“I am forever chasing The Marshall Mathers LP. That was the height of what I could do. I just don’t have the rage I did back then.”- Eminem, 2017 Vulture interview

“It sounded like something Stephen King would write. It sounded like a horror movie.” – Jimmy Iovine, VH1’s Ultimate Albums – Eminem: The Marshall Mathers LP

Jan. 20, 2001. The Barker Hangar. Santa Monica, CA. 2.5 miles from the Interscope Records office. 

He emerges wearing denim overalls and wielding a chainsaw. Chemically blonde hair meets the top of a hockey mask. Behind him on stage, an ersatz brick bungalow modeled after an equally weathered home somewhere between 8 Mile and 7 Mile roads in Detroit. The chainsaw blade is inert, but a recording of violent revving plays as sparks shoot skyward from the stage. When the DJ cuts the chainsaw recording, he chucks the prop aside. Mischievous guitar chords, the aural equivalent of a caped cartoon villain tiptoeing behind an unsuspecting mark, sound in concert with thousands of screams. He pulls a microphone from his pocket and lifts the mask.

It’s Marshall Mathers. Slim Shady. Eminem. This is his first nationally televised full-length concert, a private performance of his 2000 Anger Management Tour set taped by In Demand, then the top pay-per-view distributor in the U.S. (You can still watch most of it here.) 

The subtext, which may or may not be obvious to the audience of predominantly white (and probably moneyed) teens, is this: the rock bottom life endured in and outside of that Detroit home spawned the man (Mathers) turned rapper (Eminem) with an alter ego (Shady) who stands before them as a hybrid of horror-movie homicidal maniacs. Swooning girls and guys in Ecko beanies scream ecstatically, not in abject terror. Graphic rhymes about rape, incestuous rape, domestic violence, and gruesome murder are welcome, desired. If the video editor later soundtracked footage of the crowd with hits from *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys — and cut out the seconds where a young woman mouths “suck my dick” — they could’ve gotten away with it.

Credit: George DeSota/Newsmakers via Getty Images

Today, the image of Anger Management Tour Eminem ranks among the most iconic shots of the best-selling rapper of all-time. The theatrics work out of context, but the serial killer look resonates most in light of how well it encapsulated Eminem’s persona on-record and in the public imagination during the release and reception of his greatest album, 2000’s The Marshall Mathers LP. He was the nightmare of suburban mothers, the lyrically sadistic superhero of disaffected teens who hated MTV. Jason Voorhees (hockey mask) and Leatherface (chainsaw) were as fictional as their victims, but you could look Eminem in his blue eyes. The victims of his multisyllabic assaults — his baby mama, his mother, the president, pop artists, Christopher Reeves, Insane Clown Posse, women, gay men — were real. His looks and his lyrics both put him on the cover of magazines (Rolling Stone, SPIN, VIBE) that perpetuated the image. The Source, which made Eminem the first white cover star in its then-12-year history, went with the overalls and chainsaw.

Three days after the Barker Hangar show, the RIAA certified Marshall Mathers eight-times platinum. (It reached diamond-status in 2011 and became the second highest-selling single disc rap album of all time.) A month later, Marshall Mathers won Grammys for Best Rap Album and Best Rap Solo Performance (“The Real Slim Shady”). Practically every Eminem album has debuted at No. 1, and many have won Grammys, but each is either a prologue or postscript to Marshall Mathers.

Twenty years old this week, Marshall Mathers LP is the record the rest of his catalog is measured against. It cemented his place in the pantheon. If you include him in rap’s enduring GOAT conversation, as Zadie Smith did in her 2002 VIBE cover story, you point to Eminem’s incendiary third album with one hand and extend the middle finger of the other.

Eminem’s rhymes and wit were never sharper, his narratives never more convincing. He was a chainsaw with endless fuel, on ecstasy but never on E. Antagonistic and angered, political and politically incorrect, jesting and juvenile — he cut down enemies and innocents like it was an autonomic function. Apart from “Kim,” the grotesque and screaming diatribe, his delivery was never more fluid or in the pocket. Chalk it up to the right combination of THC, pain pills and hallucinogens, the production from Mel-Man, the Bass Brothers, or Dre’s coaching.

“[Dre] showed me how to deliver rhymes over a beat, and he showed me that you stick with something until you have it just how you want it,” Eminem told The Los Angeles Times in 2000. 

Listening to verses of interlocking internal and end rhymes on “Kill You” or even lead single “The Real Slim Shady” is like watching a gymnast solve a Rubik’s Cube while performing a flawless Triple Double during a floor routine. Syllables in each block of language rotate swiftly on their axis, aligning as though they couldn’t be arranged another way. He flips in and out of cadences and character voices without a sidestep, perhaps only as a medaling Rap Olympian can. The following lines from “I’m Back” illustrate the extent of his syllabic intricacy, but nothing rivals listening to him spring from one phrase to the next:

“Mind with no sense in it, fried schizophrenic, whose eyes / Get so squinted, I’m blind from smoke in ’em, with my windows tinted / With nine limos rented, doin’ lines of coke in ’em / With a bunch of guys hoppin’ out, all high and indo-scented” 

The linguistic acrobatics of The Marshall Mathers LP  were on par with Eminem’s palpable rage and the provocativeness of the content. Like its predecessor The Slim Shady LP, the album captured America’s attention, all but dominated the discourse of rap and pop music as rap continued its ascent to the top of the charts. Yet Eminem seemingly encouraged violence against women and condoned rape and gay-bashing. Or was it all a joke? 

“I take the things that are messed up with the world and the things that are twisted and I poke fun at them,” he told MTV in 1999. “I think anyone with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I’m joking and when I’m not.”

Like Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho, which captivated and appalled readers long before Slim Shady bleached his hair, the line between sincerity and absurdity on Marshall Mathers was soaked in arterial red. Most journalists reviewed the record positively, but detractors didn’t see the humor or rejected its very premise. In 2000, the same year moviegoers watched Christian Bale chase a prostitute with a chainsaw in the American Psycho adaptation, Eminem became the target of politicians and activists. His violent lyrics were the focal point of Senate hearings, his homophobic ones incited GLAAD protests outside of the Grammys.

Yet Marshall Mathers LP remains one of the most critically-acclaimed, commercially-successful, and influential albums in rap history. The list of rappers Eminem influenced at his peak includes Tyler, the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, Kendrick Lamar, and late Juice WRLD. How did Eminem come to write such deranged rhymes, and what made them irresistible to so many? What did the album’s ubiquity say about us?

The plot points of Marshall Mathers’ early life are well-documented. You can read about the bullies who beat him senseless and his turbulent homelife (abandoned by dad, neglected and psychologically abused by pill-popping mom) everywhere. It follows that he would gravitate toward rap, an art where skill supplants brawn. Bullies in school and at home couldn’t silence him in the cipher.

At Detroit venues like the Hip-Hop Shop, Mathers became Eminem, battling opponents who dismissed him for being white in a black art form. Technique and punchlines were paramount, but violence was the lingua Franca. Diss someone’s appearance, question their masculinity or heterosexuality, threaten extreme physical harm — all were fair game. Still, everyone involved assumed murderous intent was as figurative. For better and worse, Eminem has searched for formidable sparring partners ever since. 

His alter-ego, Slim Shady became a vehicle for every irate and demented thought that came with a rhyme scheme. Shady was the ID unbound, while Mathers grappled with fatherhood, traced the scars of his upbringing. Eminem was the bridging the divide and blurring the line between Slim’s psychotic fantasies and Mathers’ infuriated reality.

“Slim Shady is a name for my temper or anger,” Eminem told SPIN in 2000. “Eminem is just the rapper, Slim Shady is the attitude behind him, and Marshall Mathers is who I am at the end of the day.”

Without Dr. Dre, Eminem might’ve never made it out of Detroit. After the Death Row fallout, Dre’s label Aftermath was off to a rocky start. The Firm didn’t flop, but The Album (1997) didn’t do The Chronic numbers. In 1998, Interscope head and eventual-headphone-salesman Jimmy Iovine passed The Slim Shady LP to a beleaguered Dre. The man who beat Dee Barnes heard Eminem rap about killing his baby mama (“Just the Two of Us”) and was sold. Eminem became Neo to Dre’s Morpheus, “the one” to save Aftermath and crack the code of the pop Matrix-like no rapper before him.

Amidst unprecedented acclaim for The Silm Shady LP and the hassles of its attendant fame, constant criticism, and lawsuits, Eminem went on a world tour in 1999. Between frustrating interviews and an inebriated sojourn in Amsterdam, he began penning songs for Marshall Mathers. When he returned to the states, he logged marathon recording sessions in L.A. (with Dre and Mel-Man) and Detroit (with the Bass Brothers). He delivered a 16-track version of Marshall Mathers LP to Interscope in March of 2000, just over a year after The Slim Shady LP. At the behest of Iovine, Eminem recorded a commercially friendly single. 

“The Real Slim Shady” was a spiritual sequel to “My Name Is.” A reintroduction to Slim Shady with another simple and catchy chorus that you hate to love. Dre and Mel-Man made a thumping, carnivalesque beat that somehow aurally approximated Shady’s playfully dark essence and left room for his attacks. Pissed about appearing on music video countdowns next to pop acts, Shady took shots at boy bands, Britney Spears, and Will Smith. He fired back at Christina Aguilera for a perceived character assassination. It’s difficult to imagine Marshall Mathers having the same impact without Eminem stalking into the MTV Awards with a platoon of doppelgangers behind him. Tonally, though, “The Real Slim Shady” is at odds with its surroundings.

Marshall Mathers was a gallery of horrors inspired by Eminem’s critics and fans. Other multiplatinum musicians had become scapegoats for deeper societal problems (e.g., gun control, mental health awareness), so Eminem gave his persecutors the monster they wanted. Moralists deplored his lines about violence and rape, so he choked a woman to death before raping his mother on “Kill You” and made it the first song. Gay activists called his lyrics homophobic, so he said he claimed to “hate fags” and joked about Gianni Versace’s assassination in “Criminal.” On the record (e.g., “Who Knew”) and in interviews, he denied any culpability for doubling down.

“I don’t think music can make you kill or rape someone any more than a movie is going to make you do something you know is wrong,” he told the LA Times less facetiously, “but music can give you strength.”

To explain by way of example, Eminem made “Stan.” Inspired by 45 King’s brilliant flip of a Dido sample, he took the beat and wrote a nearly seven-minute epistolary horror about an obsessed fan who takes every lyric to heart. It was rap’s answer to Stephen King’s Misery. The music video is Devon Sawa’s best work, but each verse was so vivid and well scripted that you didn’t need it. You just had to listen to the words, the torrential storm, and the sound of someone scribbling on paper at the bottom of the mix. Eminem becomes Stan for three verses, Stan’s desire for acknowledgment growing in conjunction with his rage at not receiving it. After the plot twist, Eminem responds to remind Stan that he’s “just clownin’” and urges him to get “some counseling.” After standing in front of screaming faces on TRL and dealing with overzealous fans on tour, “Stan” was a call for America to reevaluate celebrity and our relationship to it. We listened and loved the song, but too few absorbed the message. Today “stan” is in the dictionary, synonymous with fans who tweet in all caps about their favorite musician and attack anyone who diverges from their myopic evangelizing. 

