Los Angeles' musical avantgarde was still absorbing the possibilities of computer-based composition. For example, Los Angeles native Steven Takasugi, a graduate of UC San Diego in the 1990s, collected samples of acoustic instruments and then used a computer to create pieces like "Jargon of Nothingness" (2001).

Canadian-born violinist Lili Haydn, raised in the Los Angeles commune of Father Yod, studied singing with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and played with the Los Angeles Philarmonic Orchestra before her Sunday show at the Viper Room (a Hollywood club opened in 1993 by movie star Johnny Depp and others) became legendary, an austere mixture of classical, folk, jazz, pop, rock and pop, as documented on her debut album "Lili" (1997).

The jazz scene thrived on its own brand of avant-garde experimentation.

The BSharp Jazz Quartet bridged hard-bop and free-jazz styles on "B Sharp Jazz Quartet" (1994).

Los Angeles native Nels Cline was a White jazz guitarist that spilled over into rock, and even into punk-rock, on albums such as "Chest" (recorded in 1993) for his trio, "Destroy All" (2001) for four guitarists and a rhythm section, and "Instrumentals" (2002), ironically credited to the Nels Cline Singers.

Improvising guitarist Greg Headley proceeded from the abstract manipulation of guitar sounds on "A Table of Opposites" (June 2000) to the frantic electronic noisescapes of "Similis" (2001).

Demolition Squad, the duo of White saxophonist Jim Goetsch and Japanese keyboardist Kim Koschka, integrated drum'n'bass, dub, trip-hop, world-music, orchestral and electronic effects to craft "Hit It" (2001).

Los Angeles-born saxophonist Kamasi Washington, who had studied ethnomusicology at UCLA, cemented the jazz collective West Coast Get Down on his album "The Proclamation" (2007) and flirted with Afrofuturist themes.

Meanwhile, the boom of rock and hip-hop continued unabated.

In fact, Los Angeles produced another great rock invention: rap-metal, the genre launched by Rage Against The Machine, with "Rage Against The Machine" (1992), one of the most violent albums of the era, realizing the similarity between the condition of Black urban rebels and the condition of White urban rebels. Korn's "Korn" (1994) and Linkin Park's "Hybrid Theory" (2000) were hit albums of the genre. There was the hardcore of Offspring, the punk-pop of Pennywise and the emocore of Weezer, but the most ferocious punk music often came from all-girl bands, part of the "riot-grrrrls" movement, such as L7, who played pop-metal on "Bricks Are Heavy" (1992), and Red Aunts, who played bluesy garage-rock on "#1 Chicken" (1995).

Southern California jumped on the bandwagon of grunge (invented in Seattle) with the Stone Temple Pilots, notably the album "Purple" (1994), while System Of A Down represented prog-metal, notably on "Toxicity" (2001). Tool sort of fused grunge and prog-rock in the lengthy and brainy suites of "Aenima" (1996) and especially "Lateralus" (2001). Stoner-rock, the brutal hard psychedelic sound invented by Blue Cheer, was pushed to the extreme of a super-distorted, super-heavy and super-loud sound by Kyuss on "Blues For The Red Sun" (1992), and then by their countless imitators and spin-offs: Fu Manchu, Unida, Nebula, Queens Of The Stone Age, etc.

Distorted Pony's "Punishment Room" (1992), Babyland's "You Suck Crap" (1992), and Fear Factory's "Demanufacture" (1995) explored various avenues of musical violence bordering on metal and industrial.

