Still can't say its a decade definer when it and the artists had virtually no impact outside of their country of origin or past the few cycles of airing.

The same logic goes against K-OS, whose mainstream success was completely limited to Canada, even if his career was longer and contained more singles.  Laffy Taffy was still part of a very long line of Dirty South snap songs that dominated American radio stations in the mid-late 2000s.

They are pretty mainstream in the US. Collabed with several artists. Funnily enough, the Atlantis album is more than what could be said for most glam rappers of the time.

This is just false and exaggerated, respectively, without any concrete evidence to defend it.  Name me one song that K-OS or Shad appeared on that charted anywhere on an AMERICAN chart, and maybe I'll change my mind.  If the artist's songs and albums don't appear on any Billboard charts, then it essentially means only underground circles play it, most likely through Pandora, MySpace, or other music exchange websites.

I'm a casual hip hop fan as well, and yet my ventures down south have turned up only a few snap songs on the local radio stations and certainly not Laffy Taffy(Though I'm sure it must've been played a few times). But you definitely don't need to be a hardcore fan to have heard even a handful of K-OS's songs. Again, I take it because of where you live, they promote local artists more. But K-OS is generally more well known outside of his home country.

Not according to Wikipedia, which only lists Canadian chart positions for the artist.  Even D4L's Laffy Taffy had decent success in the UK and New Zealand.  It's easier for you to know about K-OS in Canada because he actually had hit singles there.

While people from down here know more about skate punk than the rest of the country, Southern California radio stations mostly just play songs by the biggest artists nationwide.

Even coming off of Hiphop, French artist Stromae is more internationally famous than your listed rappers, he was even played a few times on US radios even though his songs are in French.

He is definitely more internationally famous than D4L or K-OS, but as with Nicki Minaj, his debut wasn't until 2010, by which point snap was completely dead and alternative hip hop was the norm in the United States.

1. Similar achievements/titles have been given for my aforementioned rappers too.

Such as? (excluding Canadian honors)

2. "Billboard magazine ranked the album number 103 on its list of the Top 200 Albums of the Decade" Interesting since that's only one of few glam rap albums to land on that list at all.

I'm going more by commercial success than critical success, but Tha Carter III's numerous accolades still prove that many people took it seriously when it came out.

3. Not sure how this negates the quotes I gave where reviews and public opinion virtually left the album in the dust but held Graduation up high.

I'm going primarily by what was huge at the time, not by what held up.  Graduation is definitely more popular now than Tha Carter III, but back when they respectively came out, it was more evenly matched.

Which didn't chart any of your mentioned songs on their list.

I already mentioned that Laffy Taffy found success in the UK.  The same goes with Lollipop (#26, plus #3 in New Zealand), Crank That (#2, plus top 10 in several other countries), Low (#2, plus #1 in numerous other territories), This is Why I'm Hot (#18), and Whatever You Like (#53 on the year-end chart), just to name some.  The genre wasn't really an industry standard in the UK like it was in the United States, but it definitely found reasonable success internationally, especially in New Zealand.

Snap was on its way out since 2005. With the exception of Crank Dat, most of Lupe Fiasco's lead album singles have topped higher than his.

With the exception of Superstar, all of Lupe's singles in the 2000s were chart fiascos, pun intended.  He's was just as much of a one-shot during that period as all of those obscure snap artists who found chart success.  Most sources would say that snap peaked in 2006-2008.

So you've honestly never heard Lupe, Common, Classified, K-OS, SHAD(Rose Garden), K'naan,  Gorrillaz, OutKast or The Cool Kids?

Everybody here knows who Gorillaz, Common, and OutKast are, they have well before Kanye ever picked up the mic.  Gorillaz broke out in 2001 and found further success in 2005, Common was an alternative hip hop underground mainstay since the mid-90s (peaking in 2005), and OutKast's period of success was 1994 to 2004, after which they very quickly and unexpectedly fell into obscurity, in spite of the widespread success and accolades for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and its singles.  I also knew about Lupe Fiasco in the same way I heard about Common and the like; he was even featured on Late Registration's Touch the Sky.  The rest of those artists never caught on in the United States.

Still doesn't point to anything other than your local radio stations promoting their own.