Though he displayed some empathy on “Stan”, Eminem aimed 2Pacian intensity and anger at invasive fans on the self-produced “The Way I Am.” But they weren’t the only target. Smug and bigoted interviewers (like Howard Stern), parents and politicians blaming the Columbine shooting on Marilyn Manson, people while turning a blind eye to the crack epidemic ravaging impoverished communities of color— Eminem flipped one middle finger after another at each group over funereal keys and an ominous church-bell. Despite what anyone might have written about him, there were boundaries in which he believed and prejudices he couldn’t abide.

As Eminem undoubtedly knew, though, Marshall Mathers wasn’t going to solve any of his problems. With the album’s popularity soaring, Lynne Cheney wrote to the two women members on the board of Seagram’s, which owned Interscope, and decried what the album was “doing to their children’s culture on “Violence in the Media.” With no fear of redundancy, she called his lyrics “shameful,” “dreadful,” and “awful” before asking what Marshall Mathers was “doing to their children’s culture.” Years later, she was less concerned about how kids might interpret her husband’s advocacy of waterboard torture or the massacre of innocent Iraqis.

While raping your mother and killing your wife is shameful, dreadful and awful, so is Eminem’s egregious and extensive gay-bashing. “Criminal,” though, remains the most indefensible. He raps, “Come on, relax, guy! I like gay men,” but the damage done by “…hate fags? The answer’s yes” is irrevocable. Eminem attacked a marginalized community to piss off critics. As with many victims of bullying, it’s unfortunate that Eminem didn’t realize when he’d become one himself. 

Scars and all, MMLP remains a landmark achievement. It expanded the narrative possibilities in rap and the flexibility of the English language. It elevated the bar for wordplay forever. “Bitch Please II” is one of the greatest posse cuts of all time in spite of Eminem’s gleeful anti-gay language at the end. There’s no wonder why Eminem has chased an achievement of Marshall Mathers LP’s stature ever since. Sadly, the urgency and quality of his music leveled off before crashing dramatically. Every year, he becomes an increasingly grating parody of himself. He’s matured some (see “Like Home”), but his rhymes are rigid and filled with one-liners that inspire more cringes than most of Marshall Mathers. 

Today, Eminem’s biggest artistic statement reminds us both of how much our culture has evolved and regressed. Intentionally and not, Eminem also forced listeners to probe their definitions of entertainment and art while investigating their prejudices. The hate and violence on the album reflected the ugliest parts of America at the dawn of the new millennium. We were decades away from the #MeToo Movement and the progress it made for victims of sexual violence. This record came out in an era when people said “gay” and “don’t be a fag” casually, ignorant of the hatred embedded in their diction. In the mid-aughts, everyone from Kanye West to Lil Wayne rapped “no homo.” It was only this year that Lil Nas X became the first gay rapper to win a Grammy. 

No matter what progress we’ve made, we still have a racist, misogynist, and transphobic president with dozens of sexual assault accusations in office whose negligence during a pandemic has killed thousands of people. When Eminem gave America a monster on Marshall Mathers LP, at least he was kidding. Mostly.

Great songs have a freedom that albums don’t because great songs only have to pull off their trick once. It’s like how a great SNL sketch can be a terrible movie or why Vine was an underrated miracle of online comedy. Sometimes an artist can get a lot more done in miniature. When people say that no one listens to albums anymore, they’re obviously mistaken, but they mean that no one listens to certain kinds of albums anymore. They won’t wait to get to the good part, and an industry that’s been padding out their wares for decades has had to adapt to a new reality where the customer is always dope.

From Hailey Whitters to Hayley Williams, from King Von to Christine and the Queens, here’s a supercut of just the good parts: The songs that have challenged and delighted and comforted us through a fucking weird crisis. Here are our favorite à la carte musical moments that have defined the first half of 2020.

50. Lizzo, “A Change Is Gonna Come”
The National Anthem for a country that hasn’t changed nearly enough since it was written, sung by our real president. She loves us, we got this, give her the EGOT. — Dan Weiss

49. Bob Dylan, “I Contain Multitudes”
“There’s so many ‘sides’ to Bob Dylan, he’s round,” somebody (Bob Dylan?) is supposed to have said; “I Contain Multitudes,” a revolving kaleidoscope of couplets and cliches, plays as a thesis statement for more than just Dylan’s late style. The Poe and Blake references are hilariously shallow, but a kaleidoscope doesn’t take you deeper into anything. Instead it reveals stranger things happening on the surface of the world than you could see before you started turning it, catching it in its own light. “Everything’s flowing, all at the same time,” this holographic projection of a singing Transcendental cowboy reports, and then makes an ominous allusion to John Wilkes Boothe, again. — Theon Weber

48. New Kids on the Block feat. Boyz II Men, Big Freedia, Jordin Sparks, & Naughty by Nature, “House Party”
1. The demand for new new jack swing greatly exceeds the supply; just look at Bruno Mars. God bless but he can’t take all those requests by himself. If he’s New Jack Santa Claus (with Another Bad Creation as his workshop of elves), these are his trusty reindeer: On Teddy, on Riley, on Nasty, on Freaky, on Tony, on Toni, on Toné, on Do Me,  on Poison, on Cooleyhighharmony.

2. The last time Justin Timberlake had a song this good was “My Love.” Stay mad.

3. Yes, the video is a big part of it. Oh, I’m sorry, are you too busy to watch? — D.W.

47. Whethan feat. Grandson, “All in My Head”
Electro-pop producer Whethan lets his punk side shine on this two-and-a-half-minute heart racer. Wits are abandoned on the crunching, overripe bass and “Song 2″ clang of the beat, while Grandson’s angsty, apathetic vocals drip with the cocky attitude of disaffected youth. “All in My Head” wants you to make bad but harmless decisions, like doing donuts in the Walgreens parking lot. If you’re listening to this song, you’re 19. It doesn’t matter if you’re 45 years old, now you’re 19. — Kat Bein

46. Bright Eyes, “Persona Non Grata”
Conor Oberst is still a thoughtful, songful, extravagantly detailed troubadour under his own name. His self-titled 2008 record ranks among the very top of his achievements, and the hydraulic anticapitalist outrage of Desaparecidos was ahead of the curve on both Occupy and the triumph of St. Bernard. But his emo quotient as Bright Eyes has incomparable gravitas. The strophic New Dylan-ing, the labyrinthine album intros, the Donnie Darko stare above the mouth where quavering doomsday-prophet lyrics come out; it’s been nine years since any of it. The new dystopia is putting on a kilt to the strains of a Bollywood song, for a date, no less, with someone “underfed and depressed.” And then come the bagpipes. — D.W.

45. Breland, “My Truck”
If the song’s not stuck in your head within 40 seconds, you win a free truck. There won’t be any winners today. Except for Sam Hunt, who would like his Billy Ray “Old Town Road” money now. — D.W.

44. The Strokes, “The Adults Are Talking”
“They will blame us, crucify and shame us / We can’t help it, if we are a problem,” Julian Casablancas murmurs, exacting, coiled, so, so numb. “We are trying hard to get your attention.” He could be singing for or to your parents, your children, you. Impeccably syncopated and broadly halcyon, “The Adults Are Talking” exists in a murky space where past, present, and future intersect, uncertainly — that grey area where Philip Larkin’s famed poem “This Be The Verse” makes more sense than any of us would care to admit. Meanwhile, the music bears an overdetermined, filigreed snap that, somehow, the Strokes execute offhandedly, casually, with a patient elan. — Raymond Cummings

43. Rina Sawayama, “STFU!”
Rina Sawayama threw nü-metal a surprise party for its 20th birthday and everyone’s invited, except for the real-life industry racists whose comments her antagonist/dinner date quoted verbatim in the video. Let the bodies hit the floor, starting with those guys. — D.W.

42. Caribou, “New Jade”
“Dolla dealin’ passer?” “Dolphin dealer passive?” The sampled vocal loop that opens “New Jade” is essentially gibberish — Dan Snaith has squished the sound into a strange new shape, fashioning yet another hypnotic, electronic hook from a second-long snippet of melody. After a couple repetitions of the line, the tongue-speaking sounds like a familiar language. New questions arise: Is that a synth or a pitch-shifted guitar? Hold up, a hammered dulcimer? — Ryan Reed

41. ITZY, “Wannabe”
That the winding music-box noises, flamenco guitar strums, will.i.am-circa-“Scream and Shout” sub-bass presets, and skittering Timbaland programming all assert themselves before the first verse has ended is a hallmark of the best generation-blending K-Pop maximalism. The keep-it-simple-stupid chorus (“I don’t want to be somebody / Just wanna be me” — who can’t relate?) is a respectable interjection from the West. And the dancing could come from anywhere if you believe in yourself. — D.W.

40. Chad Matheny, “The Ballad of HPAE Local 5058”
As the brainy Emperor X, Chad Matheny has proffered astoundingly empathetic laptop-emo-folk tunes for more than 20 years. But in the last few, surviving his own battle with testicular cancer has only sharpened a determination to clarify the world’s unsolvable healthcare crisis to the faithful tune-seekers that sponsor his Bandcamp releases. “I owe 30,000 euros to the German corporation / That just cured me of a terminal cancer / Now I’ve got 87 notices reminding me / They can’t care at all if my ending came too soon,” he sang in 2017, devoid of metaphor. Three years later, he resurrects the old Woody Guthrie template to dig deeper into that industry’s corruption, even going as far as calling out the “stockpiles of PPE” not serviced to healthcare workers. What does it mean when a singer-songwriter’s specifics are more painstakingly reported than entire websites claiming journalism? He even cites his sources. — D.W.

39. Eminem feat. Juice WRLD, “Godzilla”
Eminem is more or less a fire hydrant at this point, with a reliably unstoppable flow, but it’s often not necessary and sometimes even in the way. When you need it, though, it doesn’t take long to realize how much you take its presence for granted. Sure, that metaphor was a little slippery, but the man’s fripperies can still cripple these peripheral MCs in triplicate and rip them to bits while they’re taking shits and be a pain in their ass like pilonidal cysts. — D.W.

38. Hailey Whitters, “All the Cool Girls”
You work with Lori McKenna (“Girl Crush,” “Humble and Kind”) if you want a great tune, not a TikTok smash. So here’s a cheerfully snippy one from a wallflower trying to get her Daria on but can’t play it, well, cool enough to be dispassionate observer, and before she knows it, the whole cigarette pack is gone. Just because “all the cool girls can’t decide who they want to be tonight” doesn’t make her feel more at ease, so why not, over verses that hint at spooky dub, contemplate joining them? Sometimes a “midsummer night dream / the top-down Cadillac, blue jeans”  requires just the right balance of self-assurance, longing to be someone else, and a killer chorus. — D.W.

37. Jasmine Infiniti, “Yes, Sir”
If we must live with a throbbing, blistering headache through the waking hours, it’s only fair that we are allowed to dance to it. The degraded sonics, irretrievable sample, hi-hats rusted into a wet rattle of chainlinks, bass coiled around your nerves like an inoperable tumor, all it points to is that the only true drop in this world is death.  — D.W.

36. Billie Eilish, “No Time to Die”
It’s safe to say that 2020 doesn’t suck for Billie Eilish. Not long after turning 18, she scooped the Big Four awards at the Grammys and made history before following that up with another milestone: Becoming the youngest artist to pen and record a theme song to a James Bond film. “No Time to Die” — as always, written with her brother FINNEAS — is one for the Bond tune pantheon alongside Adele’s “Skyfall” and Shirley Bassey’s “Diamonds Are Forever,” thanks to Eilish’s beyond-her-years soprano that tops a quietly haunted melody with icicles. The movie’s release may have been pushed back, but by the time theaters are a thing again, its theme song will have already conquered audiences worldwide. — Jolie Lash

35. King Von, “Took Her to the O”
You try enunciating the word “Kankakee” six times in one song without your tongue turning to molasses.— D.W.

