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Basketball trash-talk tees that grew into a sneaker empire. AND1 turned playground streetball into ESPN programming, and by 2001 it trailed only Nike in US basketball-shoe market share. If you owned the shirt that said "Pass. Save yourself the embarrassment," you know.
Four university friends from London who turned quiet melancholy into the biggest sound of the decade. From "Yellow" to "Clocks" to "Fix You" to "Viva la Vida," Coldplay was the default soundtrack of the 2000s — the band on every mixtape, every TV drama's saddest scene, and every iPod's most-played list, whether you admitted it or not.