September 29, 1998 new releases (U.S.)

I reviewed four of those records for my college newspaper.

Aquemini and Is This Desire? are the only ones I still listen to.

Definitely Is This Desire?

prob should vote aquemini but my heart says soul coughing

Jay-Z - Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life
Mos Def & Talib Kweli - Black Star
OutKast – Aquemini

^^holy shit what a day!

lol jjj, OTM

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Easily "Deserter's Song" in this case.

ha i always thought about making this poll. after school that day my brother and i went to the CD store and iirc bought the Jay, Tribe, Soul Coughing and Garbage, plus i'd had a promo copy of the Black Star for a few weeks already at that point.

i think my brother got the PJ Harvey too but i never really listened to that.

i would rank them like Black Star > Outkast > Garbage > Jay > Soul Coughing > Tribe > UNKLE

jay, aquemini, tribe, harvey, and merc rev are probably the five i still play with any frequency. so...aquemini? hard.

haha i missed black star utterly there.

JIM ROME

pretty sure i voted aquemini but just caught that, major lol

I'm with Dan and jjj and voted El Oso.

R.

I definitely bought Aquemini on that day. So there you go.

Jim Rome - Welcome to the Jungle

what the christ

wikipedia sez R. came out a couple weeks later.

Anyway, there are some other good albums but Aquemini or gtfo.

i remember when i drew up a list for my aforementioned idea for the same poll, i had R. on it, don't remember where i looked it up from though

no jim rome on spotify :(

Ack. Yeah, Wikipedia appears to be correct about R. Could swear there was some major R&B release that week.

Brand Nubian – Foundation
Jay-Z - Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life
Mos Def & Talib Kweli - Black Star
OutKast – Aquemini
A Tribe Called Quest - Love Movement

The store I managed had a midnight sale and most people bought at least two of these. Several people bought all five. The previous week, when we got a print-out of the quantities we were to receive, Hard Knock Life was down for 20. I called our major-label buyer and asked if a zero was missing. We got enough copies in time, had all the major distributors buy pizza. Thousands of dollars in business during an hour and a half -- a fire-hazard amount of customers waiting in line, hanging out after checking out, talking music, eating major-label money. (Sold a few copies of Is This Desire?, Deserter's Songs, and El Oso, too.) Retail pay and hours were lousy, but I get chills thinking about stuff like that.

Aquemini

http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Jungle-Jim-Rome/dp/B00000C2BW

33 used from $0.24

i spent a lot of summer '98 bumping Reasonable Doubt and In My Lifetime Vol. 1 and watching Jay blow up off "Money Ain't A Thing" and "Can I Get A," felt like real vindication to see him outsell some more established acts and have this crazy blockbuster album

i remember going online that night and talking with a friend and being all !!!!!!!!!!!! about "Money Cash Hoes"

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Billboard 200 debuts for that week:

1. Jay-Z - Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life
2. A Tribe Called Quest - Love Movement
3. Outkast - Aquemini
5. Sheryl Crow - The Globe Sessions
7. Kirk Franklin - The Nu Nation Project
9. various artists - Mean Green: The Major Players Compilation
46. Gangsta Boo - Enquiring Minds
49. Soul Coughing - El Oso
53. PJ Harvey - Is This Desire?
54. Mos Def & Talib Kweli - Black Star
59. Brand Nubian – Foundation
75. Joni Mitchell - Taming The Tiger
78. Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach - Painted From Memory
107. UNKLE - Psyence Fiction
131. various artists - Songs 4 Life: Lift your Spirit
141. Shakira - Dónde Están Los Ladrones?
150. A Night At The Roxbury Soundtrack
156. various artists - This Is Alice Music Volume 2
169. Will Downing & Gerald Albright - Pleasures Of The Night
173. Everlast - Whitey Ford Sings The Blues
182. Bad Azz - Word On Tha Street
185. Dee Snider's Strangeland Soundtrack
192. Blackhawk - Blackhawk 4: Sky's The Limit
194. Bob Carlisle - Stories From The Heart
195. various artists - Future Disco 3

Jim Rome and Tyrese appear on the Heatseekers chart, rest did not chart.

i might've voted for Painted From Memory if it were an option!

Jay-Z in Decoded:

"1998 was an important year for hip-hop. It was two years after Pac had been gunned down, and just a year after Biggie was killed. DMX dropped two number one albums that year. Outkast released Aquemini, a game-changing album lyrically and sonically, but also for what it meant to Southern rap. (Juvenile's 400 Degreez, also released in '98, was a major shot in the growing New Orleans movement. I jumped on a remix of his single "Ha," which was a great mix of regional styles.) Mos Def and Talib Kweli had their Black Star album, one of the definitive indie rap records of all time. The prototypical "backpack rappers," A Tribe Called Quest, released their last album, The Love Movement. And the biggest album of the year in any genre was The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

It was a beautiful time all the way around in hip-hop. The album I released that year, Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life, was the biggest record of my life. The opening week was unreal for me--we did more than three hundred thousand units, by far the biggest opening number of my career at that point. The album moved Lauryn Hill down to number four, but Outkast's Aquemini was right behind me, and The Love Movement was number three. Those four albums together told the story of young black America from four dramatically different perspectives--we were bohemians and hustlers and revolutionaries and space-age Southern boys. We were funny and serious, spiritual and ambitious, lovers and gangsters, mothers and brothers. This was the full picture of our generation. Each of these albums was an innovative and honest work of art and wildly popular on the charts. Every kid in the country had at least one of these albums, and a lot of them had all four. The entire world was plugged into the stories that came out of the specific struggles and creative explosion of our generation. And that was just the tip of the iceberg of what was happening in hip-hop that year."

The store I managed had a midnight sale and most people bought at least two of these. Several people bought all five. The previous week, when we got a print-out of the quantities we were to receive, Hard Knock Life was down for 20. I called our major-label buyer and asked if a zero was missing. We got enough copies in time, had all the major distributors buy pizza. Thousands of dollars in business during an hour and a half -- a fire-hazard amount of customers waiting in line, hanging out after checking out, talking music, eating major-label money. (Sold a few copies of Is This Desire?, Deserter's Songs, and El Oso, too.) Retail pay and hours were lousy, but I get chills thinking about stuff like that.

man this post made me so damn nostalgic for midnight store openings

Jim Rome???? is there a track on there of when he got the shit kicked out of him by Jim Everett on the show?

I'm reasonably certain Big Jim just pushed over his desk rather than "kicking the shit out of him," Bill Magill.

yeah unfortunately that was all that happened. hate rome though.

agreed on store openings at midnight...i remember going to one for "Wu Tang Forever"....I think that was the same night that "King for a Day, Fool for a Lifetime" by Faith No More was out, too, so there was a weird mix

might've voted for Painted From Memory if it were an option!

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Knew I was forgetting something. If my wife finds out, she will poke me in the eye.