It’s been 23 years since the 9/11 attacks — when planes hit the World Trade Center and crashed in D.C. and Pennsylvania. It was a Tuesday, and during that era, the music industry released new albums only on Tuesdays. Digital music and iTunes had yet to take off, so an artist’s success depended on fans buying physical copies of their works.
KCRW DJ Nassir Nassirzadeh points out that Sept. 11 was actually the biggest release date of 2001, and back then, an artist would spend over a year getting ready to put out an album, while new singles in 2024 are available basically every other day.
“It was such a process to get the real estate in these stores like Tower Records and so forth. So it was a big deal. And September, this is when a lot of the record labels would front-load a lot of their biggest tent pole releases, just to be able to make up for some of the losses earlier in the year, and they want to capitalize on the holiday season,” he explains. “But who could have predicted some of the records that came out that day, and how well they would end up doing — some of the ones that we'd never heard about, and some of the ones we will never forget.”
Following 9/11, the music industry also changed (as did many parts of American life). Nassirzadeh talked about this with Errol Kolosine, professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU. He's also an artist manager, and the general manager of Astral Works Records in New York.
Kolosine said, “Clubs struggled for a while, some never really recovered, and the scene changed as a result. I do remember that some people were scared to go to shows, and it took a while for the speculation and paranoia to stop running wild. … The media was, of course, dominated by these events. So there was the question of how, and whether you should even, promote music when all of this is going on anyway.”
Nassirzadeh adds that many artists put their work on hold after 9/11, and they were concerned about what to say and how to say it.
However, some darker music did come out, which may have contributed to New York’s already emergent indie/experimental and, in some cases, outright hard rock scene post-9/11, he says.
For a comprehensive list of the albums that came out on Sept. 11, 2001, see this reference compiled by albumoftheyear.org.
The Blueprint - Jay-Z
Jay-Z released The Blueprint on 9/11, which became one of his most important records. Nassirzadeh explains that this was originally scheduled for Sept. 18 release, but Jay-Z worried about bootleggers distributing it before him. So he put it out a few days early, and it ended up selling half a million copies during the first week.
“Everyone was trying to become the next king of hip-hop after the death of Biggie Smalls and Tupac … [Jay-Z] was always great with rapping and flow and everything. But I feel like this record, particularly the production on it, was just another level. And it really was a foreshadowing of the future of hip-hop in the early 2000s.”
Jay-Z also featured Just Blaze and Kanye West, who had the most production credits on the album. It was likely the world’s introduction to West too.
“In that specific song … he's truly speaking to the ghettos, someone who came from nothing and can speak to the culture. And this rags-to-riches story is exactly what America needed to hear after what was going on during 9/11 — a case study of someone that is not afraid to tell people exactly how it was for him. He's not afraid to show his dark sides, and just who he was, and how he was able to speak to this community. So I feel like there was a lot of kids, especially in New York, that wanted to hear what they were going through.”
Embrace The Chaos - Ozomatli
The band had a critically acclaimed debut album and faced added pressure for this sophomore record, hence the title “Embrace the Chaos,” Nassirzadeh explains.
“A lot of the band members were leaving between records, and some of them had kids, and the label had changed, it was acquired by Interscope. So there was a lot of pressure for them to have a lot of names on the record, including Common. … It's ironic that Embrace the Chaos ended up becoming a very nice way to address everything that had happened afterwards.”
One of the band members,Wil-Dog, was also at KCRW for a performance the week after 9/11. He spoke to Nassirzadeh about the group’s first show in New York after the album’s release: “Let this be healing. … We want to show our hearts, and how we do that is through playing music. And people loved it. It was a really emotional moment in the club, because everybody in New York seemed to know somebody that died.”
Further, the artist shared, “Embrace the Chaos, as an album and as a name, became its own thing after coming out on 9/11. It's been a story that's been with us ever since. We say it to this day, even about ourselves, ‘embrace the chaos.’ And it means so much more, just historically, because of when it came out and the stance that we took. I'm really proud of Ozomatli for keeping its values in the time when it wasn't popular. I’m so proud to be a part of this group of people. It has a ton of integrity, this band.”
Love and Theft - Bob Dylan
This was Dylan’s 31st album, which gave solace to a lot of people, Nassirzadeh says.
“Mississippi” particularly speaks about immortality, he points out.
“When looking back at our lives and ourselves, I think it's important to … not really focus on regrets or anything. … There's something about hope with this song that just feels so beautiful, that I always want to come back to.”