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2002 was the year President Bush accused Iraq, Iran and North Korea of forming an "axis of evil"; Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes was tragically killed in a car accident; and American Idol debuted on television. It was the year of Nelly. The St. Louis rapper born Cornell Haynes, Jr. had two songs in the Top 4 of the year, the first artist to do so since Monica had a pair of songs in the Top 4 of 1998. Hot In Herre and Dilemma were successive chart-toppers in the summer of 2002, making Nelly the sixth artist in the rock era to replace himself in pole position, following Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Boyz II Men, Puff Daddy, and Ja Rule. Nelly first appeared on a year-end list in 2000, when Country Grammar was No. 36 for the year. In 2001, he had four songs on the annual recap, none higher than No. 17, easily making 2002 the best chart year of his career. Hot In Herre was produced by The Neptunes. Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams based the groove on a No. 1 R&B hit from 1979, Bustin' Loose by Chuck Brown & The Soul Searchers. "We like being inspired by old grooves," says Hugo. "We wanted something simple and everything else was up to Nelly." Once the rapper heard the track, it didn't take him long to write the lyrics. "An idea jumped in my head when I heard it," he recalls. "When I hear the beat, I usually get an idea right away." In this case, the lyrical hook suggesting that you "take off all your clothes" helped send the song to No. 1. The follow-up, Dilemma, sampled a Patti LaBelle track, Love, Need and Want You, written by Kenny Gamble and Bunny Sigler. Producers Bam (Antoine Macon) and Ryan Bowser came up with the idea for Dilemma while playing Tetris. They were in the studio one night listening to the track they had written when Bam started humming the Gamble-Sigler song. That's when Nelly decided to incorporate the older song into Dilemma. "Once I heard it, I wanted to do something special with it," says Nelly. "That was the reason we brought Kelly (Rowland) into the picture. I thought getting her on a solo tip as opposed to getting her in the group (Destiny's Child) would be hot." The No. 2 single of 2002 was also a rap song. Marshall Mathers topped the box office and the Hot 100 with his film 8 Mile ending up No. 1 its first week in release and the song from the movie, Lose Yourself, having a 12-week reign on the Hot 100. Director Curtis Hanson wanted a song written from the point of view of Eminem's character. While on location in Detroit, Eminem worked out of a makeshift recording studio in his trailer so he could work on the music while filming the movie. While Nelly's two songs in the Top 4 is impressive, another artist went him one better, with three songs in the year-end Top 10. Even more amazing, they were her first three entries. Ashanti Douglas was 14 when she signed to the Jive label. That didn't work out, nor did a deal with an Epic imprint. But Ashanti didn't give up. She was introduced to Murder Inc. founder Irv Gotti, but his label focused on hip-hop and he wasn't interested in an R&B singer. "I was persistent," says Ashanti. She kept showing up at Gotti's studio and his office and he found ways to employ her, whether it was singing on the hook of someone else's record or writing songs. When writer/producer 7 Aurelius was working on a track for Craig David, Ashanti came up with lyrics and recorded the song herself. Foolish spent 10 weeks at No. 1 and finished the year in third place. Ashanti also ranked seventh as the featured artist on Fat Joe's What's Luv? and ninth as the featured singer on Ja Rule's Always On Time. Only two artists who were in the Top 10 of 2001 repeated in 2002. Usher, No. 3 in 2001 with U Got It Bad, was No. 10 in 2002 by virtue of his featured spot on P. Diddy's I Need a Girl (Part One). Jennifer Lopez, No. 4 in 2001 with Ja Rule on I'm Real, teamed up with Ja Rule again and placed fifth with Ain't It Funny. It really was a repeat performance. Just as there were two very different versions of I'm Real, there were two different tracks called Ain't It Funny. Producer Corey Rooney explains, "It worked so well, we needed to do it again." The first version of Ain't It Funny was inspired by a movie Lopez starred in, The Wedding Planner, although it wasn't used in the film. The second Ain't It Funny was created when Ashanti stopped at Irv Gotti's studio and found Ja Rule playing video games when he was supposed to be working on the Lopez track. Ashanti wrote two verses for the song and recorded a demo version. Lopez recorded that song in Los Angeles; in the middle of the session Ashanti was asked to write one more verse. She wrote it over the phone so the recording session could proceed. Lopez had two other songs on the 2002 recap: Jenny From the Block at No. 19 and