34. The 1975, “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)”
Matt Healy personifies the restless millennial id, so who better than the 1975 frontman to document the sadness, hilarity, awkwardness and — just maybe — euphoria of the erotic Zoom call? After a swirl of ghostly ambience, with FKA twigs’ choral voice amongst the reverb, the band slips into the kind of revisionist ’80s posh sheen that few others can convincingly pull off. (These sort of suicide missions are the 1975’s whole Thing.) There’s a gleaming, high-octave guitar lick. There’s a sax solo that bridges Spandau Ballet’s “True” and M83’s “Midnight City.” Then there’s Healy, recounting his FaceTime hook-up with journaled detail. “I just wanted a happy ending,” he sings. Now we all need a towel. — R.R.

33. Psychic Graveyard, “No”
Every person mourns in their own unique way, but the bereaved clod Psychic Graveyard singer Eric Paul invents for “No” is in a league of his very own. This guy’s solipsistic, overly literal, his mind orbiting another planet, the mix unevenly doubling his inner monologues: “What do I wear to your funeral / When we were together, I never wore clothes.” Synth player Nathan Joyner, guitarist Paul Vieira, and drummer Charles Ovett all up the psychodrama by savage degrees, leading off with a grinding, foghorn dirge that eventually expands into a punishing industrial hailstorm. Of course the home of this bleak, dour thrill is entitled A Bluebird Vacation. — R.C.

32. Banoffee, “Permission”
Rape is no longer a taboo subject. Hell, both of America’s major party presidential nominees have been accused of sexual assault. Society is overdue to face the music, and in the case of Australian dancer-turned-singer Banoffee’s sparse electro-ballad “Permission,” the intimate, arresting track is both sobering and empowering, a standout between Look at Us Now Dad’s glittering, synth-heavy bops. “It was a way of me processing how my boundaries had been broken,” she told NPR. “I expected people to love me a certain way, but it very quickly twists into something darker and more sinister and speaks about the type of consent that can be broken, that can break someone.” — K.B.

31. Sada Baby feat. King Von, “Pressin”
In a scene with no shortage of local legends (Veeze, Drego and Beno), Sada Baby stands tall as the most prominent figure of Detroit’s current street rap renaissance. As prolific as he is charismatic, Sada will aggressively, gleefully rap about pouring pints and stealing your girl in the same breath. “Pressin” is the biggest standout from Skuba Sada 2, the second Sada Baby project of 2020 before we even reached the halfway point. The funereal keys and ricocheting, mortar-round drums lay the perfect foundation for Sada and King Von’s tag-team threats. You don’t want to get clowned by a dude who even jokes about calling himself a “walking lick.” — Max Bell

30. tricot, “真っ黒 (Makkuro)”
If there were any justice, the success of 2019’s biggest rock breakthrough, black midi — a band that makes it more frustrating that there’s no easy portmanteau of “virtuosic” and “perverse” (pervertuosic?) — would’ve opened the floodgates for these decade-strong Kyoto math-rockers. Except where Geordie Greep gurgles like he’s about to rip the ring off Frodo’s finger, Ikkyu Nakajima sings and even harmonizes pretty and emotive; one of the few math-rockers to actually add up to something. She moves with a purpose. — D.W.

29. TOKiMONSTA feat. EARTHGANG, “Fried for the Night”
Tune in, turn on, and drop it down low with L.A. beat queen Jennifer Lee’s surrealistic slow grind. “Fried for the Night” is a rave and a half, thanks in good part to Atlanta duo Earthgang’s trippy flows. The monolithic lead single from her sixth full-length Oasis Nocturna is, in TOKiMONSTA’s own words, “dedicated to those psychedelic moments where our reality opens up a new point of view.” Your move, Ibiza. — K.B.

28. Playboi Carti, “@Meh”
Given Playboi Carti’s event-horizon approach to the hook, in which repeating a dense syllable or two often enough collapses a track into it like light, you might imagine you can hear “@MEH” in your head without playing it. But Carti is a satellite here, not a singularity; his syrupy chirp laps in decaying orbit around an obsessive 16-bit music-box burble that’s the track’s real center of gravity. Carti swallows and mumbles boasts like they’re being transmitted across a vast distance; every now and then the beat below throws out an arpeggio like a flare. — T.W.

27. Skeleton, “Catacombs”
This punishing Austin trio have only grown more turgid and volcanic since their earlier EPs. They spend this first taste of their upcoming eponymous debut album unloading their blackened punk-metal like a cement mixer operating directly above your face, each successive jackhammer of double-bass drum pushing more wet concrete into your nostrils. Hey, no kinkshaming. — D.W.

26. Jay Electronica feat. Jay-Z, “Flux Capacitor”
Kudos to whichever dogs and cats living together it took for Jay Electronica to realize he’d better dust off this so-called album before there isn’t a world to release it in anymore. But its densest production is somehow also its most old-school, and we’ll leave that for co-conspirator and ace Rihanna sampler James Blake to sort out. It’s too bad Jay and Jay didn’t release this in the midst of Lemonade fever because then we could compare these rejuvenated middle-aged pals’ opus to Harry Nilsson and John Lennon’s lost weekend. Jay-Z preens like his pre-billionaire self (“Why would I not have a watch like a Saudi prince?”) and Jay-E recycles that old hip-hop saw of switching deftly from Nation of Islam big-ups to Cutty Ranks-inspired trash talk (“Send for the hacksaw / Take out the tongue”). A midlife crisis to nod your head to. — D.W.

25. The Magnetic Fields, “The Day the Politicians Died”
Like Distortion’s “California Girls,” this mordant little ditty from the world’s preeminent wholesaler of mordant little ditties decorates a murderous fantasy with the reedy innocence of Claudia Gonson’s voice. But that song mined its deadpan lulz from the over-the-top solipsism of Stephin Merritt’s homicidal distaste; here, if anything, the (grimmer, funnier) joke is how straight this wishful piano sketch can be taken, as petty private revenge fades into universal liberation. “It’s all one big party now,” it concludes before two minutes are up, but not before rhyming “we’re different from the beasts” with “let’s eat all the priests.” — T.W.

24. lojii, “lo&behold”
On Due Rent, his 2017 Swarvy-produced album, Philadelphia’s lojii rapped with refreshing candidness about his financial struggles: “I still ain’t make a check but I’m takin’ bets.” This year’s lo&behold is a spiritual sequel in the most literal sense; lojii delivers diaristic verses that find him pushing past an existential crisis about his life and career. And the title track showcases the power of his deftly unadorned prose, his resonant but low, slightly raspy voice. Swarvy’s thumping, downtempo suite soundtracks lojii’s submission to fate, his embrace of patience. It’s the core of an album that finds peace in the process of creation without the certainty of reward. — M.B.

23. Dreamcatcher(드림캐쳐), “Scream”
Equipped with a full-spectrum payload of pomo pop-rock weaponry — darkly twinkling Evanescence verses, Jim Steinman-core guitar-opera bombast with attendant postreunion Fall Out Boy whoa-ohs, wordless chorus that is both rock riff and EDM drop, at least one rap breakdown, broadsword in 4K video — Dreamcatcher take an only-way-to-be-sure approach to three-minute song. “Scream” fuses the whiplash precision of K-pop with a genre of melodramatic electro-rock that had already ripped most of it off anyway; it sounds like you’re hearing two of it at the same time, like eating a Big Mac.  — T.W.

22. Lil Wayne, “Mama Mia”
The Best Rapper Alive can’t necessarily turn it off and on at will anymore, but he can, apparently, still turn it off and on. This is an on, his most jovial and rewarding track since 2015’s James Brown-flipping “I Feel Good” (which, sadly, isn’t on YouTube), and it even comes with a strong, if long, full-length, Funeral. The shockingly downcast Carter V was even longer, though, and freed from that burden’s expectations, Tunechi rediscovers a looseness we’ve all been missing, so delighting in his own “Titty-fuck your baby mama / She breastfeed your child while I do it” boast that he has to repeat it twice. You already know how great he can be at his best, and “Mama Mia” comes close enough to it that Weezy himself may still be the best thing on a song that’s an early candidate for the year’s best beat (someone’s been listening to Sophie!) and video (the Wu-Tang hoodies, the CGI baby, the monkey heads). — D.W.

21. Dixie Chicks, “Gaslighter”
After the right-wing shitheads of country radio forced them into exile, Dixie Chicks returned from a decade-plus hiatus with “Gaslighter,” a scathing power-pop anthem that’s equally empowering and raging. Featuring the sorely missed country trio’s radiant, signature harmonies and Jack Antonoff’s widescreen production (those drum bursts), “Gaslighter” is a rallying cry against an irredeemable liar that not so subtly pays homage to the group’s earlier kiss-offs, “Goodbye Earl” and “Not Ready to Make Nice.” Except this one’s chorus is even harder to get out of your head: “Gaslighter, big timer / Repeating all of the mistakes of your father,” taunts long-suffering divorcée Natalie Maines. She doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. Still, we’re dying to know: What exactly happened on her boat? — Ilana Kaplan

20. Thundercat, “Dragonball Durag”
Of all things, venerable Los Angeles bassist Stephen Bruner has recently become the most unexpected (and funkiest) ambassador of yacht rock. You can hear the processed smoothness all over “Dragonball Durag,” where Thundercat comes off like the awkward man’s Barry White and somehow ends up with his catchiest-ever solo tune. In the hilariously on-the-nose video, he finds the titular durag in the trash and suddenly thinks he’s Stanley Ipkiss in The Mask, failing to woo the likes of Kali Uchis, comedian Quinta Brunson, and finally, an amused-but-not-really HAIM. Next time on Dragon Ball Z: Will Thundercat enjoy piña coladas and getting caught in the rain? ⁠— Daniel Kohn

19. Erik Griswold, “The Hive”
The only thing more badass than a piano orchestra is a prepared piano orchestra. “The Hive” wasn’t titled arbitrarily; set upon by 16 pianists, these 16 eerily tuned pianos churn out fathomless melodies that shudder from dolor to ecstasy and back. It’s as though you’re stuck in “the Shimmer” from Jeff VanDerMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy — literally rooted there, in the process of becoming a tree. With this recording, the spark that fueled this year’s All’s Grist That Comes to the Mill, Brisbane composer Erik Griswold has unleashed a tyranny that doubles as a deliverance. — R.C.

18. The Used, “Blow Me”
Admit it, your money was not on the Used in the 2020 comeback sweepstakes, and even the scene kids were caught off guard by this slab of bleeding meat thrown to them like dogs. A reasonable convert hears some Snapcase in “Blow Me,” but no one who’s being honest can take In Utero off the table entirely. The breakdown is admirably psychotic; if you’re even a little bit curious you should get in the pit with this nailbomb. Just, you know, shield your face. — D.W.

17. Roddy Ricch, “The Box”
Rap songs that top the Hot 100 for two months have historically been party anthems like “In Da Club” or “Hot in Herre” that were expertly engineered for crossover success. But Compton rapper Roddy Ricch has ruled the charts in 2020 with an ominous, mid-tempo trap beat and an intricate chorus that features 93 words and about three different vocal melodies. In the streaming era, the good fortune of being the first song on an album people love, like Roddy’s blockbuster Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial, counts more than universal appeal. But that silly “ehh-err” vocal loop probably helped. — Al Shipley

16. Phoebe Bridgers, “Kyoto”
You know you’re a bonafide pop star-qua-singer-songwriter once you’re learned how to transmute interior ennui into a world-beating anthem. “Kyoto” the song feels regal, soaring, aloft on golden horn charts, even while Phoebe Bridgers, its author, stews at the center of this pealing storm. She blows off Japanese destinations while on tour, meandering through insecurities, memories, regrets, tumbling deep into her notebook. There’s a bummed out exhilaration here in this warm, intimate re-re-reminder that wherever you happen to go, there you ultimately are. — R.C.