If non-Canadians at the time really took to the artists you listed seriously, they would have either found at least minor chart success, as opposed to none.  Plenty of indie bands like Arcade Fire and the Arctic Monkeys were growing reasonably popular at the time, even without the help of MTV and top 40 radio stations, but only a few alternative hip hop albums, primarily ones with some promotion (like Common's Be, Lupe's first two releases, and Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere), found their way into most circles.  More people were definitely buying alternative hip hop albums in the late 00s than snap (aside from things like Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III and T.I.'s Paper Trail), but the sales for alternative hip hop were still not truly improved from the 90s and early-mid 2000s, which produced all of OutKast's albums, the Gorillaz's first two albums, Mos Def and Talib Kweli's Black Star and respective solo albums, Beck's Odelay!, the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication and Hello Nasty, the Fugees' The Score, Wyclef Jean's Carnival, Lauryn Hill's Miseducation of Lauryn Hill etc.

The same logic goes against K-OS, whose mainstream success was completely limited to Canada, even if his career was longer and contained more singles.  Laffy Taffy was still part of a very long line of Dirty South snap songs that dominated American radio stations in the mid-late 2000s.
If you think K-OS's success was completely limited to one country, then you really aren't deep in mainstream knowledge are you.

Not only is Atlantis's success more than what could be said for most snap artists(souljaboytellem scored even lower on the Hot 200 list in it's first year), but his other single, Love song, landed the 40th position in New Zealand and Portugal. On top of that, he collabed and toured with a UK band. D4L is a one hit wonder who's biggest song only beat out Love song in only 2 out of 4 non-US countries in the same year. Not to mention no noteworthy global album sales at all(K-OS had a whole damn album with success outside of his country).
Soulja boy furthermore, is an international two hit wonder who only has two songs beating out Love song and only one album that sold any substantial amount outside the US. Granted this info is entirely from a glance at Wikipedia, but my main point still stands. The international performance lead these snap artists had over K-OS, just one of many Alternative artists, is measly at best. If 06-08 was the peak of snap/glam, it might just be the most paltry and unnoteworthy peak of any music in history. Alternative has grown in popularity far more than this since the mid-90s, which is why is was hyped up by analysts. If a Canadian Alternative hiphop artist can see comparable fame to Souljaboy and out do D4L on the global stage. Imagine how well other Alternative artists did in the same time frame. Lupe Fiasco's 2006 Food & Liquor album landed at #8 on the US billboard 200 and Daydreamin' landed 40th in Australia, #1 in Denmark Airplay, 25th in UK and 63rd in the US. Makes the aforementioned snap/glam artists look like a charity case.

This is just false and exaggerated, respectively, without any concrete evidence to defend it.  Name me one song that K-OS or Shad appeared on that charted anywhere on an AMERICAN chart, and maybe I'll change my mind.  If the artist's songs and albums don't appear on any Billboard charts, then it essentially means only underground circles play it, most likely through Pandora, MySpace, or other music exchange websites.
See above. Even if they had no songs in the US billboards, D4L has no songs in Canada and no albums outside the US.

While people from down here know more about skate punk than the rest of the country, Southern California radio stations mostly just play songs by the biggest artists nationwide.
Snap/Dirty South is a very local(US) phenomenon generally not gaining any Hiphop notoriety outside of its birth nation outside of a few singles by fluke artists.

He is definitely more internationally famous than D4L or K-OS, but as with Nicki Minaj, his debut wasn't until 2010, by which point snap was completely dead and alternative hip hop was the norm in the United States.
Alors on Danse was released on September 2009 :/

I'm going more by commercial success than critical success, but Tha Carter III's numerous accolades still prove that many people took it seriously when it came out.
An album that was generally ignored by Hiphop enthusiasts, and dismissed as "not Lil Wayne's best work" is not a hallmark whatsoever.

I'm going primarily by what was huge at the time, not by what held up.  Graduation is definitely more popular now than Tha Carter III, but back when they respectively came out, it was more evenly matched.
It has made way more countries billboards and has generally taken higher chart positions. It was considered more of a current era hallmark back then than Tha Carter III thats for sure.