I'm Gonna Be Alright at No. 34. Pop music made a resurgence in 2002, led by the No. 8 single of the year, Complicated by Avril Lavigne. She was just 17 when her debut effort spent two weeks at No. 2 on the Hot 100. Born in Ontario, Canada, she started writing songs early and was in the studio when Arista chief L.A. Reid heard her playing and offered her a contract. Lavigne followed Complicated with the upbeat Sk8er Boi which became another Top 10 single and the No. 67 song of 2002. America was blissfully unaware of a British phenomenon that began October 5, 2001. Pop Idol took that country by storm, and by the series' finale, the top two finalists, Will Young and Gareth Gates, were famous all over the United Kingdom. Young won the competition with 4.6 million votes and Gates finished second with 4.1 million. Both were signed to recording contracts and both had mega-selling No. 1 singles. Series creator Simon Fuller tried to sell the concept in America and was turned down everywhere, even by the Fox network, until CEO Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth told her father about Pop Idol and suggested he broadcast an American version. American Idol debuted on June 11, 2002, retaining many of the elements of its British cousin, including acid-tongued judge Simon Cowell, who was joined by recording artist Paula Abdul and music executive Randy Jackson. The 100-plus contestants were whittled down to 30 and then to a Top 10. Week after week, finalists were voted off the show by the public until two remained standing. On the season finale, broadcast September 4, Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini stood on the stage of the Kodak Theater in Hollywood, waiting for Ryan Seacrest to pronounce one of them the first American Idol. One day after being named the winner, Kelly Clarkson was on the radio airwaves. The song she performed on the finale, A Moment Like This, was shipped the day after the show, but radio stations were already playing the live version from the TV soundtrack. Foreshadowing the impact American Idol would have on the Billboard charts, Clarkson's A Moment Like This rocketed from 52 to 1 on the Hot 100. It was the biggest jump to the top in the chart's history, besting the 38-year-old record held by The Beatles' Can't Buy Me Love, which zoomed from 27 to 1 in 1964. Click the link below to see all the songs which made it to the Top 5 of Billboard's Hot 100 for 2002. Submit your vote by scoring each song out of 10 (10 being the greatest). The average will then determine our Singles Rate for the year. Votes must be submitted in the next 72 hours. VOTE HERE!

What we're gonna do here is go back, way back, back into time. 2001 was the year terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, George Harrison died of lung cancer in Los Angeles, and Apple introduced the iPod. For the first time since Bryan Adams ruled the 1991 recap, a Canadian act had the No. 1 song of the year. Nickelback pulled off the feat with its very first chart entry, How You Remind Me. Atlanta-born, New York-raised Mary J. Blige had peaked at No. 2 and No. 3 on the Hot 100, but never had a No. 1 single until 2001, when Family Affair ruled for six weeks, helping it become the No. 2 song of the year. Blige made her debut on the Hot 100 in 1994 with You Remind Me. Family Affair was her fourth song to appear on a year-end recap. In 1995, her collaboration with Method Man on I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need To Get By was No. 47 for the year. A year later, her song from the Waiting To Exhale soundtrack, Not Gon' Cry, ranked No. 19 for 1996. And in 1997, Everything was No. 80 for the year. Usher Raymond was the only male artist to have a No. 1 as a solo act in 2001, and he did it twice, with U Remind Me and U Got It Bad. Both ended up in the Top 15 for the year, with the latter at No. 3 and the former at No. 11. In 1997 he was No. 7 for the year with You Make Me Wanna... and the following year he was No. 8 with Nice & Slow. Actress Jennifer Lopez had her most successful song up until that time with a remix of I'm Real. The original recording, which appeared on her J.Lo album, was a solo effort; the new version sounded so different that some people wondered if it was the same song. Ja Rule, who was also No. 36 for the year with Livin' It Up, was featured on the remix. I'm Real was one of three songs by Lopez on the 2001 recap. Love Don't Cost a Thing was No. 29 and Play was No. 76. It was the second time that Lopez had a year-end Top 10 hit; in 1999, her debut single If You Had My Love placed seventh. Clive Davis' new J Records was immediately successful upon launch - no surprise given his track record. His biggest success was with R&B newcomer Alicia Keys, who had been signed to Atlanta in 1998. Davis nurtured her talent and she was one of a handful of artists he took with him when he started