The 1990s Arts and Entertainment: Topics in the News

ARTS AND POLITICS: CONTROVERSY AND CUTBACKS

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), an independent federal government agency created by the U.S. Congress in 1965, provides grants to artists, museums, and galleries to encourage promising artists who are unlikely to attract large audiences or private funding. In the late 1980s, controversy erupted in Congress over the NEA's support for certain artists, particularly photographers Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe, whose works some people found obscene or immoral. For months, certain members of Congress, led by Senator Jesse Helms from North Carolina, heavily criticized the NEA for funding such art with taxpayers' money.

In the fall of 1989, when Congress passed the annual appropriations bill determining how much money the NEA would receive from the federal government, it specified that no NEA funding could be used to promote or produce art that may be considered obscene. When Congress passed the next annual funding bill in December 1990, it specified that obscenity should be defined in accordance with community standards of decency and that artists whose work was judged obscene must return their NEA grant money.

In the midst of the debate surrounding the NEA, an exhibit of photographs by Mapplethorpe toured several cities, where it was shown without incident. When it reached the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in Cincinnati on April 7, 1990, however, the Hamilton County sheriff's department shut down the museum. The CAC and its director, Dennis Barrie, were subsequently prosecuted on obscenity charges. On October 5, they were found not guilty.

While arts supporters were applauding the court decision in Cincinnati as a victory for freedom of expression, a long battle over NEA funding was brewing. When the controversial performance artists Holly Hughes, John Fleck, Tim Miller, and Karen Finley (all of whom had previously received small NEA grants) applied for new NEA funding, they were recommended for grants by an initial screening panel. The director of the NEA, however, vetoed funding for the four artists because of the nature of their work. In turn, the four artists sued the NEA, arguing that the new NEA standards, among other things, represented an effort to limit freedom of expression. Finley's suit went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In June 1998, the Court ruled that the NEA could indeed consider general standards of decency when making grants. The refusal to fund Finley's work did not limit her freedom to create, the Court stated.

Throughout the 1990s, the NEA suffered from budget cuts. In 1996, Congress slashed NEA funding even further, eliminating fellowships for all artists except folk artists, jazz musicians, and writers. It also cut off funding to theaters and museums. Artists faced other financial challenges later in the decade when large corporations, which had relied on the NEA to indicate artists worthy of financing, decided to withhold money they previously had offered in support of the arts.

FILMS: VIOLENCE, POLITICS, AND HISTORY

In the movies of the 1990s, violence was more prevalent and graphic than ever before, and it seemed to be celebrated in a deliberately enticing manner. Many educators, politicians, and even some filmmakers expressed concerns about a possible connection between violence on the screen and increasing violent behavior in schools and on the streets. Director Oliver Stone's 1994 film, Natural Born Killers, in which a pair of criminals go on a murder spree in order to become famous, was intended to depict American society's obsession with violence and celebrity. After the film's release, however, teenaged murderers around the world claimed to have been inspired by the movie. Social critics pointed out that the staging of the April 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado was similar to those in The Basketball Diaries (1995), a film in which a trench-coat-clad young man with a machine gun attacks people who had mocked him.

One of the most critically acclaimed movies of 1994 seemed to raise the threshold of acceptable screen violence. Director Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction was an outrageous comedy filled with profanity, senseless shootings and stabbings, and drug overdoses. The movie contained one explicitly violent scene after another, designed to shock unsuspecting audiences. Tarantino conceived the movie as a tribute to pulp magazine stories from the 1930s and 1940s about hard-boiled detectives who survive in an amoral world by being as tough and ruthless as the criminals they are trying to defeat. While some film critics took Tarantino to task for the film's violence, many others praised the movie's artistry.

By the mid-1990s, politicians had begun to target movie violence, attacking the entertainment industry in the process. The U.S. Congress proposed various bills: to ban sales of violent materials to minors, to require the entertainment industry to label violent products with government-approved warnings, and to keep filmmakers from using federal property as a setting for violent purposes. Critics of such legislation pointed out that these measures might appeal to voters but would have very little impact on the movie industry.

