The long American war in the Middle East begins.

The culture war begins.

Rap music, still a young genre, finally sees chart-topping success in 1990, beginning to reach its way now into the suburbs and onto mainstream airwaves. But it's also in 1990 that hip hop solidifies itself as what Public Enemy rapper Chuck D called "black people's CNN," giving voice to black frustration and anger. That mounting black anger in 1990 finds expression in a new marriage of hip hop and American Islam.

President Bush searches for ways to describe this new American power after the Cold War. He joins Fukuyama, Governor Bill Clinton and even Janet Jackson in imagining a world in which borders matter less and less. 

The American television landscape will also begin to see dramatic changes at the beginning of the decade. 

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The end of the Cold War inaugurates a new epoch: With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States is poised to become the first uncontested global imperial power in the history of humankind. The American victory over the Soviets also establishes capitalism as a global system, arguably a more important development than the emergence of the US as the world’s only global superpower. The political elite declares the victory of the US and capitalism the "end of history."

Welcome to Things Done Changed: America in the '90s, a biweekly series examining the political and cultural history of America in the 1990s. Subscribe to catch the series premiere on September 14!

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