As usual, the counterpart and counterweight to hard rock was a large contingent of folk and pop musicians. Sheryl Crow, who arrived from Missouri in 1987 to work as a backing vocalist for Michael Jackson, was the one who managed to sell that scene to the masses. with "Tuesday Night Music Club" (1993), an album titled after the circle of friends who helped her compose it. The intellectual Tori Amos, who had moved in 1984 from Maryland to Los Angeles and who held her first major concert at the Montreux jazz festival, was the Joni Mitchell of the new era, one of the first female singer-songwriters to play a grand piano on stage. Her albums "Little Earthquakes" (1992) and "Under The Pink" (1994) set a new standard for her category. Los Angeles native Beck Hansen, who started out performing in humble venues such as Al's Bar in Arts District, Jabberjaw coffeehouse and Troy Cafe (opened by his mother Bibbe Hansen in their Hispanic quarter), changed the way singer-songwriters sounded by incorporating hip-hop beats on "Mellow Gold" (1994) and "Odelay" (1996), both released by Geffen after becoming an underground legend, and became a leader of the anti-folk movement. The Pomona-born Ben Harper was the link to the blues world with albums such as "Welcome To The Cruel World" (1994). John Darnielle's project Mountain Goats, jumpstarted with an all-girl reggae band while he was still working for a hospital with releases for small independent labels like Shrimper (founded in 1990 by Dennis Callaci) and Absolutely Kosher (formed in 1998 by Cory Brown), employed humble acoustic folk for ambitious concept albums such as "Sweden" (1995) and "Tallahassee" (2002). Mark Oliver Everett, who had relocated in 1987 from Virginia, the son of a famous quantum physicist and the rare case of a musician who debuted on a major label without playing live, improved over Beck's ideas with the sophisticated arrangements of "Beautiful Freak" (1996), peaking with the bleak concept album "Electro-Shock Blues" (1998), recorded with his band The Eels. The intimate lo-fi songwriter Elliott Smith moved in 1999 to Los Angeles but only to die there (a drug addict and alcoholic, he killed himself in 2003).

Carla Bozulich fronted the Geraldine Fibbers on their desolate "Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home" (1995) and then turned into a follower of Diamanda Galas on the terrifying "Evangelista" (2006). Geraldine Fibbers had debuted at Fuzzyland, a night-club opened by journalist Jac Zinder.

"Fuzzy" (1993) by Grant Lee Phillips' project Grant Lee Buffalo, and "Power Trips Down Lovers Lane" (1993) by Franklin Bruno's Nothing Painted Blue offered intellectual versions of power-pop.

Gothic rock was virtually reinvented by Black Tape For A Blue Girl, the brainchild of keyboardist Sam Rosenthal, who penned "A Chaos Of Desire" (1991), a cycle of baroque ballads for chamber ensemble and electronics, "Remnants Of A Deeper Purity" (1996), a collection of melancholy madrigals set in desolate landscapes, and "As One Aflame Laid Bare By Desire" (1999), performed with the austere aplomb of sacred music. Rosenthal was also the founder of the label Projekt, which specialized in gothic rock and released for example "Songs Of Betrayal" (1995), a philosophical meditation by Johnny Indovina's project Human Drama.

Madonna, now one of the biggest stars in the world, bought a house in 1989 in the Hollywood Hills and in 1992 upgraded to a mansion in the Hollywood Hills built in 1926 by architect John DeLario for oil explorer Patrick Longdon. Madonna was appointed head of Maverick, a record label formed in 1992 by Warner that debuted with Madonna's own book "Sex" (1992) and its accompanying studio album, "Erotica" (1992). The big breakthrough for the label came three years later with the album "Jagged Little Pill" (1995) by a very young Canadian immigrant, Alanis Morissette, a collection of generational and gender anthems which became the best-selling album of 1996.

Several acts played a form of restrained psychedelic pop, for example Idaho on the funereal "Year After Year" (1993), and Madder Rose on the idyllic "Bring It Down" (1993). Savage Republic gave rise to Medicine of "Shot Forth Self Living" (1992) and to Scenic of "Aquatica" (1996), two different variants of psychedelia. Mazzy Star initiated a new genre, slocore, with the tender slo-motion lullabies of "So Tonight That I Might See" (1993). Crawlspace embraced psychedelic free-jazz on "Sphereality" (1992).