15. Disclosure feat. Eka Roosevelt, “Tondo”
Everyone’s favorite U.K. house brothers quietly closed out February with their most surefire dynamite in years. Its Ecstasy EP took their sampling skills to new heights, the peak of which manifested in the vibrant swing of “Tondo,” built generously and brilliantly from Cameroonian musician Eko Roosevelt’s 1985 disco-funk banger “Tondoho Mba.” It just thumps a little heavier now, with a fresh new coat of groove. — K.B.

14. Halsey, “You Should Be Sad”
If “You Should Be Sad” is any inclination, Halsey could make a camp-country album that would leave both Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus proud. The Manic highlight recalls the singer’s rage against an unfaithful ex-lover, strengthening an Americana-tinged ballad with tense rock riffs. “You can’t fill the hole inside of you with money, girls, and cars / I’m so glad I never ever had a baby with you,” she seethes. The song is best heard with its accompanying visual, which takes place in an underground western nightclub and nods to idols as disparate Christina Aguilera, Shania Twain, and Lady Gaga circa American Horror Story. She makes this whole “sad” business sound pretty fun, really. — I.K.

13. Sam Hunt, “Hard to Forget”
“Hard to Forget” does exactly what it says on the label; the hooks will fuck up your summer more than the titular girl in the dress does to Sam Hunt’s. For a country song, it’s got shocking range, pulling in not just Hunt’s signature trap 808s but a prominent sample of Webb Pierce’s 1953 No. 1 song “There Stands the Glass” and even some reggae-lite guitar on the verses. The Pierce tune is woven throughout what may well be country’s first charting hit containing a sample (that isn’t named “Old Town Road,” anyway) and functions as an old-timey parallel to Hunt’s song. “There Stands the Glass” concerned imbibing the sauce to keep thoughts from straying to heartbreak, and Hunt’s modern-country vocal is equally haunted by an ex. Plenty of country music time-travels to the past, but how much of it goes back to the future? — J.L.

12. Lady Gaga, “Stupid Love”
Lady Gaga took pride in being practically the only pop diva who never needed Max Martin’s help making a hit. But she recently decided to, in her own words, “stop being an asshole” and meet Martin, who co-wrote the blaring Chromatica lead single, which has her first-, second-, and third-best hooks in years. Everything about “Stupid Love” (even the title) reeks of a concerted effort to return Lady Gaga to the loud, garish pop throne she commanded so naturally circa The Fame Monster. And after a year of singing tasteful ballads with Bradley Cooper, good — we like her best at her most shameless. We want her stupid, oh, you know. — A.S.

11. Run the Jewels feat. Greg Nice & DJ Premier, “Ooh La La”
Three albums and countless summer festivals later, Run the Jewels remain united by their affinity for rap and weed, their antipathy for fuckboys, the law, and craven politicians. The important things. “Ooh La La,” the first single from the forthcoming RTJ4, is a cross-generational rap fever dream that proves Killer Mike and El-P’s synergy remains undiminished. (We’ll see about Mavis Staples and Josh Homme’s.) This is rap as tag-team WWE, the outrageous braggadocio of one half inspiring more outlandish boasts from the other. With a hook that samples Greg Nice from Gang Starr’s classic “Dwyck” and scratches from DJ Premier himself, “Ooh La La” pays homage to RTJ’s predecessors while remaining irreverent to everyone and everything else. The perfect soundtrack for pissing on a passing royal’s footwear. — M.B.

10. Waxahatchee, “Fire”
Katie Crutchfield achieves Peak Road Anthem with this windows-down tribute to the power of self-love — the warmest and wisest moment on Saint Cloud, her warmest and wisest Waxahatchee LP. Over unobtrusive electric piano, fidgety, palm-muted guitar, and eventually, a loping drum beat, Crutchfield spills out her guts to the most important partner of all: herself. “If I could love you unconditionally,” she sings with a hint of twang, “I could iron out the edges of the darkest sky.” — R.R.

9. Rosalía, “Juro Que”
No need to mince words; Rosalía is the most arresting singer on the planet. Her gymnastic vibrato conveys every pixel of emotion on her 2018 breakthrough El Mal Querer but she has plenty of fun just flexing it as a muscle, whether it’s deployed on a miniature opera or a fully quantized urbano song. That balance between her academic virtuosity and her bleeding-edge pop transmissions — and that voice — is why she’s as poised as anyone to become the Beyoncé of the 2020s. Her video for “Juro Que” is typically cinematic, befitting a political song about a prison wall dividing lovers. Just wait until she starts chanting the title, “juro que, juro que, juro que” (“I swear that, I swear that, I swear that”) until it glitches out in a psychedelic Auto-Tune orgy. Anyway, walls are for shitbags. — D.W.

8. HAIM, “The Steps”
Like the ditched boyfriends in the video for “The Wire,” we don’t deserve HAIM. The only thing sisters Este, Alana, and Danielle can’t do is wrong, which is probably why their third LP, Women in Music Pt. III, has taken so long to cook. Perfectionism makes, well, perfect: “The Steps” brings contemporary pop back to Buckingham-Nicks and the Laurel Canyon scene, with its ache-driven, country-tinged harmonies, warm bass, and crying guitar solo. Documenting a pretty doomed relationship (“Every time I think that I’ve been taking the steps / You end up mad at me for making a mess”) – those pre-breakup frustrations have never sounded so blissful. — J.L.

7. Maddie & Tae, “Write a Book”
Madison Font and Tae Kerr were just teenagers when their debut single “Girl in a Country Song” cleverly stirred up debates about Bro-Country sexism in 2014. Half a decade later, they’ve finally returned with a sophomore album that fulfills the duo’s early songwriting potential with a song cycle about love and heartbreak that’s rife with observational detail. Most of the highlights on The Way It Feels focus on the pain of a breakup, but the bubbly “Write a Book” is an addictive ode to a guy who’s qualified to write a bestseller about how to be a dreamy boyfriend. — A.S.

6. Christine and the Queens, “People, I’ve been sad”
In 2008, Brandon Flowers posed the question, “Are we human, or are we dancer?” It only took 12 years for Héloïse Letissier to definitively answer “both.” One needn’t watch the video for “People, I’ve been sad” to know that the physicality of Letissier’s performance is intertwined with the elegiac beauty of her impassioned vocal. Heart-wrenching and delicate, the long-running contender’s new signature tune braids moody ’80s synths and a thicket of call-response vocals that weigh the cost of stepping back from the fullness of life. This one gets our vote for the pandemic’s unofficial theme song — and most inspired modern dance? — J.L.

5. Poppy, “Concrete”
Poppy thrives on disorientation, cramming her spastic “post-genre” hybrids with emotional and sonic contrasts: the menacing distortion of metal, the sugary intensity of J-pop, the mechanical chill of industrial. But “Concrete,” the opener and centerpiece of her third LP, is discombobulating in a way that can only be described, in totality, as “prog”: Electronic drones bleed into metallic guitar fireworks, and djent-y riffs careen into landscapes of billowing Pet Sounds vocal harmonies. Sure, she’s showing off — and it’s working. Poppy is one of the few artists alive who can elicit a genuine WTF — and how many of those can make “Bohemian Rhapsody” cross your mind? — R.R.

4. Hayley Williams, “Sugar on the Rim”
One of the things Hayley Williams has always known is that you have to take the bad with the good, but knowing is one thing and being at ease is another. So the woman who at 19 could write a song so enthusiastically candid about her own capacity for selfish vindictiveness that having grown up she no longer feels comfortable singing it, and at 21, could sum up the behind-the-music nightmare chronicled on Brand New Eyes by swearing she’d “never trade it in”, is only now able to write and casually deliver this slithering tropical bop about silver linings in bad love — and if it isn’t love after all, “Maybe we just had to feel it / So we know the difference.” — T.W.

3. Megan Thee Stallion, “Captain Hook”
⁠The phrase “Captain Hook” isn’t, strictly speaking, the hook of “Captain Hook”— that duty’s pulled by the sound of a sword being sharpened, with an assist from the long vowels Megan habitually splays out like dissected frogs — and it isn’t the climax either, and it isn’t spoken more than once. But like you she knows a hook when she hears one: It’s the right title, because the image it completes sticks so neatly in the mind, it’s barbed. Two minutes later, when the song’s over, it’ll be the joke you hit repeat to hear again. — T.W.

2. Fiona Apple, “Heavy Balloon”
Bookended by electric clanging, Fiona Apple’s “Heavy Balloon” grapples with the crippling weight of the singer’s lifelong depression. With Apple’s smoky contralto hanging over the skeletal track, she confronts her internal strife, but doesn’t sink into it. After trekking through mud, the culmination of her own growth is the hilarious gutsiness of the toughest-sounding chorus on her amazing record using gardening similes: “I spread like strawberries / I climb like peas and beans / I’ve been sucking it in so long / That I’m bursting at the seams.” — I.K.

1. Dua Lipa, “Don’t Start Now”
Exes — both toxic and not — attempting to reconnect during the global coronavirus pandemic has unfortunately been an actual thing. Luckily, we’ve had Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” as a swift, anthemic antidote – all about moving on while not actually forgetting. The first single off the left-field Grammy winner’s floor-ready Future Nostalgia is a modern disco classic, with house piano stabs and pocket-orchestra flourishes underscoring a vocal turn both sultry and unforgiving. But if anything will get us through that breakup — or this Black Mirror of a year — it’s that walking, talking, pirouetting bass line, pop’s best in recent memory. An “I Will Survive” for an era when we really need the reassurance. — J.L.

Listen to the entire list of songs below.

Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP turned 20 today, and the rapper’s not letting COVID-19 stop him from celebrating it. Like so many artists are doing in quarantine, Slim Shady is planning an online listening party for his seminal (albeit controversial) third album.

The livestream is set to take place next Wednesday (May 27), and he’ll be answering fan questions in the live chat. Aside from the listening session, Eminem is also dropping a “Stan University” hoodie next week, and has hinted that more anniversary celebrations will be rolling out. Stans can stay up to date on MMLP20 by texting this number: 313-666-7440 or continually refreshing Eminem’s official website.

The Marshall Mathers LP came out on May 23, 2000 and featured singles like “The Real Slim Shady,” “Stan,” “The Way I Am,” and “Bitch Please II.”

Though it may not have aged well in the current political climate, The Marshall Mathers LP launched Eminem into superstardom. “I am forever chasing The Marshall Mathers LP,” he said in a 2017 interview with Vulture. “That was the height of what I could do. I just don’t have the rage I did back then.”

SPIN celebrated the album’s 20th anniversary with an in-depth retrospective, which you can read here.

While Eminem has been included on others’ lists for great rappers of all time, who would be his G.O.A.T.?

Over the weekend, someone randomly tweeted and asked him that very question. But what surprised everyone wasn’t that Marshall Mathers actually responded. Instead, it was who was on his list. And he couldn’t just name one.

“For me, in no particular order… Toss up between wayne, pac, royce, jay, redman, treach, g. rap, biggie & king crook…. [sic],” he tweeted.

