For some reason, I have a lot of fond memories of some of the music that was on the radio waves in early to mid 2001 and once every blue moon, I'll go and revisit some of those songs.
Daft Punk - "One More Time" "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" (honestly any song from Discovery)
ATC - "Around the World"
Crazy Town - "Butterfly"
J'Lo - "Play"
Shaggy - "It Wasn't Me"
Everlast - "I Can't Move"
Janet Jackson - "All for You"
Eve - "Let Me Blow Your Mind"
Any U2 song from All That You Can't Leave Behind
Staind - "It's Been Awhile"
Destiny's Child - "Independent Women" and "Bootylicious"
Nelly - "Ride Wit Me"
Jay-Z "Guilty Until Proven Innocent"
Any Outkast song from Stankonia
Eiffel 65 - "Move Your Body"
Memphis Bleek - "Is That Your Chick"
Put some of Nelly Furtado, Linkin Park, POD, and Moby's songs in there too.
Are some, dare I say, most of these songs three to four minutes of dumb shlock? Defiantly. Most of these aren't even rap songs, but as you said, there was something about that small period of time before 9/11 happened that a lot of people, including myself, like to hold on to. Us 90's kids had to come to the realization that that innocent time period was over, we were officially in the new millennium, everything around us was changing - for better or worse, and it just seemed like we were going into the dark unknown.
" and then I saw it was last year, so no, no I was not. Still..."dare I say." 