Top Films of 1990s

While the federal government was trying to regulate the movie industry, certain filmmakers were creating movies that depicted American politics in a negative light. Foremost among these was director Oliver Stone. In 1991, he released JFK, a $40 million movie that revived conspiracy theories about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1917–1963). The movie proposed that various financial and government leaders conspired to assassinate Kennedy because he was planning to pull U.S. troops out of the Vietnam War (1954–75). Stone combined computer animation with real news footage in the film, which prompted some journalists and historians to express concerns that viewers might confuse fact and fiction. Stone's follow-up film, Nixon (1995), raised further worries about the director manipulating historical truths to fit his artistic purposes.

Not all 1990s movies were cynical about American politics and history. Forrest Gump, one of the most popular movies of 1994, starred Tom Hanks as an intellectually impaired man who participates in every major event in American history over four decades. Critics praised the movie, pointing out that its real theme is Forrest Gump's life-affirming power to transform the lives of those around him.

Popular director Steven Spielberg made two critically acclaimed films in the 1990s with positive portrayals of American and world historical events. In 1993, he released Schindler's List, a fictionalized account of a real-life incident that occurred in Germany during World War II (1939–45). An opportunistic, amoral German businessman named Oskar Schindler has a change of heart, saving thousands of Jewish slave laborers at his factory from extermination by the Nazis. Many critics claimed the grainy black-and-white movie was the best film of the decade. Spielberg later returned to the World War II theme with Saving Private Ryan (1998). The film paid tribute to American soldiers who fought and died in the pivotal D-Day invasion of the beaches of Normandy, France, in June 1944.

TALK RADIO: FROM CONSERVATIVES TO SHOCK JOCKS

Throughout the last few decades of the twentieth century, conservative politicians, religious leaders, and other public figures often claimed that the American media (newspapers, television, radio) were controlled by liberals. (Conservatives, usually members of the Republican Party, favor preserving traditional values and customs. They oppose any sudden shift in the balance of power, and they believe that the federal government should have limited control over and involvement in the lives of average Americans. On the other hand, liberals, often belonging to the Democratic Party, favor a stronger central government. They support political reforms that try to extend democracy and civil rights fairly to all citizens and distribute wealth more evenly.) In the 1990s however, despite their complaints about the liberal media, conservatives found themselves in control of one particular medium: talk radio.

By the middle of the decade, talk radio had become the second most common radio format in the nation after country music. The number of talk stations exploded to one thousand, up from two hundred only ten years before. Many media critics believed most conservative radio talk-show hosts became popular because they were not afraid to offend people; they attacked topics as varied as feminism, welfare, gun control, and the president of the United States.

The most popular conservative radio talk-show host of the 1990s was Rush Limbaugh, whose three-hour show was heard daily by twenty million listeners. His derogatory on-air comments frequently targeted women, the poor, and minorities. Limbaugh's willingness to criticize liberals, sometimes completely disregarding the facts, nevertheless earned him a devoted following, who agreed with his views. Many of his loyal listeners were white, working-class males who felt threatened by increasing economic and social empowerment of women and minorities. Limbaugh's inflammatory comments angered organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW) and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). After he constantly attacked feminists, referring to them as "femi-Nazis," NOW began a campaign to encourage advertisers to pull their spots from his show. FAIR released a report documenting the misinformation in many of Limbaugh's comments. For example, he contended that volcanoes did more to harm the protective ozone layer in Earth's atmosphere than human-produced chemicals, contrary to the views of hundreds of scientists around the world.

Another talk-show host who shared Limbaugh's views of feminism and the women's movement was Laura Schlessinger. Her three-hour daily radio talk show drew twenty million listeners, making her the second most popular talk-show host during the decade. Schlessinger, who had earned a doctorate degree in physiology and a license in marriage and family therapy, offered blunt advice to callers from all over the nation. Like Limbaugh's, many of Schlessinger's views were offensive to some people, especially her belief that women were not oppressed in modern American society.