J. She had been trained as a classical pianist, and recorded her first album when she was just 19. Keys' first single, Fallin', spent six weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100 and ranked No. 5 for the year. Of the 14 songs that advanced to No. 1 in 2001, the longest-running chart-topper was Janet Jackson's All For You, which reigned for seven weeks and ended up in sixth place for the year. During the recording sessions for what would become the All For You album, Janet knew she wanted that to be the first single. Producer Jimmy Jam remembers Janet walking into the control room at the studio when they still had five or six more songs to record to complete the album. "She said, 'I don't want to sound crazy, but I think this is the first single. I know we're going to get some more songs and they're going to be really good. I just feel that I want this to be the first thing that people hear from me. When I do my first record after three years, I want this to be the tone.'" Both of Janet's 2001 hits - All For You and the No. 31 song, Someone To Call My Lover, were based on samples of previous songs. But Jackson wasn't familiar with either one, according to Jimmy Jam. All For You is based on Luther Vandross' The Glow of Love, released in 1980 when Vandross was the lead singer of the group Change. Jimmy Jam recalls, "She didn't know that song and I was really shocked. I was DJ'ing at the time that record was out, so that was a huge record in my life and one that I have always wanted to sample one day and bring it back for people to hear." Jam, who grew up listening to pop radio, had the same experience when he played America's Ventura Highway for Jackson. "She said, 'Ive never heard that.' And I said, 'I'm going to work this one up and I'll send it to you and you tell me what you think.' She loved it and we did it. For me, it's a thrill to hear that on the radio because I imagine people getting the same feeling as if they were hearing it for the first time as I did when I was a kid listening to AM radio." The members of Lifehouse first got together in Los Angeles, even though they were from different parts of the globe - Arizona, Guatemala, and Camarillo, California. Lead singer Jason Wade had lived in a number of different places, including Hong Kong, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon. The band's debut album, No Name Face, received critical raves, and a few weeks after its release, the song Hanging By a Moment was sitting on top of the Modern Rock Tracks chart. It crossed over to pop radio, and peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100. A long chart run helped it to become the No. 7 song of 2001. Orville Richard Burrell was born in Jamaica, and moved to Flatbush, Brooklyn, in New York when he was 18. In 1991, he was a US Marine serving in Kuwait during the Gulf War. Ten years later, he had the best-selling album of 2001 with Hotshot, thanks to two No. 1 singles. It Wasn't Me, which featured Ricardo "Rikrok" Ducent, was No. 8 for the year, while Angel, which featured Rayvon, was No. 13. Angel was based on Angel of the Morning, the No. 53 song of 1968 by Merrilee Rush & the Turnabouts, and the No. 34 song of 1981 by Juice Newton. Angel also sampled the Steve Miller Band's The Joker, the No. 10 hit of 1974. It Wasn't Me and Angel were Shaggy's highest year-end placings, after ranking No. 23 for 1995 with the two-sided hit, Boombastic/In the Summertime. Christina Aguilera had reached the top of the Hot 100 three times by the time she teamed up with Lil' Kim, Mýa and P!nk on a remake of Lady Marmalade for the soundtrack to Moulin Rouge. Her three partners all made No. 1 for the first time when the song found itself in pole position for five weeks, beating the one-week reign of the Labelle version. That single was the No. 20 title of 1975, giving the new version another edge, as it finished ninth for 2001. The events of September 11 resulted in a wave of patriotism that swept the US for the rest of the year. A flood of nationalistic songs appeared on the charts, but only one ended up on the year-end list. Aaron Tippin's Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly ranked No. 77. Other songs not specifically recorded in the wake of the terrorist attacks, like Enya's Only Time and Enrique Iglesias' Hero, became emotional anthems and received increased airplay after 9/11. Click the link below to see all the songs which made it to the Top 5 of Billboard's Hot 100 for 2001. Submit your vote by scoring each song out of 10 (10 being the greatest). The average will then determine our Singles Rate for the year. Votes must be submitted in the next 72 hours. VOTE HERE! Tune in soon to see how it all unfolds. Good luck to your faves!

Game Changer© Damn... and isn't he married? The article didn't say his wife.. or child.. it says female passenger... lemme do some research oh...