Southern Hip-Hop Essentials
PLAYLIST ∙ 2020Apple Music Hip-Hop
Hip-hop from the Dirty South reflected its environment: bass blasts made for car stereos, slow tempos for slow cruises, lyrics about the streets, and shout-outs to local thriving neighborhoods. Mid-’80s Miami bass groups like 2 Live Crew turned electrofunk into a rumbling, bawdy party that dominated clubs and parks. A few years later, the bloody outbursts of Houston gangsta rappers The Geto Boys and the avant-garde funk of Atlanta’s Outkast helped establish the “Third Coast”; enterprising independent labels then made national concerns out of the gloomy Memphis horrorcore of Three 6 Mafia, the twerk-ready New Orleans funk of Juvenile, and the slowed sounds of Houston’s Screwed Up Click. Raised on these records, other Southern states produced stars of their own, like Nappy Roots (Kentucky), Big K.R.I.T. (Mississippi), and Yelawolf (Alabama). By the 2010s, Atlanta would become hip-hop’s unofficial capital thanks to crunk, snap, and the domination of trap artists like Future and Migos.
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