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The Omaha band that fused alt-rock, reggae, funk, and rap into a laid-back sound built for summer. Their 1995 self-titled "Blue Album" broke them nationwide on the strength of "Down" and "All Mixed Up," and their two-vocalist lineup has stayed intact for decades.
Three New York punks who made the first rap album to top the Billboard chart, then spent the 90s outrunning the frat-party joke. The Beastie Boys played their own instruments on Check Your Head, starred as fake 70s cops in the Spike Jonze video for "Sabotage," headlined Lollapalooza, and closed the decade with Hello Nasty and two Grammys.
Crazy Town's tattooed valentine — a rap-rock love song floated on a borrowed Red Hot Chili Peppers guitar loop all the way to #1 in spring 2001. The softest thing the nu-metal era ever sent up the charts, from a band that never landed another hit.
![Video thumbnail — In The End [Official HD Music Video] - Linkin Park](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eVTXPUF4Oz4/maxresdefault.jpg)
Linkin Park's landmark debut album, released October 24, 2000, blending Chester Bennington's soaring vocals with Mike Shinoda's aggressive rapping over heavy guitars and electronic production. The best-selling album of 2001 in the US, Hybrid Theory became the soundtrack to countless angsty bedrooms and defined nu-metal for a generation.
Four guys from Los Angeles whose eight-line chant of refusal became a rite of passage for every suburban kid with a Discman. Rage Against the Machine fused metal, rap and funk to revolutionary politics, tried to hang upside-down flags on Saturday Night Live, charged the New York Stock Exchange for a video, and broke up in 2000 at the height of it.