The third leading radio host of the 1990s was the self-proclaimed "King of All Media," Howard Stern. Foul-mouthed and offensive, he was the best-known of the so-called "shock jocks." For using indecent and sexually graphic speech on the air, Stern was fined more than two million dollars during the decade by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). A 1997 Gallup Poll found that although 90 percent of Americans had heard of Stern, 75 percent of those polled held an unfavorable opinion of him—especially women, older people, and college graduates. In 1998, Stern began hosting a nightly television show on E! Entertainment Television, which carried an MA (mature audiences) rating for its lewd content. Critics almost universally denounced the show, calling it a new low in television trash

The radio talk shows of the 1990s relied more on passion than substance. Though widely popular, conservative hosts seemed more concerned with attracting a loyal audience than discussing real issues. The tone of their shows was often mean-spirited and sometimes downright vicious. Nonetheless, talk radio seemed to provide a forum for some Americans to have their say—or at least to have someone say it for them.

SHOCKUMENTARY: TV TALK SHOWS AND REALITY TV

Howard Stern's shocking behavior on his radio talk show was rivaled by participants on 1990s daytime television talk shows. Guests voluntarily appeared on these shows to air grievances, reveal secrets, or reunite with mysterious people from their pasts. According to many talk show guests, producers often tried to whip them into an emotional frenzy before they went on the air. The resulting dramatic outbursts proved entertaining for audiences and increased ratings for hosts such as Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer. For some, the tactic had deadly results: A guest on Jenny Jones who revealed his secret same-sex crush on another male on the show was later murdered by that man.

As the 1990s began, longtime talk-show host Phil Donahue led in the ratings, followed closely by Geraldo Rivera, Sally Jesse Raphael, and Oprah Winfrey. Donahue and Winfrey, in particular, promoted shows dealing with information and interpersonal relationships, encouraging viewers to improve themselves. Winfrey went even further, focusing on personal empowerment, social activism, and book discussions.

Cameras in the Courtrooms

In the 1990s, the American appetite for "real" television grew. In addition to watching the many "shockumentaries" that broadcast everything from police chases to animal attacks, Americans began to tune in to courtroom television. Two types experienced increasing popularity throughout the decade: televised coverage of criminal trials and shows starring theatrical judges who generally heard civil cases.

In 1981, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that television camera crews could film a criminal trial providing they did not violate the defendant's rights. Following that ruling, courtrooms across the nation began to welcome television cameras. By the 1990s, almost every state allowed them into some judicial proceedings and about two-thirds freely allowed them into trial courts at the judge's discretion.

The 1995 O. J. Simpson case, however, led to a rethinking of the impact of courtroom cameras. Simpson, the former football star, was charged with murdering his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Several news networks, including CNN, broadcast the murder trial live. Legal experts thought Judge Lance Ito did not handle his courtroom very well, and the cameras allowed the world to view the spectacle. Following the not-guilty verdict, many people blamed television coverage for influencing the trial's outcome, and many judges began to reconsider allowing cameras in their courtrooms.

Because of access to many courtrooms and rising public interest in the American judicial system, Steven Brill launched the Courtroom Television Network (Court TV) in July 1991. Highly successful from its inception, Court TV aired several high-profile cases during the decade, including the 1994 trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez, two Beverly Hills brothers accused of murdering their parents.

Real-life television courtroom trials began with Divorce Court, which ran from 1957 to 1969 and again from 1986 to 1991. Its popularity was eclipsed by Judge Joseph A. Wapner's The People's Court, which aired from 1981 to 1993. Following Wapner's success, other court shows took to the air. Judge Judy Sheindlin, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Greg Mathis, and Judge Mills Lane all handed out justice on their own daytime programs.