He also added, “Plus redman, LL, nas, joyner, kendrick, cole, andre, rakim, kane….”

Now we’re not thinking that he noted Redman twice because he thinks the Muddy Waters rapper was the GOAT but more that Eminem wanted to ensure he was on the list. What’s interesting is that he praises hip-hop artists from across the years — naming seven lyricists who are younger than him.

As Stereogum pointed out, no females, white rappers or Wu-Tang members made it on his list as well as some notable names including Ice Cube, KRS-One, 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg.

Aside from giving his list of greatest rappers of all time, Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP reached the 20th anniversary milestone recently. He also dropped his video for “Godzilla,” which also made SPIN’s Best Songs of 2020 (So Far) list. And in April, he donated the dishes from “Mom’s Spaghetti” to Detroit healthcare workers in April.

See Eminem’s list of G.O.A.T. rappers below.

Ennio Morricone, the celebrated Italian film composer who died on Monday at the age of 91, could elevate any film with his remarkably bold and expressive scores. Spaghetti westerns, Hollywood dramas, Giallo films — they were all his domain throughout an astonishingly prolific career.

But when you compose more than 500 scores, your work is going to wind up in some unexpected settings. And Morricone’s transcendent cues and dramatic flourishes livened up quite a few hip-hop and electronica songs as well, whether he realized it or not. According to the sample junkies over at WhoSampled.com, Morricone’s music “has been sampled over 400 times by artists including Jay-Z, Flying Lotus, Eminem and the Orb.” 

Rap music has long been obsessed with cinema, and with genre films in particular—think Wu-Tang Clan’s obsession with Samurai films or MF Doom’s heavy reliance on sampling old horror flicks and monster movies. For ’90s rap producers seeking to evoke some cinematic grandeur, Morricone’s rich catalog, which includes stirring scores for iconic westerns like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, must have seemed like a gold mine, pun intended. And it’s a gold mine the rap genre has been returning to for 30 years.

Here’s a brief guide to the most notable hip-hop and electronica tracks drawing from the Morricone sample well. It is, of course, by no means an exhaustive list of Morricone samples.

Beats International, “Dub Be Good to Me” (1990)
(Morricone sample: “Man With a Harmonica”)

Before he took over the world (and that one hotel lobby) as Fatboy Slim, Norman Cook founded the early ’90s electronica outfit Beats International, whose signature track, “Dub Be Good to Me,” triggered one of the early unauthorized-sample lawsuits—namely, from the Clash. The punk band didn’t appreciate Cook and co. nabbing the bassline from “The Guns of Brixton.” Morricone, though, evidently didn’t know or care that the track also incorporates a snippet of his Once Upon a Time in the West harmonica theme (see: 0:21). And it wasn’t the only early ’90s dance track to do so. Which brings us to…

The Orb, “Little Fluffy Clouds” (1990)
(Morricone sample: “Man With a Harmonica”)

Among the headiest and enduring of early ’90s house tracks, “Little Fluffy Clouds” splices together an odd mix of samples —including a strange and rambling interview with Rickie Lee Jones, some pounding drums from a Harry Nilsson classic, and that brooding harmonica from Morricone’s Once Upon a Time in the West score—into one psychedelic amalgamation.

Method Man, “Release Yo’ Delf” (1994)
(Morricone sample: “Il Colpo”)

The Prodigy remix of this early Method Man cut has Morricone’s sonic fingerprints all over it: those doomy timpani rolls, the sudden, blaring brass. It’s a tiny fragment from one of Morricone’s most enduring western scores — for Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More — which Prodigy looped into a thumping, hard-hitting dance groove. You can tell from that Morricone snippet that bad shit’s about to go down, whether it’s a verse from the Wu-Tang emcee or a shoot-out in the Old West.

GZA (feat. Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Masta Killa, and Inspectah Deck), “Duel of the Iron Mic” (1995)
(Morricone sample: “La Resa Dei Conti (Seconda Caccia)”)

Yeah, I’ve seen the Biden/Liquid Swords tweet. But can Biden rattle off the names of the various samples that comprise “Duel of the Iron Mic”? The main piano loop in the song is nabbed from an oddball 1971 pop-soul opera by Stax songwriter David Porter. But just before that loop kicks in, there’s a brief, faint snatch of the western-fried guitar from Morricone’s score for the 1966 spaghetti western La resa dei conti. Admittedly, it’s not one of the more prominent Morricone samples, but the full track is too good not to include on this list.

EPMD (feat. Method Man & Redman and Lady Luck), “Symphony 2000” (1999)
(Morricone sample: “Uccellacci Uccellini – Titoli Di Testa”)

There are a lot of ’90s hip-hop heads who will instantly recognize the delicate opening bars of Morricone’s theme music for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1966 film Uccellacci e uccellini. That’s not because ’90s hip-hop heads adore Salò director Pasolini. No, it’s all thanks to EPMD. I don’t know what kind of brain hears that staccato string figure and thinks “We should loop this up and get Method Man to rhyme over it,” but I’m grateful such a brain exists.

Eminem, “Bad Meets Evil” (1999)
(Morricone sample: “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Main Title)”)

With the main theme from Sergio Leone’s 1966 masterpiece The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Morricone managed to summon all the desolation, terror, and alluring danger of the spaghetti western in one howling, animalistic call-and-response motif. Three decades later, Eminem wanted to evoke a faux-cowboy feel on this brief, campy interlude at the beginning of “Bad Meets Evil,” so he borrowed from the master. Over on the Eminem subreddit, the rapper’s fans are mourning Morricone as we speak.

Gorillaz, “Clint Eastwood” (2001)
(Morricone homage: “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Main Title)”)

Look, I’m cheating on this one — technically speaking, Gorillaz’s 2001 trip-hop classic does not sample Morricone. But its opening banshee wail is such an obvious callback to the famous coyote howl flourish from Morricone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme that the cartoon group even titled the song after the film’s rugged-hero star actor, Clint Eastwood. (And if you doubt that Damon Albarn is a Morricone obsessive, consider that Blur has a Think Tank-era outtake titled… “Morricone.”)

Atmosphere, “Shrapnel” (2002)
(Morricone sample: “Man With a Harmonica”)

Has anyone ever managed to make a harmonica sound as grim and foreboding as the harmonica-wielding gunman who stalks the Old West in Sergio Leone’s 1968 classic Once Upon a Time in the West? No. Probably not. On Morricone’s soundtrack, that ominous harmonica whine dominates two tracks: the aptly titled “Man With a Harmonica” and “Death Rattle.” The Minneapolis rap duo Atmosphere utilized a snatch of “Man With a Harmonica” in an eerie outro from their 2002 track “Shrapnel.”

Jay-Z, “Blueprint2” (2002)
(Morricone sample: “The Ecstasy of Gold”)

Having previously sampled Isaac Hayes’ wah-wah classic “Theme from Shaft” on “Reservoir Dogs,” Jay-Z understands the power of a well-deployed iconic movie score sample. Still, it takes Kanye-level nerve to rhyme over a cinematic cue as recognizable as the majestic, operatic climax from Morricone’s The Good, The Bad and the Ugly score. But this outcome is certainly preferable to Metallica’s turgid cover of the same piece. 

Mobb Deep, “Blood Money” (2006)
(Morricone sample: “Cosa avete fatto a Solange?”)

The 1972 murder thriller What Have You Done to Solange? (or Cosa avete fatto a Solange?) may not be the first film most American viewers associate with Morricone, but it did occasion a wonderfully lush, angelic theme from the composer. Decades later, East Coast rap duo Mobb Deep looped an enticing fragment of the piano and strings intro for their track “Blood Money,” a song orphaned from the 2006 album of the same name. (Curiously, Joey Bada$$ sampled the same track, though not the same snippet, seven years later.)

Flying Lotus, “Turtles” (2014)
(Morricone sample: “Piume Di Cristallo”)

Flying Lotus’s ever-shifting, maximalist mishmash of electronica and jazz owes more than just one sample to Morricone’s influence. But for the purposes of this article, that one sample is what we’re going to talk about, and it’s an incredible one. Instead of borrowing from one of Morricone’s more familiar works, FlyLo zeroed in on a remarkably expressive slice of the L’uccello dalle piume di cristallo (1970) score—an ambient fade-in ornamented with pattering bells and angelic murmurs—and equipped it with a thumping bassline and beat. The result is like a cross-genre collaboration spanning across 44 years.

It looks like Mr. Solo Dolo and Mr. Slim Shady have some big plans this Friday.

Enlisting his daughter Vada for a video reveal on Wednesday, Kid Cudi announced on Twitter that a new collaboration with Eminem, “The Adventures of Moon Man and Slim Shady,” is set to drop on Friday.

This is the first time the two hip-hop heavyweights have linked up for a track, and Vada’s exclamation for fans to “check it out” makes it even more encouraging. Fans have since found new meaning behind Cudi’s May tweet directed at Em, where he asked the “Rap God” to simply “help.” I think we’ve figured out why now.

Cudi’s new single announcement comes after April’s “The Scotts” topped the Billboard Hot 100 with Travis Scott sharing the podium. The track was Cudi’s highest-charting track ever, so hopefully this means he’s fired up enough to drop the next album sooner than later.

While you wait for the Friday track and Cudi’s eventual comeback, give our 2010 Cudi interview a read.

The year 2000 looms large in pop culture history: the Y2k non-scare, the Seinfeld “Newmannium” episode, the “In the Year 2000″ sketch from Conan O’Brien’s original late-night show, the Hulu series PEN15. And just like, say, the grunge-defined 1991, the year immediately conjures specific sounds: gleaming teen-pop, earnest radio rock, the Neptunes and Timbaland.

There’s never a bad time to revisit this music. But in the middle of a pandemic, with America on the verge of collapse, it feels extra comforting — a blast of nostalgia for a time when you could safely exit your home, visit your local mall’s Sam Goody and buy Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass” CD single.

For this list, our only criteria was that the songs appear on albums or soundtracks released in 2000.

Here we go.

