Some Excellent Albums from 2000

Wazzzzuupppp from the year 2000. Featuring: Santana, Radiohead, Erykah Badu, Outkast, Linkin Park, The Avalanches, D'Angelo, Primal Scream

Ancient American culture history lesson: The infamous “wazzzuppppp” Budweiser commercial came out in December 1999, and by the year 2000 I’m pretty sure it had infiltrated the vocabulary of every single male person in their teens or below to the point where nobody from that generation can ever say the words “what’s up” again without thinking about it. Marketing has become one of the great evils of the modern world, but you can’t really deny how much this one shining example brought us together. I had entire 4th grade friendships build on this single word. It’s a rallying cry for Millennials, and in my mind it was the wazzupp commercial on December 20, 1999 that caused the actual Y2K cultural apocalypse.

2000 was the beginning of the next big revolution in music distribution, when the internet started taking over from CD’s, when the passing of the Y2K scare made people believe computers weren’t actually something to be feared. From the lens of 2025, it’s hard to believe we actually convinced ourselves that the entire world needed to be connected, and that such a networked world would lead to a spread of knowledge the world had never seen. Here’s hoping that the current technology scares are just as insubstantial as Y2K.

Erykah Badu - Mama’s Gun

Erykah Badu’s swaggering neo-soul is instantly recognizable. The sophistication of Baduizm was enlightening for me, and it took a couple of listens to really recognize the greatness. I’m glad I had that foundation as I approached Mama’s Gun - Badu is widely considered one of the founders of the Neo-Soul movement, and I’ll admit that’s not a genre I’ve ever been overly familiar with.

Erykah Badu’s version of Neo-Soul is an effortless sounding thing, as if the music is beamed at you straight from her brain, and the band isn’t so much a group of musicians as one entity pulsing with the same beat.

Outkast - Stankonia

The bouncy beats are addicting, and the sheer output of designer hook-laden bangers is ridiculous. It’s dirty south hip-hop with a wide array of instrumentation and styles piled on top, named for the studio Big Boi and Andre 3000 bought in Atlanta. The pace of this album is much faster than their previous Aquemini, and it’s hard not to let it get you wound up. This will increase your pace if you’re on a treadmill, or your blood pressure if you’re sitting on the couch.

Primal Scream - XTRMNTR

I was drawn in to this album early on - the sinusoidal bass line of “Kill All Hippies,” the hyper-fuzz guitar of “Accelerator.” None of it is lyrically deep, but the sound takes you in, all single-syllable hooks like something that just barely got cut from the shortlist for an Apple commercial. Parts of the album go industrial, a sound that always gets my thumbs up.

But then it goes off the rails (“Pills”? Wtf?), and after some hyper-repetitive trance floor type songs you start to realize the conceptual depth of the lyrics is something like a stoner who heard a one liner that changed their life so much it must be repeated into infinity to get the point across. Or maybe it’s more like a tweaker talking to themselves on the street. As a result, this album’s instrumentals hold the most value for me.

I can’t say why, but I find Primal Scream kind of funny. Are they being ironic? Are they being serious? Is there a deeper meaning to the cyclical shroom-head lyrics? Are they trying to give us a stroke or is that just a side effect? I have no idea, and that’s part of the fun.

D’Angelo - Voodoo

Another major voice in the development of neo-soul, D’Angelo’s second studio album is undeniably impressive. It was recorded at the same studio as Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, and a lot of the guest appearances on both albums came about because of this cross-pollination. The sounds are different beasts entirely, though - and I’ll admit D’Angelo’s music struck me more like late-career Michael Jackson, with most of the title artist’s contributions coming in the form of little interjections and counter-lines and falsettos. At some points you just want him to cut out that nonsense and just freaking sing. I know the restrained style is an art in itself, it just feels like D’Angelo’s singing is so far back in the mix it could be almost anyone. But in the end the alternating hip-hoppish and R&B beats are great, and of course I’m a sucker for a 3/4 or 6/8 time song, a staple of the R&B genre found on “Send It On” and “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”, two of the album’s highlights.

The Avalanches - Since I Left You

I went back and forth about including this album, which is a patchwork of samples knit together from hundreds of songs (estimates range from 900 to over 3000 samples used in all the album’s various versions).

The reason for my hesitation is honestly my current appreciation for “real” music, played on real instruments, which is an idea that 1) requires some more unpacking than I have room for here and 2) is pretty much driven by the AI ripoff-heavy atmosphere of 2025. Unpacking what “real” music is will require a thinkpiece, and I don’t have enough think energy at the moment. But I think this album will figure heavily in whatever conclusions I might draw at that future moment of brilliance.

This album is built around a cohesive concept, it’s tight, and it’s beautiful in many ways. Dance music is an arena I’m still learning about, but this effort sounds like it should have taken a million DJ’s mixing and sampling to achieve; in fact it was 2 guys in Australia working in different studios, sending mixes and records and samples back and forth, who made it happen. I’m no expert, but that sounds like an achievement most producers could only dream of; I haven’t heard of a music production effort that impressive since I discovered J Dilla’s deathbed masterpiece Donuts.

