September 11th Changed Music—And Not In The Way You Think

Anger and aggression topped the charts in the fall of 2001, but the musical legacy of the 9/11 terror attacks is quite the opposite.

This is a special weekend edition of the Zogblog. Regular installments of my new serialized book We Are All Musicians Now will resume next Friday.

As a wounded nation processed the atrocities of September 11th in real time two decades ago, an album surged to the top of the charts that mirrored the country’s rage: Jay-Z’s The Blueprint. The record feature…