It established Jay as the premier freestyle rapper of his generation and includes a filthy seventeen-year-old Foxy Brown on “Ain’t No Nigga.”

16. Metallica, ‘Metallica’
The speed metalheads were barking, “Sellout!” the minute this baby dropped: Metallica had actually bothered to write songs, not just string ten minutes’ worth of hot licks into an anti-capital-punishment suite. But in slowing the tempos down from dizzy to primal, in choosing meaty presence over mere velocity in the riffing, Metallica made a record of durable, mature violence ”” not to mention the biggest metal album of the decade. And don’t let the orchestration and James Hetfield’s thoughtful growl on “Nothing Else Matters” fool you: Metallica didn’t turn into power-ballad suckers; they simply created a ballad with power.

15. Lucinda Williams, ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’
It’s not that the performances on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road aren’t first-rate ”” they are. It’s just that when you start with songs this impressive, it’s hard to go wrong. Lucinda Williams had done strong work before, but it all came together here. From the openhearted yearning of “Right in Time” to the surrealist country funk of “Joy,” she runs a gamut of styles and themes, handling each with authority and ease. You don’t arrive in your mid-forties without stories to tell ”” Williams’ are riveting in every detail.

14. Snoop Doggy Dogg, ‘Doggystyle’
With his mind on his money and his money on his mind, Snoop rolled in from the West to pick America’s pockets, and his laid-back drawl was such a hilarious trick that he got away clean. Dr. Dre’s low-riding G-funk makes the perfect backdrop to Snoop’s rhymes, as slow and lazy as a dog-day afternoon. Doggystyle has a serious streak of gangsta remorse running through all the murder and misogyny, but it also offers cheerfully ridiculous cartoon theme songs like “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” and “Doggy Dogg World.” “Gin and Juice” takes a timeless teen trip in the tradition of “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “The Twist” and “Bust a Move” ”” it’s six in the morning, the freaks are still dancing, and the house party keeps jumping till Mama gets home.

13. Beastie Boys, ‘Ill Communication’
Ill communication puts a little polish on the mishmash of Check Your Head; the Beasties freewheel from hardcore punk thrash to jazzy cool-downs for an album with more action than John Woo and mad hits like Rod Carew. The Boys loosen up on their instruments, especially in the subzero cool of “Transitions.” But it’s the linear party starters that make the record: “Sure Shot” knocks a doofy flute sample out of the park, “Get It Together” takes a D-train detour with Q-Tip, and “Sabotage” serves up a slab of red-meat metal that not even Sabbath fans could resist.

12. Tom Petty, ‘Wildflowers’
At a time when most rock veterans were stagnating, Tom Petty and producer Rick Rubin made Wildflowers, the most organic, cohesive record of Petty’s career. Compared with the pleasingly slick textures of Petty’s work with Jeff Lynne on 1989’s Full Moon Fever and 1991’s Into the Great Wide Open, there is a timeless grace and folky subtlety to the material here, including the haunting title track, the soulful stoner rock of “You Don’t Know How It Feels” and the orchestral delicacy of “Wake Up Time.”

11. Outkast, ‘Aquemini’
Featuring joyous, bass-happy party funk dotted with tight horn lines, Outkast‘s third album captures Big Boi and Andre 3000 rollicking like the church choir in full effect. On tracks such as “Rosa Parks” and “Skew It on the Bar-B,” they reveal themselves to be a stylistic midpoint between hip-hop’s East and West Coasts, mixing the unassumingly cerebral hip-hop of A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul with that George Clinton””drenched funk favored out west. With their drawled-out voices, neighborhood slang and cascading sheets of words, they put permanently to bed all questions about serious MC’ing on the South Coast. Atlanta’s reputation as hip-hop’s most avant-garde area code ”” the Long Island of the Nineties ”” was cemented.