I already mentioned that Laffy Taffy found success in the UK.
Lupe Fiasco "Kick, Push": #27 UK

The same goes with Lollipop (#26, plus #3 in New Zealand), Crank That (#2, plus top 10 in several other countries), Low (#2, plus #1 in numerous other territories), This is Why I'm Hot (#18), and Whatever You Like (#53 on the year-end chart), just to name some.  The genre wasn't really an industry standard in the UK like it was in the United States, but it definitely found reasonable success internationally, especially in New Zealand.
Can't Tell Me Nothing(Canada: #16, UK:  #107), Daydreamin'(UK: #27, Australia: #40, Denmark: #1), Stronger(Canada: #1, top 10 in other countries), Superstar(Ireland: #2, Turkey: #4, top 10 in other countries), Lupe's whole dang F&L album for that matter, #31 in UK. And 2008's The Cool album landed 44th Australia(Superstar: #32) and 24th in Ireland. I dunno, across the board, Alternative is looking at least comparable to Glam/snap if not having already surpassed it at the time. There was a higher proportion of Alt. albums and singles in popular international circulation, thanks to the higher population of renown Alt. artists in the mid/late-00s, plus the general decline of Glam rap. Speaking in terms of UK charts, the large number of local UK Alt. artists glam artists had to compete with hasn't even been mentioned yet. The whole thing was a force to be reckon with.

With the exception of Superstar, all of Lupe's singles in the 2000s were chart fiascos, pun intended.  He's was just as much of a one-shot during that period as all of those obscure snap artists who found chart success.
Hiphop saved my life(US #20) is a chart fiasco? And his albums kicked major butt both in and outside his home country. Can the other artists lay that claim?

Most sources would say that snap peaked in 2006-2008.
See above. It was a pathetic "peak" at best in an already declining portion of Hiphop music. Alternative was rivalling it on the work scale.

Everybody here knows who Gorillaz, Common, and OutKast are, they have well before Kanye ever picked up the mic.  Gorillaz broke out in 2001 and found further success in 2005, Common was an alternative hip hop underground mainstay since the mid-90s (peaking in 2005), and OutKast's period of success was 1994 to 2004, after which they very quickly and unexpectedly fell into obscurity, in spite of the widespread success and accolades for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and its singles.  I also knew about Lupe Fiasco in the same way I heard about Common and the like; he was even featured on Late Registration's Touch the Sky.  The rest of those artists never caught on in the United States.
A result of local(US) support of globally irrelevant artists is the answer to the last sentence

If non-Canadians at the time really took to the artists you listed seriously, they would have either found at least minor chart success, as opposed to none.  Plenty of indie bands like Arcade Fire and the Arctic Monkeys were growing reasonably popular at the time, even without the help of MTV and top 40 radio stations, but only a few alternative hip hop albums, primarily ones with some promotion (like Common's Be, Lupe's first two releases, and Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere), found their way into most circles.  More people were definitely buying alternative hip hop albums in the late 00s than snap (aside from things like Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III and T.I.'s Paper Trail), but the sales for alternative hip hop were still not truly improved from the 90s and early-mid 2000s, which produced all of OutKast's albums, the Gorillaz's first two albums, Mos Def and Talib Kweli's Black Star and respective solo albums, Beck's Odelay!, the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication and Hello Nasty, the Fugees' The Score, Wyclef Jean's Carnival, Lauryn Hill's Miseducation of Lauryn Hill etc.

Ignoring the jab at Canadian artists because I debunked that above.
Read what the industry analysts had to say, global Alternative Hiphop sales have grown substantially since the mid-90s and have been ruling the late-00s. Glam rap on the other hand has been declining commercially since the mid-00s at the latest. Alternative has seen more success spanning multiple countries while Snap and Crunk have mostly been the K-pop of the US; popular there, but irrelevant everywhere else outside a thumbful of one or two hit wonders.

I'm gonna just stop here because I feel like I've already said everything relevant to the subject, even though I still don't understand where all of your points are coming from.  I can only speak from personal experience, and obviously a Southern Californian perspective is going to differ notably from a Canadian or international one, but frankly, you're the first person I've ever encountered who so adamantly believed the mid-late 2000s were all about alternative hip hop and that snap music was on its way out beginning in 2005.  I'm gonna just assume that you know far more about hip hop in Canada than I do, and I won't try and act like the United States perspective totally applies to the rest of the world, but I still don't understand how you can think it's ridiculous for me to not know who K-OS or other pre-Drake Canadian rappers are when they never found any chart success whatsoever in the United States.  At least from what I've seen, most other Americans, when discussing decade musical trends, refer to snap/crunk as having completely dominated 2005-2008, and alternative hip hop not having fully taken off until 2009.