Ambient music in the vein of Harold Budd surfaced on "Reflect Like A Mirror, Respond Like An Echo" (1992) by Barry Craig's project A Produce, and on "Ambience Minimus" (1994) by Chuck Wild's Liquid Mind.

The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was founded in 1999 by the Los Angeles–based music promoters Paul Tollett and Rick Van Santen in the desert three hours east of Los Angeles. first one: Rage Against the Machine, Pavement, Tool, Korn, DJ Shadow, Beck, Ben Harper

The 1990s were, generally speaking, the definitive era for hip-hop's maturation, which involved both commercial success and artistic growth. This was particularly true in Los Angeles, the epicenter of West Coast rap.

Latino hip-hop music was born with the singles released by Kid Frost (Arturo Molina) in the mid-1980s. An artistic peak of West-Coast rap was reached by a semi-Latino group, Cypress Hill, who recorded the depressed trilogy started with "Cypress Hill" (1991).

Ice-T's "gangsta-rap" erupted after the racial riots of 1992. These rappers were arrogant bards of the ghetto, but often accompanied by a fatalistic mood: gangsta-rap was not about immortality, but about survival. Two former members of N.W.A. delivered milestones of gangsta-rap: Ice Cube (O'Shea Jackson) with "AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted " (1990) and Dr Dre (Andre Young) with "The Chronic" (1992). Gangsta-rap went mainstream via albums such as "Doggystyle" (1993) by Snoop Doggy Dogg (Calvin Broadus) and produced by Dr Dre, and "Me Against The World" (1995), the third album from Oakland-based 2Pac (aka Tupac Shakur, born Lesane Parish Crooks, shot to death in 1996), which was followed by "All Eyez On Me" (1996), the first double album of hip-hop music. As gangsta-rap generated sales, rappers found it almost obligatory to spin stereotypical hard-boiled tales of drugs, sex and murder. One of the main sources of creativity for the Los Angeles scene was the the Freestyle Fellowship crew, responsible for the elaborate collages of "Innercity Griots" (1993). Jazz-hop was briefly a sensation after the success of Pharcyde's "Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde" (1992).

During the 1990s, San Diego became a major center of rock music, in particular of "post-hardcore" and of "post-rock", from Trumans Water's brainy post-hardcore album "Spasm Smash" (1993) to Tristeza's instrumental post-rock album "Spine And Sensory" (1999). Pall Jenkins (Paolo Zappoli) featured both in Three Mile Pilot, a guitar-less trio of vocals, bass and drums that made the post-hardcore album "Chief Assassin To The Sinister" (1994), and in Black Heart Procession, that produced the melancholy, skeletal and creepy post-rock lullabies of "2" (1999) and "3" (2000). Rob Crow covered the whole spectrum with his many parallel projects: progressive hardcore with Heavy Vegetable, post-rock with Optiganally Yours, the acoustic quartet Thingy, the power-pop trio Pinback, etc. San Diego's post-rock school also yielded Xiu Xiu, arrangers of theatrical chamber-rock on "A Promise" (2003) and "La Foret" (2005). No wonder then that San Diego boasted two of the most innovative punk bands in the world: Rocket From The Crypt, who released one of the catchiest albums of the genre, "Circa Now" (1992), and its spin-off Drive Like Jehu, whose "Yank Crime" (1994) was one of the most excoriating albums of the era. Blink 182 cashed in on that scene with their fifth album "Enema Of The State" (1999).

A poorly documented collective called Crash Worship staged raves in warehouses based on non-stop ritualistic percussive pandemonium. As the title of their underground cassette stated: "The Science Of Ecstasy" (1989). Psychedelic rock was well represented in San Diego by Maquiladora, a trio that filled "Lost Works Of Eunice Phelps" (1998) and "Ritual Of Hearts" (2002) with lunatic ballads baked by the hot sun of the desert.