All of that changed quickly in the early 1990s when the number of talk shows multiplied greatly. When hosts such as Maury Povich, Montel Williams, and Jenny Jones hit the airwaves in 1991, Jerry Springer in 1992, and Leeza Gibbons and Ricki Lake in 1993, trash TV emerged to dominate daytime television. While the earlier talk shows had not shied away from controversy, these newcomers added an element of confrontation, and suddenly screaming matches and fistfights became commonplace. With topics such as "Woman in love with a serial killer" and "Girlfriend, I slept with your man and I'll do it again," these shows played to whooping, cheering audiences. Along with the hosts and producers, the studio audiences encouraged the guests to sling mud at each other, with tempers flaring. In fact, the confrontation format was so successful that in February 1998 the Jerry Springer show nudged Oprah out of the numberone slot for the first time since 1987.

Quite often, talk-show producers' recruiting practices could be somewhat deceptive; many guests left the shows feeling they had been set up to be humiliated. In March 1995, producers invited Jonathon Schmitz to appear on the Jenny Jones show to meet a secret admirer. They chose not to tell Schmitz that his secret admirer was a man. Fellow guest Scott Amedure revealed his secret crush on Schmitz on national television. Three days after the show was videotaped, an angry and mortified Schmitz went to Amedure's home and killed him with two shotgun blasts.

Attempts to reform daytime television began soon after this tragic event. The Rosie O'Donnell Show, which debuted in June 1996, was the first of several new more wholesome, less confrontational talk shows. In 1997, journalist Barbara Walters launched The View, a daytime show hosted by a group of women discussing everyday issues. The impact of these and other shows was widely felt in the industry. Geraldo Rivera cleaned up his act and left his talk show in 1998, moving on to NBC News. Even Springer agreed to eliminate his show's foul language and fistfights. His ratings then promptly slipped 17 percent, allowing Oprah to regain the number-one spot.

While daytime television was cleaning up its act, the ratings winners on 1990s evening television were "shockumentaries," a form of realitybased television showcasing shocking, violent, and gory footage of everything from police shootouts to unbelievably large tumors to natural disasters. They were inexpensive to produce and drew large numbers of viewers.

The shockumentary trend began in 1995 when the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) aired World's Most Dangerous Animals, but the Fox network perfected this brand of television show with When Animals Attack. In fact, the second installation of this show was so successful that Fox ran it twice during the November 1996 rating sweeps period (a period during which the networks measure ratings to determine future advertising rates).

Top Television Shows of the 1990s

One of the most successful reality-based programs, first aired in 1989, had broadcast more than four hundred episodes by the end of 1999. COPS, shown on Fox, showed real-life law enforcement officers chasing suspects, intervening in domestic disputes, and apprehending alleged murderers. The show was nominated for four Emmy awards and won its time slot during the 1998 May sweeps. At the end of the decade, COPS was one of the longest-running programs on television, joining the ranks of the television newsmagazines 60 Minutes, 20/20, and 48 Hours.

The V-Chip

With ever-increasing violence shown television in the 1990s, parents and politicians became concerned about children's access to violent programming. As early as 1992, the technical standards for a "violence chip" (V-Chip), which could provide parents with a way to block particular television programs, were discussed at meetings of the Electronic Industries Association.

Included in the electronics of a television, the V-Chip reads information encoded in a rated program and blocks programs based on a parent's selections. In 1992, broadcasters vetoed the V-Chip, afraid it might limit audiences and advertising revenue. Two years later, however, the industry group agreed to begin including the device in more expensive televisions.

The U.S. Congress and President Bill Clinton recognized the need to provide parents with technology to help them control programming in their homes. In 1996, Congress passed and the president signed the Telecommunications Reform Act. Among other things, the act called for a V-Chip to be installed in every new television set. In response to this legislation, the television industry in 1997 submitted a voluntary system of parental guidelines for rating television programs to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for review. In March 1998, the FCC approved the rating system and adopted technical requirements for the V-Chip.