They don't mention alternative at all let alone some random arbitrary date like 2009. But they do often complain that 2010s rap seems to maintain a glam style not emphasized as much in the late 00s. I think Its best to stick to what the analysts say since they know more about where the industry was headed than anyone here does. Although they seem to be referring to the global hiphop scene, they did present stats showing snap on the decline early on even in the states while alternative was shown picking up steam by the mid-00s. I guess it might just be regional perception because what I say also has American backing as well from people I know, and many of them know K-OS, the Billboard doesn't lie. Drake never started any era, he was just a product of the current era that began earlier in the decade.  To each their own I guess.

But wasn't 1997 when the earliest millennial signs occur? It was the year internet and cellphone usage (Telecommunications Act) started getting big. Grunge bands broke up. (Post-Grunge took off around the time?). Gangsta rap gets replaced by bling rap. Many late 90's shows that would get popular in the early 2000's like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and much more would get on the air. This is why I thought 1997 was not a core 90's year. Well maybe still a core 90's year when it started out but I thought it was a transitional year before 1998 hit.


Dude, Buffy the Vampire Slayer peaked in the late '90s. Just look up the ratings. The most viewed episode was "Innocence", a season 2 episode that aired in early 1998. Season 3 was the show's seasonal average peak. Whenever people mention the name of that show, they instantly associate it with the '90s. It has appeared on many "Best Shows of the '90s" lists. In the early 2000's, it was just a holdover from the '90s.

Regarding other posts, #Infinity and Shemp97 have turned this thread into something other than how people perceived the late '90s in 2003. Should this thread even be up anyway?

Dude, Buffy the Vampire Slayer peaked in the late '90s. Just look up the ratings. The most viewed episode was "Innocence", a season 2 episode that aired in early 1998. Season 3 was the show's seasonal average peak. Whenever people mention the name of that show, they instantly associate it with the '90s. It has appeared on many "Best Shows of the '90s" lists. In the early 2000's, it was just a holdover from the '90s.

Regarding other posts, #Infinity and Shemp97 have turned this thread into something other than how people perceived the late '90s in 2003. Should this thread even be up anyway?

Season 3 was my favorite season of the show!! And you're correct this thread shouldn't be up, the late 90s did not look or feel old school in 2003. By the end of the year it did feel dated though!

Dude, Buffy the Vampire Slayer peaked in the late '90s. Just look up the ratings. The most viewed episode was "Innocence", a season 2 episode that aired in early 1998. Season 3 was the show's seasonal average peak. Whenever people mention the name of that show, they instantly associate it with the '90s. It has appeared on many "Best Shows of the '90s" lists. In the early 2000's, it was just a holdover from the '90s.

Regarding other posts, #Infinity and Shemp97 have turned this thread into something other than how people perceived the late '90s in 2003. Should this thread even be up anyway?


I wasn't talking about the show's max popularity. What I meant to say is that many late 90's shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer would get on the air that would RUN through the early 2000's. I shouldn't have used the word popular in there, my mistake. But Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of those shows that started in the late 90's that would run through the early 2000's, just as many others at the time well, but a lot of those shows ended all at once around 2003/2004.

Anyways, you're right, I don't understand why this thread was created, it's making me scratch my head like was this person off by one year?

I said before that the title of this thread should have been "By 2004 did you consider the late 90's retro or old school?"

1997/1998-mid 2001 was the true pre-9/11 late 90's culture. Late 2001, 2002, and 2003 was the true early 2000's post 9/11 culture which were transitional times when the late 90's culture was dying out before 2004 hit, when all the late 90's cultural fads became completely obsolete and core 2000's culture was phased in 100%.

One thing I have noticed is that depending on what country you live in around this world, your viewpoint of the culture around you at a certain point and time might be different. Fashions might have been relevant at a different time in your country than ours (at least here in the U.S.), music might have been relevant at a different time, even certain fads and shows might have been relevant at different times than our country as well.