Southern hip hop

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Southern hip hop, also called southern rap, is a form of American hip hop music that emerged from a late-1990s club-oriented vibe in southern U.S. cities, including Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Nashville, Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham, New Orleans, Miami, Shreveport, and Baton Rouge.^[1] The music was a reaction to the 1980s flow of hip hop culture from New York City and California, and can be considered a third major American hip hop genre, after East Coast hip hop and West Coast hip hop.^[2] Many early Southern rap artists released their music independently or on mixtapes after encountering difficulty securing record-label contracts.^[3]

The first rap from the Southern United States to gain national noteriety was Miami Bass music from Miami, Florida. This genre of music was primarily designed for dance clubs and focused on hard bass to get the party going, rather than lyricism. The 2 Live Crew were the most famous Miami Bass group. They released their debut album, 2 Live Crew Is What We Are in 1986. Their third album, 1989's As Nasty As They Wanna Be garnered national attention for the attempts of some conservative politicians to censor its sales for its extremely explicit sexual content. It also contained the hit single "Me So Horny". Miami Bass would continue to have some national success through the 1990s, with artists from Florida such as 95 South, Tag Team, 69 Boyz, and the Quad City DJ's all scoring some hit singles. However, success was usually short lived and Miami Bass never truly got that much exposure outside of Florida. It also always struggled to gain acceptance from mainstream hip-hop fans, most of whom were mostly into East Coast Rap that traditionally placed a much higher emphasis on lyricism.

Around the same time that the 2 Live Crew were causing great controversy for their sexually explicit lyrics, a group from Houston, Texas, was also stirring up politicians for their explicit content of violnce and other subjects. The Geto Boys released their second album Grip It! On That Other Level in 1989, and it was a landmark release for Southern Rap. The Geto Boys, made up of rappers Bushwick Bill, Scarface, and Willie D had a style somewhat similar to the West Coast Group N.W.A.. It was highly explicit gangsta rap. The release was highly acclaimed by many hip-hop fans and is considered probably the first classic Southern Rap album. The Geto Boys would continue to release more material, which was still highly explicit and frequently censored. Their 1991 single "Mind Playin' Tricks On Me" actually was a pop hit, making the Top 40 by peaking at #23 on the Billboard Hot 100. This brought new attention to Southern Rap. Geto Boys member Scarface also released his debut solo album in 1991 titled Mr. Scarface Is Back, and it was well received by hip-hop fans.

After the Geto Boys Southern Rap started greatly expanding and started gaining much more national noteriety. Another Texas group, UGK (Underground Kingz), released their debut album Too Hard to Swallow in 1992. Their debut didn't make much of a splash, but their later releases, especially 1996's Ridin' Dirty would be very well known and chart highly. Eightball & MJG debuted with Comin' Out Hard in 1993, putting the city of Memphis, Tennessee on the hip-hop map. These groups would become two of Southern Rap's premier acts in the mid 1990s. Perhaps the biggest splash though was made by Atlanta, Georgia group OutKast in 1994 with their debut Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. This album charted top 20 on the Billboard charts and contained high charting singles such as "Player's Ball" and the title track. It went Platinum, and really made the Southern hip-hop scene a national force. OutKast would go on to become one of the best selling rap groups of all time. The production on that album by production team Organized Noize got particularly high praise, and it would help to shape the Southern sound for years to come. The production would give southern music a signature sound, seperating it completely as a sub-genre (As previous southern rap releases had production reminiscient of Dr. Dre's G Funk). They would also produce other landmark albums such as the Goodie Mob's Soul Food in 1995 and future OutKast releases.

In the late 1990s Southern Rap began to be just as popular if not more popular than East Coast and West Coast Rap due to widespread attention from the "breaking out phase" in the mid nineties. Along with OutKast and the Goodie Mob, the record labels Cash Money Records and No Limit Records began to be extremely popular, releasing multiple multi-platinum albums. Both lables were from New Orleans, Louisiana. Cash Money Records and their in-house producer, Mannie Fresh, tended to use a traditional Bounce Music style, which had been popular in New Orleans for some time but got its first mainstream exposure through Cash Money. Albums such as Juvenile's 400 Degreez in 1998 went multi-platinum and had the Bounce style. Many more Southern rappers began rapping over beats that were specifically engineered in this fashion, and were played in clubs so that people could dance to them, especially in Atlanta. No Limit Records was also extremely popular and used a style that was more traditional and more resembled East and West Coast hip-hop of the time. The most recognizable rapper on the label, Master P, was also the label's president and CEO.

Hip hop native to the South placed heavy emphasis on beats, tending to forego lyricism. However, this allowed Southern rap to penetrate into the mainstream, as people who never would have listened to hip hop were drawn in by infectious beats.^{[citation needed][original research?]} Southern rap grew popular in clubs, and got heavy rotation in dancing venues. By the early 2000s rap from the South had become equally if not more popular than that from the East or West. New forms of Southern Rap were also being developed such as Crunk, pioneered by Atlanta producer Lil Jon and Memphis collective Three 6 Mafia. Later in the decade Snap Music also became very popular and saw mainstream hits such as "Crank Dat (Soulja Boy)" by Soulja Boy Tell 'Em.

[edit] Notable musicians

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[edit] External links

• Eyesoda.com [1] Film New Flavors: The Emergence of Southern Hip Hop (2008)
• 'Ya Heard Me': A documentary film about a regional version of hip-hop specific to New Orleans called Bounce.
• News about Southern hip hop artists.
• http://www.thehiphopdeal.com/2009/07/08/why-is-there-so-much-hate-towards-southern-hip-hop/