According to the FCC's requirements, all television sets with picture screens thirteen inches or larger must be equipped with the V-Chip. Half of all televisions manufactured after July 1, 1999, were required to carry the V-Chip, and all thirteen-inch or larger sets made after January 1, 2000, had to meet this requirement.

While COPS was an innovator in reality-based television, its images of police experiences were mild compared to the shock specials popular in the middle of the decade. Shows with titles such as World's Deadliest Swarms, When Stunts Go Bad, Cheating Death: Catastrophes Caught on Tape, and World's Scariest Police Shootouts, featured extremely violent and gory content. Some television critics chided the networks for televising such shows, but others believed the specials depicted the same violence shown every day on local news programs. Despite the debate, shockumentaries continued to be highly successful at the close of the 1990s.

LITERATURE: READING GROUPS AND SUPERSTARS

Though critics bemoaned the declining quality of books, reading became more popular in the 1990s than it had been in decades. By 1999, there were approximately five hundred thousand readers' book clubs in the United States, nearly double the number that existed in 1994. The book club formed in 1996 by popular daytime television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey accelerated the trend, but the popularity of book clubs had begun to soar even earlier.

Meeting in libraries, bookstores, and private homes, book clubs attracted readers of all ages and in all regions of the country, appealing to a wide variety of literary tastes. Some were devoted to mysteries or romances; others focused on classic or contemporary fiction, biography, science fiction, history, or books dealing with social issues. Children's reading groups became especially popular. A survey conducted by Publishers' Weekly magazine in 1998 indicated that 78 percent of teenagers thought reading was a "cool thing to do," while 86 percent said that they read "for fun." Sixty percent of teenagers who read on a regular basis believed that they were smarter than their peers who did not. People also joined reading clubs for reasons other than their love of books. For many, membership in a reading club provided an opportunity to discuss something besides work and family and to express their ideas to others.

When Oprah Winfrey started a book club, no one, perhaps not even Winfrey, expected her book selections to influence book buyers. But viewers trusted her choices, and Oprah's Book Club became a national phenomenon. Books she recommended became immediate best-sellers. She transformed unknown writers into national names and introduced well-known authors to whole new audiences. A recommendation by Winfrey meant that book would sell hundreds of thousands of copies. In December 1996, after Winfrey selected Toni Morrison's 1977 novel, Song of Solomon, as the second book-club offering, one million copies of the novel were sold. In fact, Morrison experienced more commercial success as a result of Winfrey's selection than she had after she won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

In choosing books by new writers as well as by established ones, Win-frey was guided by her own tastes. Her wide-ranging selections included

Toni Morrison and the Nobel Prize

Over her long career as a writer, Toni Morrison has used poetic language in an unflinching examination of gender conflicts, race relations, and other aspects of American society. When she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, she became the first American woman to receive the prestigious award since Pearl Buck in 1938. Perhaps more noteworthy, she became the first African American woman ever to be so honored.

The Nobel Foundation is a private institution founded in 1900 based on the last will and testament of Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel (1833–1896). Each year since then, the foundation has given awards—the Nobel Prizes—to individuals for their accomplishments in the fields of chemistry, literature, peace, physics, and physiology or medicine. In 1969, the foundation added an award in the field of economics.

Generally, the foundation awards the Nobel Prize for Literature to a writer whose body of work merits attention. In doing so, the foundation may cite one or more of the writer's works that are especially outstanding.

In its press release announcing the awarding of a Nobel Prize to Morrison, the foundation stated that "Morrison is a literary artist of the first rank. She delves into the language itself, a language she wants to liberate from the fetters of race. And she addresses us with the lustre of poetry." In particular, the foundation cited Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977), a complex study of black family life and the search for love and meaning in family history, and Beloved (1987), a mesmerizing story about the legacy of slavery.

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novels that dealt with disabled children, missing persons, bitter divorces, the ties that bind in a black community, and responsibility in the death of a child. Some critics denounced the selections as sentimental, unnecessarily graphic, or sexist. For members of her book club, however, Winfrey's taste in reading material was on the mark: It resembled their own.

