The Culture Corner: How Cibo Matto quietly influenced New York in the '90s

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Cibo Matto's 1999 album, Stereo Type A Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Courtesy of the artist

Cibo Matto's 1999 album, Stereo Type A

Courtesy of the artist

At the tail end of the '90s, a duo of New York-based Japanese expats called Cibo Matto released their sophomore album, Stereo Type A. While the album didn't make Cibo Matto a household name, World Cafe correspondent John Morrison says Stereo Type A quietly subverted stereotypes at the time.

In this session, Morrison explains where Cibo Matto fits into the New York music scene of the '90s, specifically the universe surrounding the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal record label.

"You had this whole scene of musicians around the Beasties and Grand Royal who were obviously influenced by Brazilian music on top of a bunch of other genres and stylistic influences," Morrison says.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.