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World Cafe 30th Anniversary Playlist: 1993

World Cafe celebrates 30 years with a 1993 playlist.
WXPN
World Cafe celebrates 30 years with a 1993 playlist.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of World Cafe, we'll be looking back and posting playlists from each year of the show. As music has evolved over the years, so have our playlists, which have grown to reflect many genres and styles of music.

Today we're focusing on 1993. While grunge rock was still commanding attention from audiences, sitting at the top of the pop charts at the end of 1993 were songs and albums by hip-hop and R&B artists, including Wu-Tang, Janet Jackson, Dr. Dre, Sade, Cypress Hill, Jodeci, and the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, which included Whitney Houston's timeless "I Will Always Love You."

Underneath the pop charts, 1993 saw the release of seminal releases in every niche imaginable, including albums by The Breeders (Last Splash), Uncle Tupelo (Anodyne), Björk (Debut), Digable Planets (Reachin'), The Afghan Whigs (Gentlemen), KRS-One (Return of the Boom Bap), as well as albums from singer-songwriters like Rosanne Cash's The Wheel, and John Hiatt's Perfectly Good Guitar. The year also saw the release of timeless debuts by The Cranberries (Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?), Counting Crows (August And Everything After), Liz Phair, (Exile In Guyville), Meshell Ndegeocello (Plantation Lullabies), and Radiohead (Pablo Honey).

Copyright 2021 XPN

Bruce Warren is assistant general manager for programming of WXPN in Philadelphia. Besides serving as executive producer of World Café, Warren also contributes to Paste magazine and writes for two blogs: Some Velvet Blog and WXPN's All About The Music Blog.