The Good & The Ugly: 1999

Music has been a fascinating phenomenon throughout my whole life. In between my intake of cartoons and chicken nuggets, listening to the radio and watching music videos were my favorite pastimes. Those outlets were important to forming my knowledge of hip-hop, R&B, and pop music, creating the strong opinions I’ve developed throughout the years. With those years of music digestion and development of tastes, there were tons of excellence and absolute musical atrocities to grace the mainstream airwaves. As a result, I wanted to use the benefit of hindsight to observe everything music had to offer from the year I was born to the present day. Every crappy trend and every stroke of genius will be considered in creating the perfect encapsulation of each year*. I will go over 5 bad songs and 5 great songs, starting with the end of the last millennium, 1999.

First, however, are some honorable mentions: Busta Rhymes- “What’s It Gonna Be?”, Will Smith- “Wild Wild West”/“Miami”, Monica- “Angel of Mine”, Deborah Cox- “Nobody’s Supposed To Be Here”, Maxwell- “Fortunate”, and Enrique Iglesias- “Bailamos.” With that out of the way, let’s discuss one of the biggest hits of 1999.

*Disclaimer*: One strict rule I’m following is not to consider R. Kelly solo work at all in this retrospective. I’ve made one exception for a song he was a feature on in a later installment but he will not make any…