50. Papa Roach, “Last Resort”
If you really wanted to rage with the flame-pattern bowling shirt and wallet chain crowd, Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” was the move. The band’s breakthrough punisher, which first appeared on the Ready To Rumble film soundtrack, was easily one of rap-metal’s most ubiquitous singles, climbing all the way to No. 57 on the Hot 100 — an unthinkable run now. The song is, of course, about contemplating suicide, more pointedly, singer Jacoby Shaddix’s roommate’s suicide attempt at the time. Wildly, the song known for its bombastic guitar melody was written first on piano, bassist Tobin Esperance once said. And with well over half a billion Spotify streams, all those Chads and Travises are clearly still listening. – Bobby Olivier

49. PJ Harvey, “Good Fortune”
Listening to PJ Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea six months into a global pandemic hits differently. Across a lush tangle of guitar ballads, Harvey captures the intimacy of falling in love with and in New York City, each lyric a tender and economic ode. Ambling in short lyrical stops through Chinatown and Little Italy, lead single “Good Fortune” elegantly captures the early morning disorientation of seeing the city as if for the first time, honoring how brave it is to be present again and again. Behind Harvey’s straightforward delivery is an ecstatic longing to memorialize each moment as it happens: “Talking about / Time travel / And the meaning / And just what it was worth.” – Stefanie Fernández

48. Jill Scott, “The Way”
Somehow Jill Scott can make cooking breakfast sound rapturous: “Toast, two scrambled eggs, grits,” she sings, her voice blooming into petals of harmony on the latter word. “The Way,” the fourth single from the soul singer’s debut LP, unfolds at its own luxurious pace: clockwork hi-hat, herky-jerky electric piano, the softest of slapped bass. The groove suspends time, as Scott belts about watching the clock until a night of romance. – Ryan Reed

47. Queens of the Stone Age, “Feel Good Hit of the Summer”
Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme helped kick off the new millennium with a song that simply repeated the words “Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol – c-c-c-c-c-cocaine!” for three minutes, with metal God Rob Halford chiming in towards the end. It’s a classic trope of alternative rock to write a big catchy hook and then hide behind a tongue-in-cheek song title that playfully refers to how accessible it is (see also: R.E.M.’s “Pop Song ‘89” and the Chills’ “Heavenly Pop Hit”). But “Feel Good Hit of the Summer” was a little too dark to fulfill the prophecy of its title. It was released as the follow-up to the band’s radio breakthrough “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret,” but DJs wouldn’t touch a song where the only word that wasn’t the name of an intoxicant was “and.” – Al Shipley

46. Paulina Rubio, “Yo No Soy Esa Mujer”
From teen star to pop diva, Paulina Rubio spent the ‘80s and ‘90s largely under the thumb of another’s creative direction. But 2000’s Paulina, her fifth solo album and first with Universal Music Latin, was a sea change for the Mexican icon, who finally had complete creative control. At the time, Rubio described the record as a risk, and it more than paid off, going multi-platinum in the U.S. and Mexico. Paulina was a vast genre experiment for Rubio, from the bubbly pop-rock of “Lo Haré Por Ti” to the ranchera “El Último Adiós” to ballads like “Tal Vez Quizás” and the dance-pop “Y Yo Sigo Aquí.” While it’s impossible to narrow Paulina’s influence to any one of its singles, “Yo No Soy Esa Mujer” is a fitting, feminist mission statement from an artist who still defies expectations. – S.F.

45. Samantha Mumba, “Gotta Tell You”
With Samantha Mumba’s rich drawl and the urgency of the single’s sleek, pulsating synths, the R&B-tinged “Gotta Tell You” was destined for nightclubs — and the pop charts. “Don’t wanna tell you this now, but it wouldn’t be right,” she sings. “If I didn’t tell you this tonight.” While the track helped her find instant fame, the Irish pop singer would only release one album. This banger, though, has never been forgotten. – Ilana Kaplan

44. Beenie Man (featuring Mya), “Girls Dem Sugar”
When dancehall reached its peak of U.S. crossover success in the early 2000s, it was largely with homegrown Jamaican riddims like Diwali and the Buzz. But one notable exception was Beenie Man, whose biggest hits of the era relied on American super producers the Neptunes. “Girls Dem Sugar” was Pharrell Williams’ and Chad Hugo’s own quirky neon take on dancehall, with Williams chanting Beenie Man’s signature phrase “sim simma” in the background and R&B star Mya cooing the chorus. Yet Beenie Man’s Kingston patois is still the star of the show, and “Girls Dem Sugar” felt more like an inspired moment of international alchemy than dancehall being watered down for mass consumption. – A.S.

43. U2, “Beautiful Day” 
The title of U2’s milestone 10th album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, is symbolic, as the Irish rockers went back to the drawing board. After experimenting with electronica in the late ‘90s, the band decided to return their classic rock sound. Thus the birth of lead single “Beautiful Day,” whose uplifting messages inspire the pursuit of beauty in the grimmest moments. The song became a staple in U2’s arsenal, winning three Grammy awards (including Record of the Year) and peaking just a position shy of Billboard Hot 100’s Top 20. As the world entered a new decade surrounded by uncertainty, “Beautiful Day” was an assurance that life will remain hopeful. – Bianca Gracie

42. Steely Dan, “Cousin Dupree”
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen enjoyed filling their slick jazz-pop songs with seedy characters and unreliable narrators. And when they returned from a two-decade recording hiatus with 2000’s Two Against Nature, they put their skeeviest foot forward with a song about a couch-surfing slacker hitting on his cousin — making even the lecherous narrator of “Hey Nineteen” seem a little less scandalous by comparison. Sure, Steely Dan was cast as the stodgy, old-fashioned counterpoint to Eminem’s insurgent shock rap at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards, but only one of those albums had a lead single about an incest fantasy and it wasn’t The Marshall Mathers LP. The song inspired a more entertaining but largely facetious celebrity rivalry in 2006 when Becker and Fagen jokingly accused the Owen Wilson comedy You, Me and Dupree of ripping off their song for its title. (Wilson offered an equally sarcastic response.) – A.S.

41. Slum Village, “Climax (Girl Shit)”
“We’re trying to break the monotony and relax the stiffness of sexuality because it’s so suppressed,” Baatin told the BBC of “Climax,” an atmospheric ode to ménage à trois. “Sexuality is freedom, and we support that.” Throughout the song, a highlight from the hip-hop act’s second LP, Fantastic Vol. 2, the trio trade classy verses about the practicalities of sexual fantasy — with Baatin telling a potential lover, “Take a position in my world of compassion / Satisfaction, ecstasy.” Their requests are anchored by a near-whispered neo-soul chorus and one of Jay-Dee’s airiest beats. – R.R.

40. Fuel, “Hemorrhage (In My Hands)”
All those radio-friendly post-grunge bands like Fuel, 3 Doors Down, Puddle of Mudd and Creed were the early ‘00s version of hair metal — rock fans either embraced the trend or fucking hated it. But of all the gravel-voiced jams that flooded pop radio with Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell mimics at the time, “Hemorrhage” holds up particularly well. Deliciously named frontman Brett Scallions nails the tormented, desperate lyric penned by guitarist Carl Bell, about his grandmother’s cancer battle. And you gotta love (or hate) Bell’s hyper-processed guitar solo, which all but screams “we’re in the digital era now, damnit!” – B.O.

39. Janet Jackson, “Doesn’t Really Matter”
The late ‘90s and early ‘00s birthed some of the greatest soundtrack cuts in cinema history — with Eddie Murphy films becoming a go-to for R&B superstars. Aaliyah recorded her Timbaland-produced anthem “Are You That Somebody” for the 1998 Dr. Dolittle soundtrack — two years before Janet Jackson’s “Doesn’t Really Matter” gave fans another reason to watch The Nutty Professor II. Produced by hitmakers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, the song went from just a soundtrack song to top Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. And it still makes us nutty, nutty, nutty. – Brenton Blanchet

38. AFI, “The Days of the Phoenix” 
“I fell into yesterday / Our dreams seemed not far away,” Davey Havok snarls over Jade Puget’s steamrolling riff. The bittersweet lead single from The Art of Drowning, AFI’s first classic LP, gazes back fondly on youthful exuberance — the title is seemingly a nod to the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, California, where the gothic post-hardcore band (in their pre-Puget days) staged their first show. AFI wrote sharper hooks than “Phoenix” later on (see: every track on their commercial breakout, Sing the Sorrow) but never one that felt so pure and honest. – R.R.

37. The New Pornographers, “Mass Romantic”
Particularly in the band’s early years, every New Pornographers song was a party, a riot of feeling and euphoria. If you were fortunate enough to catch them on tour then, this was borne out live. “Mass Romantic” was and remains a wondrous exemplar of this era: a hurdy-gurdy, Technicolor sing-along essentially about itself. The band and producer David Carswell manage to cram every inch of space with blessed noise, with melodic color and sinew. Neko Case, in her introduction to a mass audience, leads a fierce Valkyrie charge that will never not pulse with vitality. – Raymond Cummings

36. New Found Glory, “Dressed To Kill”
The lovelorn pop-punk precursor to “My Friends Over You,” “Dressed To Kill” is all double-guitar funfetti and lonely-on-tour angst from singer Jordan Pundik. The track remains a mega-fan favorite and one of the band’s many seminal “easycore” tracks, which would fuel the major key breakdown trend a decade later (A Day to Remember, Four Year Strong). We have to talk about the 2000s-tastic music video featuring She’s All That star Rachael Leigh Cook, who plays the pretty girl being stalked by her suburban cul-de-sac neighbor (while NFG jams in a garage nearby). But wait, there’s a twist — she’s stalking her neighbor too! Crazy! She also inexplicably uses an old chocolate lab as a pillow around the 0:50 mark. Leave that dog alone! – B.O.

35. Shakira, “Sombra de Ti” (MTV Unplugged)
In 1999, a red-haired Shakira broke the MTV mold as the first Latina solo act to record an Unplugged concert; the 2000 album won a Grammy for Best Latin Pop Album — a rare Spanish-language success among English-speaking audiences. Recorded on the cusp of her first English-language LP, 2001’s Laundry Service, Shakira’s Unplugged performance featured 10 songs from 1998’s ¿Dónde Están Los Ladrones? and one from 1995’s Pies Descalzos; it showcased the vocalist at the height of her rockera epoch — an astonishing display of her artistry, confessional songwriting and masterful control in stretching and experimenting with a voice laid bare. “Sombra De Ti” is among the album’s quieter moments, but it lacks none of its characteristic intensity, her liquid voice lingering over heartsick lyrics in the dark, as it was written, in one of her most honest and affecting performances. – S.F.

34. Death Cab for Cutie, “Company Calls”
Bellingham’s Death Cab for Cutie emerged at the end of the ‘90s as maybe the most mild-mannered band from Washington state to gain national prominence since grunge hit. But the group, originally Ben Gibbard’s lo-fi solo project while playing guitar in Pinwheel, was still slowly transitioning into a solidified four-piece on their second album, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes. So early drummer Nathan Good only played on a couple tracks on the album before exiting the band, including the downtempo “Company Calls Epilogue.” But Gibbard handled the drums himself impressively on the preceding “Company Calls,” one of the faster songs from Death Cab 1.0 that spun their all too obvious Built to Spill influence into something leaner and wordier. – A.S.

33. Jurassic 5, “Great Expectations”
If you ever spent your time kickin’ it in front of the PS1 and shredding on Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX, hearing “Great Expectations” is likely as 2000 to you as bringing your portable CD player on a family vacation to Nickelodeon Studios. This Jurassic 5 tune from their second LP, Quality Control, has all the DJ scratching, jazz sax samples and dusty drums to round off a glorious year for rap. The alternative hip-hop crew gave 2000 the call-and-response anthem it truly needed. – B.B.

32. Nine Days, “Absolutely (Story of a Girl)”
They’ve released eight albums, but for most of the population, Nine Days might as well only have one song: “Absolutely (Story of a Girl).” Written by vocalist/guitarist John Hampson for his wife (then-girlfriend), the power-pop anthem — featured on the band’s fourth LP The Madding Crowd — was a breakthrough for the Long Island rockers. The effortlessly charming yet clichéd single balanced its sappiness (“This is the story of a girl / Who cried a river and drowned the whole world”) with irresistible hooks, earning the top spot on Billboard’s Mainstream Top 40 chart. It may have been the group’s lone hit, but “Absolutely” has earned enough airtime over the years for two. – I.K.

31. Green Day – “Warning”
The opener from Green Day’s last great album knows it has to set a certain tone. Companionable, gently sloganeering and denim-sheathed, “Warning” collages together cliches and pro-forma admonitions, locating a merry urgency in abject banality. The trio’s prior breakneck pace takes a backseat to a mid-tempo chug — a species of dad rock, to be sure. Warning itself bridges Green Day’s personal and generalist-brand eras; “Warning” teeters precariously, its enduring tensions wrestling between Billie Joe Armstrong’s blasé, calculated needling and the arrangement’s eagerness to endear, to be winningly autumnal, to retain a certain naturalism. – R.C.