The general literary taste of the American public created a few publishing superstars in the 1990s. Horror-fiction writer Stephen King, a one-man best-seller factory throughout the 1980s, continued to turn out hits at the beginning of the 1990s. However, he was soon eclipsed at the top of the charts by lawyer-turned-novelist John Grisham, who transformed the legal thriller into a best-selling phenomenon. Beginning in mid-decade, he dominated the publishing world. His books spent unprecedented weeks—and months—on best-seller lists, numbered more than sixty million copies in print across the world, and were translated into thirty-one languages. A number of his works in the decade also were adapted into popular films.

Best-selling Fiction of the 1990s

Another publishing phenomenon in the 1990s was The Bridges of Madison County. Written over a two-week period by Robert James Waller, the novel focused on the fateful union of Robert Kincaid, a free-spirited, wandering photographer, and Francesca Johnson, a war bride living on an Iowa farm far from her native Italy. Literary critics panned the 1992 book but American public loved it. It remained on the best-seller lists for well over a year and broke many sales records. In 1995, the novel was adapted into a Steven Spielberg film starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood.

GRUNGE, GANSTA RAP, A LATINO RESURGENCE, AND A DIVA FOR THE DECADE

A new form of rock music—grunge—arose in the 1990s, combining elements of punk rock and heavy metal. Characterized by distorted guitar sounds and lyrics of despair, grunge emerged from the Seattle, Washington, music scene where it had been popular for most of the 1980s. Grunge musicians thought of themselves as authentic street rockers, not as a bunch of packaged bands hyped by prominent producers. The bands that succeeded, however, did so because they signed contracts with major record labels, leaving behind other local talent.

Harry Potter

During 1999, thousands of young children proudly displayed tattoos in the shape of a purple lightning bolt on their foreheads. Many adults were puzzled. For those in the know, however, the temporary tattoos indicated that these kids were fans of the young, wizard-in-training Harry Potter. The fictional character and his magical adventures, the creation of English author J. K. Rowling, captivated readers young and old.

Three books, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (1998), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1999), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999), racked up record-breaking sales in the United Kingdom and the United States. The books also earned the distinction as one of the few children's books ever to crack the adult best-sellers list, remaining on the New York Times best-sellers' list for more than thirty-eight weeks.

By the fall of 1999, more than 7.5 million volumes were in print, translated into twenty-eight languages, with more than 650,000 lightning-bolt tattoos also being sold at local bookstores across the country.

As the next decade and new century began, Rowling continued to publish further adventures of Harry Potter, and the frenzy over the novels continued. In 2001, a film adaptation of the first novel was released, bringing the Harry Potter sensation to movie screens worldwide.

The record company most responsible for introducing grunge to a national audience was Seattle-based Sub Pop Records, which signed bands such as Green River, Soundgarden, Blood Circus, Swallow, Nirvana, and

TAD. These bands, along with Mudhoney, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, and Pearl Jam, quickly brought a much-needed end to the tired, dated sound of mainstream rock that had dominated the 1980s.

The best-known of the grunge bands was Nirvana, formed in 1986 in Olympia, Washington, by Kurt Cobain and Kris Novoselic, who had played together in other groups. In 1988, they signed a record deal with Sub Pop Records and released the single "Love Buzz." The band's first album, Bleach, was released in the following year. It was unpolished, but Cobain was already demonstrating his melodic and lyrical creativity. By 1991 Nirvana had parted company with Sub Pop and signed with Geffen, through which the band released its second album, Nevermind. From the moment the first copies of the first single from the album, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," went out to radio, the excitement started growing. By the time the first reviews of Nevermind appeared in the music press, Nirvana was already on its way. Three months after its release, the album reached number one.

