It was published in October 2000 by St. Martin's Press's Griffin imprint and collects approximately 3,800 capsule album reviews, originally written by Christgau during the 1990s for his "Consumer Guide" column in The Village Voice.

Covering a variety of genres within and beyond the conventional pop/rock axis of most music press, the reviews are composed in a concentrated, fragmented prose style characterized by layered clauses, caustic wit, one-liner jokes, political digressions, and allusions ranging from common knowledge to the esoteric.

Adhering to Christgau's mainstream tastes and some personal eccentricities, the guide favors music on standards of catchiness, rhythmic vitality, and practical significance, while generally penalizing qualities like sexist content and hour-plus album lengths.

[1] He has said that the 1990s guide, collecting reviews written between 1990 and 2000, was "in many ways" the hardest to develop because of the decade's proliferation in music production and the growth of the record industry's market – he estimated approximately 35,000 albums were released each year worldwide.

In September 1990, he abandoned his original letter-grading scheme on a scale of A-plus to E-minus, as B-plus records had become the most commonly reviewed works while albums rarely received grades lower than C-minus in the column.

"[3] In this new format, records that Christgau deemed B-pluses were only reviewed occasionally and most were filed under an "Honorable Mention" section, featuring one short phrasal statement for each album alongside its recommended tracks.

[3] Records he considered poor were relegated to a list of ungraded "Duds" or featured in a special Thanksgiving Day column dedicated to negative reviews (titled "Turkey Shoot"), with the highest possible grade a B-minus.

[5] Christgau refined his new format further as the 1990s progressed, anticipating the decade's rapid increase in music recording and the diversification of the CD into archival releases and longer album lengths – from the traditional 40-minute average to upwards of 60 minutes.

The following year, an argument with fellow critic Eric Weisbard persuaded Christgau to review in each column a "Dud of the Month", which, in comparison to "Turkey Shoot", highlighted "a fair number of dull, disappointing, or overhyped B's".

His most essential albums from the 1990s, as mentioned in the guide, include Fear of a Black Planet (1990) by Public Enemy, Nevermind (1991) by Nirvana, Maxinquaye (1995) by Tricky, The Score (1996) by Fugees, and Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998) by Lucinda Williams.

[9] In regards to sexism in rap, he refutes the commonly held notion among African-American critics that "young black men should have absolute carte blanche to say what they want" because they are "thoroughly fucked over" by a racist society.

Dawn, Kris Kross, and a variety of African musicians, while many conventionally acclaimed releases are appraised negatively, including those by Radiohead, the Flaming Lips, Elvis Costello, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Marilyn Manson, Son Volt, and Emmylou Harris.

"[14] Noel Murray regards the writing as veering from "incisively personal" to dense in the manner of prose poetry, while Rick Anderson observes "biting one-liners, obscure references and unapologetically political asides".

[21] As examples of these qualities, Murray refers to Christgau's reviews of Cat Power's Moon Pix (1998) and the 1993 Counting Crows album August and Everything After, in the latter of which the critic writes that the band's frontman Adam Duritz "sings like the dutiful son of permissive parents I hope don't sit next to me at Woodstock".

[27] Reviewing for No Depression magazine that month, Manzler applauded Christgau's aim for "an opinionated, expansive survey" of the past decade's music, albeit at the expense of total consistency and grace in coverage.

Appraising the merits of Christgau's "densely packed, deeply textured" writing, Manzler respected the uniqueness of his "aesthetic, winnowed and refined over three decades of music processing" and which, at its best, "ring[s] in the mind's ear like catchy three-minute pop confections".

Considering the 1990s "Consumer Guide" collection alongside its preceding volumes on the 1970s and 1980s, Cartwright said "they're a comprehensive overview of musical activity across the past 30 years, effortlessly surfing the high ways and cul-de-sacs of popular culture.

Murray, writing in Nashville Scene, tried to understand the new rating system as a method of "cherry-picking the ripest fruit on a dying tree" that is "the album as an art form", which he acknowledged has been "debased" by the CD era.

His review also highlighted Christgau's commendable disapproval but inconsistent coverage of "intentionally sloppy and/or overly pensive indie rock", alongside a "deferential stance" toward more exotic styles the critic is less knowledgeable about.

Despite "moments of stunning clarity", Murray concluded that the guide lacks the relevancy of its previous volumes and that the critic's writing would benefit from a stronger focus on music of specialized interest to him: "In these cluttered times, we need someone to sort through the pile, not embrace it.

Club, in March 2002, Klein panned Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s as significantly inferior to its predecessors, particularly because of the complicated ratings it implements alongside traditional letter grades, "an error in judgement that robs the book of any sense of scale, context, or comprehension".

"[16] However, he later told Rolling Stone in February 2001 that he has since appraised the band's newest album Kid A (2000) favorably with an "A-minus" after its performance on the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll – which Christgau supervised – encouraged him to revisit it in his column.

A brief essay accompanying the ranking advised that "these books should be read as a trilogy, with special attention paid to the way the last decade's increasingly fragmented pop landscape and flood of DIY releases has caused even The Dean to sputter a little.