30. No Doubt – “Bathwater”
With Return of Saturn, No Doubt proved its reign would be genre-bending. But “Bathwater” returned the Gwen Stefani-led group to their ska-reggae roots. Anchored by pulsating bass and thumping drums, the song flaunts a bouncy melody as the singer laments being drawn to a man who’s indifferent about her. Despite knowing about his ex-lovers, she continues to have an inexplicable affection for him, continuing to wash herself in his “old bathwater.” And the cycle persists. – I.K.

29. Destiny’s Child, “Independent Women”
The chart domination of “Independent Women” — one of only 39 songs (as of July 2020) to spend over 10 weeks at the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100  — was a literal surprise. The group’s manager (and Beyoncé’s father), Mathew Knowles, covertly submitted the song for inclusion on the Charlie’s Angels soundtrack, one year before the track (and its “Part II”) appeared on their third album, 2001’s Survivor. But the hit’s franchise framing soon became its least compelling aspect: It remains a lasting feminist manifesto to financial autonomy, the freedom to pay your own bills and the right to self-determination. – S.F.

28. Nelly Furtado, “I’m Like a Bird” 
The Mellotron, an electro-mechanical keyboard invented in England in the ‘60s, is most closely associated with prog-rock and psychedelic songs like the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever.” But the instrument’s unmistakable quivering texture made an unlikely return to the pop charts in 2000 via the faux symphonic fanfare of Canadian singer’s Nelly Furtado’s debut hit. “I’m Like a Bird” offers an earthy singer-songwriter appeal. But the groovy synth work and the bassline by Dr. Dre’s right-hand man Mike Elizondo give the song a subtle R&B bounce that foreshadowed Furtado’s later, clubbier hits with Timbaland. – A.S.

27. Blink-182, “Man Overboard”
“Man Overboard” was an odd man out during the Enema of the State sessions in 1999. The now-beloved tune wasn’t finished in time for the record and was instead tacked on as a promo single for The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back!), their subsequent live record. The rumbling track is one of Blink’s best: addictive, aggressive and full of instantly recognizable hooks, like Mark Hoppus’ opening bass riff and Tom DeLonge’s chugging guitar melody. Plus, everybody knows somebody who’s “out of line and rarely sober.” - B.O.

26. Godspeed You! Black Emperor, “Storm”
This is the dystopian future that Godspeed You! Black Emperor foretold; we’re just living in it. If 1997’s F# A# ∞ and 1999’s Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada set the pre-apocalyptic stage, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven sends a Phoenix streaking through the ruins, mourning and vengeful in equal measure. Opener “Storm” swiftly achieves a self-immolating altitude — a conservatory rupture of pealing horns, incandescent strings, thermite guitars — then dips in and out of wind currents. When these mood-ring post-rock blues do desist, it’s to roll tape on an Orwellian service station recording that remains, two decades on, capable of raising the hairs on the back of necks. – R.C.

25. Madonna, “Don’t Tell Me”
After drawing all the club kids to the neon-hued dance floor with glitzy lead single “Music,” the Queen of Unpredictability decided to take listeners…back to the ranch? In an album filled with electronica, “Don’t Tell Me” stuck out like a twangy thumb ready to hitch a hike. In true Sheryl Crow-gone-wild fashion, Madonna grabbed her trusty Stetson hat and channeled her inner cowgirl. But it wouldn’t be Madonna without some experimental elements: a CD-skip stutter effect, orchestral strings, obscure lyricism (“Tell the bed not to lay / Like the open mouth of a grave”) and homegrown country guitars that flipped the genre on its head while scoring her yet another top-five hit. – B.G.

24. Coldplay, “Shiver”
Before they became one of the biggest bands on Earth and collaborated with Rihanna and the Chainsmokers to maintain their Top 40 market share, Coldplay were just another post-Britpop band who aspired to the swooning falsetto dramatics of Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke. Released as the first single from Parachutes in the U.K. and the second single in the U.S., “Shiver” was less successful than “Yellow” in both markets but better crystallized the band’s sound at the time. The winsome melody and 6/8 gallop echo Buckley’s “Grace” and Radiohead’s “(Nice Dream)” enough to make Chris Martin’s influences transparent. But Johnny Buckland’s soaring lead guitar and Will Champion’s propulsive drums, which would get lost in the mix more and more in the band’s quest for world domination, have never sounded better than they did on “Shiver.” – A.S.

23. Smashing Pumpkins, “The Everlasting Gaze”
Wounded, dramatic and declaratory, “The Everlasting Gaze” packs a lot of punch; it had to, had to. The Smashing Pumpkins were a fallen Icarus in that moment — there’d been losses and evasions and an entire pop culture universe that spun away from their orbit since the triumph of 1995’s Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. So the guitars of Billy Corgan and James Iha are blaring and overdriven; drummer Jimmy Chamberlin lays on a mighty thwomp; and Flood produces with a crushing, mythic intensity. This is that “Zero”/“Jellybelly,” no fucks given near-metal shit; the vocals claw straight down to your soul, never letting go. – R.C.

22. Mystikal, “Shake Ya Ass”
The early ‘00s club scene would be even quieter than 2020’s without the Neptunes’ influence on airwaves. The production duo of Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams changed the pop and hip-hop landscape with an unmistakable dash of funk in everything they touched — they really cruised into the new millennium looking like Clipse’s Lord Willin’ cover. Their first triumph of 2000 was Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass,” a song that can transform any setting into a twerking triathlon. Seriously, throw this bad boy on at a Sam’s Club and try not to bust it down once that bassline hits and Mystikal demands that you show him what you’re working with. – B.B.

21. *NSYNC, “Bye Bye Bye”
Some songs are their own moments. And for *NSYNC, “Bye Bye Bye” represented freedom. The masterfully choreographed boy band’s best-selling album, No Strings Attached, followed a tedious legal battle with former management; and though the lyrics to its lead single focus on a romantic breakup, it’s hard not to interpret both titles in their historical context — as the pitch-perfect quintet cutting off their puppet strings and bidding their past farewell. “Bye Bye Bye” channeled the best of Y2K pop and gave Justin Timberlake that massive chorus to propel him into eventual ramen-hair superstardom. It’s also a reminder that JC Chasez was (and remains) a powerhouse, crushing an opening verse we still hold close to our Team JC hearts. – B.B.

20. Erykah Badu, “Bag Lady”
One of the music industry’s favorite bait-and-switch schemes peaked around the year 2000: The biggest hit from an album was often a remix that sounded completely different from the version you’d hear when you bought the physical product. On Erykah Badu’s lush, ambitious second LP, Mama’s Gun, “Bag Lady” was a slow burner with delicate snare drum rolls, electric piano and a guitar line borrowed from Dr. Dre’s “Xxplosive” interpolation of “Bumpy’s Lament” by Isaac Hayes. But the version featured in the video that pushed the song to No. 6 on the Hot 100 was “Bag Lady (Cheeba Sac Radio Edit),” which swapped out Badu’s live band arrangement for the thumping beat from the widely sampled Dr. Dre track. Eventually, Motown gave consumers what they were looking for, reissuing Mama’s Gun in 2001 with the “Bag Lady” remix as a bonus cut. – A.S.

19. Mya, “Case of the Ex” 
Mya was briefly everywhere around the turn of the century: making hits with everyone from Jay-Z to Silkk the Shocker, singing hooks for Pras and Beenie Man, joining the all-star “Lady Marmalade” remake that topped the charts in 2001. But “Case of the Ex” was the one big moment where she stood on her own, interrogating a boyfriend who’s just a little too friendly with an ex. It’s the kind of classic R&B scenario that usually makes for great ballads, but producer Tricky Stewart filled “Case of the Ex” with intricate drum patterns that primed the track for crossover success, almost a decade before he became a Billboard fixture with blockbusters like “Umbrella” and  “Single Ladies.” In the video, Mya and her friends do synchronized dance moves with big metal pipes in the middle of the desert, like they’re about to throw down in some kind of choreographed Mad Max dystopia. But “Case of the Ex” resonated because of how well its lyric dramatized the ordinary everyday jealousy and paranoia that can accompany a young relationship. – A.S.

18. Craig David, “Fill Me In” 
Everything about this R&B-dance banger feels distinctly Y2K: the staccato synth-strings, the sweet (if slightly sterile) drum programming, the goofy production techniques (the telephone EQ on “Please leave a message after tone”). But even if “Fill Me In,” the signature hit from the British singer’s debut LP, sounds a bit dated two decades later, the song itself still rips. David’s nimble rhythmic twists in the first verse are God-level: “So I went in, then we sat down, start kissing, caressing / Told me about jacuzzi, sounded interested, so we jumped right in.” – R.R.

17. Linkin Park, “In the End”
“In the End” has remained Linkin Park’s signature song for two decades. Fusing hard rock riffs, rapped verses and ballad-level introspection, “In the End” — the final single off Linkin Park’s 2000 debut, Hybrid Theory — helped set the group apart from the Limp Bizkits of the early aughts. The enchanting piano line opens the track before erupting into an explosive, existential chorus rooted in defeat. “I tried so hard and got so far / But in the end, it doesn’t even matter,” singer Chester Bennington screams in raw angst. And Bennington did get far: “In the End” is an integral part of the band’s legacy. – I.K.

16. Dashboard Confessional, “Screaming Infidelities”
At the turn of the century, Dashboard Confessional played a key role in the progression of emo with the slow-burning heartbreak anthem “Screaming Infidelities.” Released on the band’s independent debut, The Swiss Army Romance, the tearjerker put a vulnerable lens on a relationship’s demise from unfaithfulness. Despite the fallout, singer Chris Carrabba can’t help but find reminders all around: “Your hair is everywhere / Screaming infidelities, and taking its wear.” The piercing chorus wail lives on as a fan-favorite sing-along for a reason. – I.K.

15. Sunny Day Real Estate, “One”
By Y2K, Sunny Day Real Estate were no longer the emo darlings of their 1994 debut, Diary. The band’s trajectory in the six years between is the stuff of lore: the spiritual epiphany of frontman Jeremy Enigk, the lineup’s initial collapse and (partial) reunion, the gradual sonic evolution that crescendoed with their sadly underrated swan song, The Rising Tide. The album’s lush, symphonic sound and philosophical lyrics alienated the OG fans (and many critics) who clearly craved the basement-fidelity angst of “Seven” and “In Circles.” But Enigk’s songwriting blossomed on this grander scale, epitomized by the record’s sole single, “One.” Like their early work, it’s driven by the entangled distortion of Enigk and Dan Hoerner, with William Goldsmith’s fluid, lyrical drumming — full of articulate tom flourishes and swooshing open hi-hats — the not-so-secret MVP. But like many Rising Tide cuts, “One”’s earnest melodies and startling dynamic shifts approach a prog-like level of sophistication. – R.R.

14. Lifehouse, “Hanging By A Moment”
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there were 71.8 million family households in America — and all of them contained at least one Lifehouse fan. Your mom, dad, little sister, guinea pig — there was someone who couldn’t get enough of “Hanging By A Moment,” one of the alt-rock wave’s biggest hits. The bounding jam, which frontman Jason Wade has said was written in roughly 10 minutes, climbed all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, fueled by massive crossover play on pop, rock and adult contemporary radio. Everybody loves a chorus, and Wade credits the simple melody, which he accurately describes as “almost nursery rhyme-ish,” as the key to the song’s success. But lest we forget that deep, opening note — not a cello but a bow drawn across an upright bass — which feels like an exhale and sets the tone for one of the greatest radio rock earworms of the last 20 years. – B.O.