It’s a musical quilt that I might not use every day, but it’s worth pulling out of the chest at the foot of the bed on cold winter nights. Despite the stroke-inducing repetitiveness at times, the kind I refuse to believe anybody actually enjoys outside a mind-addled dance floor, it’s an album I’m glad to know about.

Note: this album was released in Australia in 2000, and internationally in 2001. But I already wrote it up so it stays in the 2000 issue!

Radiohead - Kid A

Aaghhg… Nnghhhnhnhhh… Gahhhmmmmbbbmmbbmmmm… Sorry. I was trying to describe this album with the same abstract disregard for the English language as Radiohead has for the basic concepts of music in Kid A.

It sucks when people don’t “get” stuff. My biggest pet peeve is when people just don’t even try to get it, or to open themselves to new ideas and experiences, or to be humble enough to admit that their world isn’t the extent of the world. On the other hand, I totally vibe with people who want to get it, who try and go out of their way and use the lost art of empathy to understand new things. Even if they fail, the effort shows a good mentality, and I respect it. And I certainly try to fall into the latter group.

Take this example: if you grew up middle class or below in the US in the 2000’s, there’s a good chance you considered Olive Garden a great place for a fancy Italian date night. For the people who would turn their noses up at such things, there are two ways of looking at this; first, you could sneer at the non-worldly cretins pretending that unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks is just as cool as a visit to Italy. Or, on the other hand, you could appreciate that for people without the means or experience to care about authentic Italian food, and whose white-bread American diets have been programmed into their brains by a combination of unrestrained capitalism and limited budget, the act of going to an OG might actually be an adventurous step outside their comfort zones, and that’s always something to be applauded.

Radiohead internet stans can make nonbelievers feel like shamed Olive Garden lovers, clowning them for not hanging onto every strained, reedy utterance of “Kid A” like it’s a poem of deep meaning. This is like the 10th time I’ve tried to get this album, spaced over about a decade, and there’s just nothing of value here for me. A couple of places on the album make my ears perk up with interest, only to fail to deliver each time as Thom Yorke shakily screeches out what can only be described as a vocal vision quest, a vision quest whose artistic merits seem to be limited to whatever the living heck was going on in Thom’s head at the time. I can’t imagine the band listening back to this album and going “Yup, this is it. This album is finished.”

I’ve listened to Kid A again and again over the past year in the spirit of education, but I think I’ve got to conclude once and for all that I’ll never get it.

Linkin Park - Hybrid Theory

How could I leave out Linkin Park? Admittedly, this album takes me straight back to some of the bro-iest moments of my life, mostly on a baseball field or in a weight room. Working out as a team, getting hyped up before a game - these are the kinds of memories this album brings back for me. I don’t think I’ve ever listened to it in a normal setting, only on pre-game or workout playlists. It’s kind of funny to sit here listening to it while I do my remote desk job in 2025, but I can’t say it’s not getting me hyped for my next Powerpoint.

I am normally a nonconfrontational and positive person, and this album (and the many others it spawned) were kind of my introduction into that feeling of competitiveness, bordering on angry energy, that is so highly valued in the world of team sports. I know this experience will differ, but when I listen to music like this, metal or angry music of any sort, I don’t get angry, I get the same kind of endorphins you get from running out onto a field for a game. It doesn’t make me angry - it makes me want to go run ten miles (as if). That’s obviously not Linkin Park’s intent, which is obvious if you listen to ten seconds of their lyrics, but it’s the unique relationship I’ve formed with this music, purely a result of the timing and circumstances under which I first heard it.

Stepping back today, this album is the result of some impressive musical talent and the advent of the rap-rock-metal movement, and love or hate the genre, there’s some serious musicianship going on here.

Santana - Supernatural

Santana’s 18th studio album follows a trend I’ve noticed in many superstar-level artists reaching the later parts of their careers - gratuitous guest stars galore. The guest feature phenomenon can go really well or really poorly, depending on the album. At its best, this trend is an awesome way for an established act to pass along some of their hard-won exposure to worth heirs or up and coming artists, or less excitingly, to shout-out to some of their peers who don’t need the exposure but certainly won’t turn it down. But some albums like this can turn into something like the NBA all-star game, with absolutely no competitive drive, morphing into more of a circus show than a legitimate artistic effort.

I think this album, which won a Grammy in 2000 and had great commercial success, falls somewhere in between the guest-star-rich attention grab and a true artistic output. The multiple featured artists take away from any identity or theme this album might have contained, making this sound more like a playlist than a cohesive album. But on the other hand, it’s a pretty darn fun playlist. It’s very poppy, without a doubt, but it’s not overly icky pop for the most part.

OK there was one pretty big “ick” - Dave Matthews’ weird intro on “Love of My Life”. Scat on your own time, Dave. Ugh.