Soon after, the band performed on Saturday Night Live and recorded an acoustic session for the MTV Unplugged series. In 1993, Nirvana released In Utero, which many critics thought was an even stronger record than Nevermind. Despite such success, Kurt Cobain was consumed by an addiction to heroin. He nearly overdosed on a sedative in Rome in early 1994, and in April of that year, he shot and killed himself in his garage. His death ended the life of Nirvana as well. The other band members dissolved Nirvana and later formed separate musical groups.

In the 1980s, rap music had emerged as one of the most original new music forms, with artists such as Run-DMC and LL Cool J spreading the Bronx-born sound from Brooklyn to Beverly Hills. Yet few would have expected performers such as MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice to make rap music a force in pop radio. By the 1990s, rap's authentic voice of urban youth had evolved into mindless jingles with polished beats played at suburban school dances nationwide. Rap had left the ghetto and lost touch with its roots.

At the beginning of the decade, some performers decided to take rap back to the streets. Street credibility became an essential part of rap music. Taking their cues from early hard-core artists such as Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions, West Coast artists such as former N.W.A. members Dr. Dre and Ice Cube tried to convey the violence of living in the ghetto through a new style called gangsta rap. It became the predominant sound of the early 1990s. The more menacing it sounded, with references to guns and illegal substances, the better it was received by a naive, largely white, suburban teenage audience. In 1993, Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle became the first debut album ever to enter the pop-album chart at number one.

At the same time gangsta rap arose in the West, another hip-hop sound was emerging on the East Coast. New, positive-minded groups started to bring a jazzier style to rap music. Groups such as the Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Leaders of the New School formed a new alliance called the Native Tongues, which focused on black thought and black history. Alongside other influential groups, such as EPMD and Gang Starr, their soulful sounds and creative rhymes brought the hip-hop culture back to the music.

During the last half of the decade, people who were concerned with preserving the roots of hip-hop culture began to call themselves hip-hop artists to distinguish themselves from rappers. A divide that had developed between East Coast and West Coast groups earlier in the decade grew stronger. Some

claim the conflicts between the two groups were responsible for the murders of two superstars: Tupac Shakur in 1996 and Notorious B.I.G. in 1997. By the end of the decade, hip-hop had splintered even further.

Another musical style popular in the 1990s was the Latin sound, and one reason for its renewed popularity was Ricky Martin. Formerly one of the teen vocalists in the popular 1980s Latin group Menudo, Martin made the most of his handsome Latin looks and his considerable vocal talents during the late 1990s. In February 1999, Martin impressed the audience at the Grammy Awards show with an electrifying performance of his worldwide smash hit, "La Copa de la Vida" ("The Cup of Life"). Later that year, his first English-language album, Ricky Martin, hit number one on the album charts. "Livin' La Vida Loca," the debut single from the album, became the biggestselling number-one single in the history of Columbia Records.

One other Latin artist who gained broad appeal during the 1990s was Jennifer Lopez. A dancer, actress, and singer, Lopez was thrust into the spotlight in 1997 for her film portrayal of murdered Tejano singing sensation Selena. Other film roles showcasing her talents quickly followed. In the summer of 1999, Lopez released her first album, On the 6. The first single, "If You Had My Love," topped the music charts for five weeks.

Top Singles of the 1990s

Perhaps the most prolific singer-songwriter of the 1990s was Mariah Carey. Her debut album, Mariah Carey, was released by Columbia Records in 1990. Despite its syrupy-sweet lyrics, it sold six million copies, and two songs from the album reached number one on the charts. She won two Grammy awards in 1991, one for Best Pop Vocal Performance and another for Best New Artist.

Carey, who had been writing songs by the time she was in high school, soon became involved in the entire process of creating her subsequent albums, from writing or cowriting the songs to arranging and coproducing. Only five of the singles she released during the decade failed to reach number one on the pop charts. She had more number-one hits than any other female soloist, and only eight fewer number-one hits than Elvis Presley, the all-time leader. A perfectionist, Carey once recorded one hundred versions of the same song ("Honey").