13. Jay-Z, “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)”
The ‘90s was the Decade of Jay-Z, with the Brooklyn native showing the world why he was the dopest rapper in the game. But during that time, he didn’t really have a mainstream hit (save for 1998’s “Hard Knock Life”) in his back pocket. So who do rappers call when they want to cross over? The Neptunes, of course. “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me),” the production duo’s first collaboration with Jay-Z, found Hov at his most playful, spitting about quintessential Y2K items: Chloe glasses, Cristal and two-way Motorola pagers. The infectious song was topped with Pharrell’s signature falsetto that still has everyone “in the club, high, singing off-key” to this day. – B.G.

12. A Perfect Circle, “Judith” 
They had us at “fuck your God!” Named for Maynard James Keenan’s mother, “Judith” was the world’s explosive introduction to A Perfect Circle, a side-project that sounded a lot like Tool, only loaded with more digestible melodies and studio polish. The lead single from 2000’s dare we say, pretty, debut LP, Mer de Noms, played not unlike Tool’s breakthrough “Sober” — with a big, fat guitar riff and Keenan’s patently brooding lyricism, exploring his mother’s religious devotion even as her health deteriorated. The tune was also a major respite for Tool fans who’d been drooling since ‘96’s Ænima melted their brains. – B.O.

11. Nelly, “Country Grammar (Hot Shit)”
By the end of the ’90s, virtually every platinum-level rapper hailed from one of a few major cities with storied hip-hop scenes. Then Cornell Haynes stormed out of Missouri at the dawn of the new millennium and his debut album sold 10 million copies. Jason “Jay E” Epperson, a producer from Nelly’s hometown of St. Louis, gave “Country Grammar” such a bright, bubbly backing track that people almost didn’t notice that Nelly was rapping about a drive-by shooting and passing a joint. There were already plenty of vocalists who alternated between melodic vocals and staccato rhymes before Nelly, but Nelly’s sing-song flow bridged the gap between the Bone Thugs-n-Harmony era and the Drake era, helping break down the distinction between singing and rapping for good. – A.S.

10. Britney Spears, “Oops!…I Did It Again”
It’s impossible to think about “Oops!…I Did It Again” without recalling its companion music video: the red, latex bodysuit; the Moon Man, Titanic’s Heart of the Ocean jewel — oh my! Britney Spears’ early singles often explored doomed romances. But with “Oops!” she was back in control as the heartbreaker, not the heartbroken. The song was a cultural reset — and with its killer pop hooks and flirtatious chorus, it earned Spears her third Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. Spears may have broken some hearts then, but it didn’t stop them from coming back for more. – I.K.

9. At the Drive-In, “One Armed Scissor”
“One Armed Scissor” moves like a rickety carnival roller coaster — at any moment it might fall apart and send you to hell — and that’s part of the thrill! The lead single from Relationship of Command, one of the most revered alternative records of the last 20 years, “Scissor” has become something of a mythic cut, especially since the band broke up only months after the manic track earned ATDI their first real radio airplay. Sharing its name with the Canadian version of a vodka/Red Bull and loaded with dense, vaguely digital lines (“A neutered is the vastness / Hollow vacuum, check the oxygen tanks”), it’s one of many Command songs that’s been key in post-hardcore’s development over the last two decades. Title Fight, Touché Amoré, La Dispute and a million more don’t exist — at least not in the same way — without Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Omar Rodríguez-López and Jim Ward. – B.O.

8. Modest Mouse, “3rd Planet”
Modest Mouse’s first major-label album, The Moon & Antarctica, had many fans worried that the band might sound too polished. Instead, the record preserved all their weirdness and recklessness, distilling that essence in moments of aching abandon and quiet restraint alike across songs about human life, death, the universe and all of its cold darkness. “3rd Planet” opens the record with its thesis: “Everything that keeps me together is falling apart / I’ve got this thing that I consider my only art of fucking people over.” In each of its movements, it marches through cycles of planetary evolution and personal tragedy, each event at the beginning or end of a world landing without resolution. It’s the record’s first question of the human desire to keep manufacturing meaning after world-altering change and grief, marveling at the mechanisms by which it continues to lurch forward thereafter. – S.F.

7. Deftones, “Change (In the House of Flies)”
Chino Moreno watches someone turn into a fly, captures them, takes them home, pulls off their wings, laughs about it, and then hands the wingless fly a gun — a very small gun, surely — to blow him away. The metaphor is obvious, right? Okay, fine, the lyrics to “Change” can mean almost anything (and Moreno has said as much), but the assailing, hypnotic single — Deftones’ highest-charting track ever — remains a cornerstone of the dream-metal giants’ mesmerizing catalog. If 1997’s Around The Fur didn’t sell you on Deftones as a band that would transcend the nü-metal craze and maintain rock relevance into 2020, its accompanying LP, White Pony, should’ve done the job. – B.O.

6. Aaliyah, “Try Again”
By the turn of the decade, Aaliyah had elevated from R&B singer to budding movie star. And she brought Timbaland — her lucky music charm — along for the ride. The result was “Try Again,” the Grammy-nominated lead single from the soundtrack of Romeo Must Die (in which she also starred). When Timbaland declares, “It’s been a long time, we shouldn’t have left you / Without a dope beat to step to” on the Rakim-interpolating opening seconds, he isn’t playing around. The anthemic lyrics, Aaliyah’s effortless cool factor and Timbaland’s fuzzy, acid house-inspired synths propelled “Try Again” to their first Hot 100 chart-topper. If not for her tragic death just a year later, we could only envision her earning more. – B.G.

5. Common, “The Light”
While most rappers were flaunting their tough-guy status, Common opted to test the decade’s emerging new sound with the heartwarming “The Light,” the second single from his fourth album, Like Water for Chocolate. The Bobby Caldwell-sampling neo-soul track reads more like a poetry slam than a classic rap song, which makes sense as Common wanted to tribute his then-girlfriend Erykah Badu. “The Light” has even grown into a passing of the rap romance torch, with Jay-Z adapting the classic opening lines (“I never knew a luh, luh-luh, a love like this / Gotta be somethin’ for me to write this / Queen, I ain’t seen you in a minute”) for 2018’s Everything Is Love’s “713” — a lovestruck duet with his soulmate, Beyoncé. - B.G.

4. D’Angelo, “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”
As bubblegum pop and rambunctious nü-metal fought to take over the millennium, an innovative new sound was emerging: neo-soul. And D’Angelo was the leader of the pack. “Untitled,” the hit single from his sophomore album Voodoo, dared to explore what was occurring on the opposite side of the bedroom door. In the spirit of Prince, the song mimics the art of lovemaking: starting off sensual and measured before ending in a wailing climax. But one cannot discuss “Untitled” without mentioning the video, whose intimate close-ups revealing a chiseled (and very nude) D’Angelo propelled him to sex icon status. The legacy of “Untitled” has strengthened since its inception, as seen with Beyoncé’s “Rocket” in 2013, Miguel’s effortless sensuality and the entirety of Justin Timberlake’s falsetto range. Call it the power of the pelvis. – B.G.

3. Radiohead, “Everything in Its Right Place”
A windswept sonic cathedral of Prophet-5 synthesizer chords, “Everything In Its Right Place” presents an intriguing duality. The music’s effect is both an embrace and a smothering, a swirling balm, a fluorescent prison. Thom Yorke’s processed, mantra-like vocals deepen this impression; from moment to moment, he’s adrift in an inescapable tortured despair or ecstatic in a half-sarcastic way. Yorke’s emotions seem beamed in from a different, worse dimension — a reality not dissimilar to ours, corroded and cybernetic, alluring, damned. – R.C.

2. Eminem, “Stan”
By May 2000, Eminem was well on his way to becoming the world’s most popular rapper. That doesn’t mean he was happy about it. While The Marshall Mathers LP’s first single, “The Real Slim Shady,” entered the pop culture lexicon for Em’s rapid-fire delivery, mocking pop songs and noteworthy (hilarious in hindsight) celebrities of the time, another cut ended up having a more permanent impact: “Stan” — a heavy song about the perils of diehard fandom, with a somber beat that samples Dido’s “Thank You” — was a wicked curveball. From its gradual build, intense storyline and surprising twist, the track showcased Eminem’s lyrical depth, proving he was much more than just a shock rapper. If only fans of today listened to the message of that cautionary tale. – Daniel Kohn

1. Outkast, “B.O.B.”
In five minutes, OutKast managed to squeeze in every ounce of mania the world felt at the unpredictable start of Y2K. For a song boldly titled “B.O.B.” (or “Bombs Over Baghdad”), it begins suspiciously unassuming before Andre 3000 counts down to a sonic whiplash. He and Big Boi rap with a head-spinning fervor that the beat, filled with thunderous gospel cries and a wailing electric guitar a la Jimi Hendrix, runs to catch up with. The pair didn’t intend for the song as a political statement: “Baghdad” was meant to mimic the ghettoes of their native Atlanta. But as 2003 approached, “B.O.B.” transformed into a battle cry against the Iraq War — and a middle finger to then-President Bush’s administrative reign. And with the November election looming over our heads, it might just be time to resurrect “B.O.B.” as our 2020 anthem. – B.G.

In this most fractious of election years, when artists are lambasting politicians for using their songs, Eminem has endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden by allowing his 2002 classic “Lose Yourself” to be used in a new 45-second Biden campaign ad.

Released the day before the election (Nov. 2), Em tweeted his support for the Democratic candidate by sharing the video featuring the track — which includes footage of Biden at a rally in Michigan, along with black-and-white footage of voters — with the caption “One opportunity… #Vote”

See the video below.

As part of our 35th-anniversary, we’re naming the most influential artists of the past 35 years. Today, we’re at #25. From Detroit, Michigan here is Eminem.

Credit: J. Shearer/WireImage

Marshall Mathers. Slim Shady. Eminem. An unholy trinity embodied by the blonde-haired, blue-eyed best-selling solo rapper of all time.

For better or worse, Eminem kicked the door in for white rappers at the dawn of the millennium. After critics investigated and Jim Carrey eviscerated Vanilla Ice, Eminem battled to the top of every doubting cipher from Detroit to L.A. When Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine discovered him, he took the antagonism, shock, comedy and verbal dexterity of battle rap and made it commercial. His Aftermath debut, The Slim Shady LP, and its darker, horrorcore-leaning sequel, The Marshall Mathers LP, documented the plight of lower-class whites and poked at some of America’s ugliest scabs: homicide, rape, child and domestic abuse, opiate addiction. He aimed his vitriol at pop artists, fans and critics. The lines between sincerity, commentary and puerile jokes were blurred by design. Whether critics stanned or misunderstood, the lyrics landed for millions of suburban teens whose new favorite artists terrified their mothers.

None of the misogyny, homophobia or suggested homicide would’ve passed if Eminem weren’t immeasurably gifted. He rapped with gymnastic flare, syllabically interlocking entire phrases for multiple lines like flips in a floor routine. He penned rap’s Misery with “Stan,” a narrative so powerful the titular character became an adjective for obsessive fans. After The Eminem Show, each subsequent Eminem album suffered from progressively cringe-worthy attempts at the comedic and subversive. There were more overtly political songs and those that re-examined a past that he’d covered at length. Still, his stature rose in conjunction with his influence. All but two of his 11 LPs are platinum (the other two are gold), and you can see his shadow on early work by everyone from Tyler, the Creator to Kendrick Lamar. Even though he raps more rigidly than he once did, Eminem continues to expand the genre’s linguistic possibilities