Dirty Decade: Rap Music and the U.S. South, 1997-2007
Matt Miller, Emory University
Essay Sections:
Introduction | Rap
and Place | The Rap Map Unfolds | Rap Scenes and Styles | Marketing | Dirtiness Defined | Dirtiness in Southern Rap | Get Crunk |
Visual Culture | Conclusion | Notes| Recommended Resources
The Rap Map Unfolds:
From its beginnings in New York's neighborhoods, rap spread first to other large cities in the northeast, then jumped across the continent to southern California, for reasons that had much more to do with the preexisting structure of the music industry than with any sort of monopoly on talent held by the California-based rappers and producers who entered the national rap market in the late 1980s. However, California-based artists and independent record label owners took advantage of the opportunity and in turn helped to develop what would become known as the "gangsta rap" subgenre. This style was characterized by lyrics which emphasized criminality, violence, and rebellious anger, tempered by a celebration of the extravagant lifestyles of pimps and drug dealers.
Within the lyrics of this hyper-masculinized genre, women were infrequently represented. When they were, it was within a schema where the only positive model was that of the older, self-sacrificing single mother. Younger women were scorned as either stuck-up "bitches" or promiscuous "hoes." As in other emergent rap scenes, artists, producers, and label owners in these places were overwhelmingly male, and the emergence of well-known female rappers was a slow process. However, in New York, California, and other places where rap scenes coalesced, women and girls played a central role as part of rap's audience. As Kyra Gaunt argues, "black girls' sphere of musical activity (e.g. "handclapping games, cheers, and double-dutch") represents one of the earliest formations of a black popular music culture."6
Within the lyrics of this hyper-masculinized genre, women were infrequently represented. When they were, it was within a schema where the only positive model was that of the older, self-sacrificing single mother. Younger women were scorned as either stuck-up "bitches" or promiscuous "hoes." As in other emergent rap scenes, artists, producers, and label owners in these places were overwhelmingly male, and the emergence of well-known female rappers was a slow process. However, in New York, California, and other places where rap scenes coalesced, women and girls played a central role as part of rap's audience. As Kyra Gaunt argues, "black girls' sphere of musical activity (e.g. "handclapping games, cheers, and double-dutch") represents one of the earliest formations of a black popular music culture."6
| Due to their proximity to both the centers of power in the entertainment industry and centers of rap creativity in largely African American communities around L.A., Southern California-based independent record labels and their artists were able to firmly establish themselves as competitors in the national rap market in the late 1980s. This development occurred in a complementary fashion with the collective creation of the idea of a distinctive geographically based style and point of view. While relatively vague and mutable, the conventions of West Coast 'gangsta' rap — which included particular musical, thematic, visual, and lyrical markers — were perceived to be distinctive despite significant areas of overlap with other rap music.7 The emergence of "authentic" rap from the West Coast in the form of acts like N.W.A. or Ice-T led to a steady progression of more pop-oriented rappers who exchanged authenticity for access to wider audiences, as in the case of MC Hammer, Tone Loc, or Young MC. |
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The U.S. southeast represented as the "Third Coast" (2003, Starzmusic). |
Until the late 1980s, when Los Angeles emerged as an up-and-coming center for rap music production, New York had enjoyed an exclusive claim on the genre. Two regionally based stylistic spheres began to take hold. New Yorkers still dominated rap in the northeast throughout the 1980s, but as the decade progressed, many rap acts began to emerge from areas outside of the core neighborhoods associated with the genre's early years. New York retained a symbolically and structurally central position, but suburbs like Long Island and nearby places like New Jersey and Philadephia began to be grouped with New York-based artists to form a cultural-industrial bloc called "the East Coast." Meanwhile, the Los Angeles-based scene engendered another regional imaginary, "the West Coast." This metaregional division was used to categorize artists, companies, and audiences and was soon imbued by audiences, critics, and music industry personnel with an understanding of basic differences in style and viewpoint which characterized each contingent.
Hip-hop scholar Murray Forman has noted the correspondence between "the rise and impact of rappers on the West Coast" and a "discursive shift from the spatial abstractions framed within 'the ghetto' to the more localized and specific discursive construct of 'the hood' occurring in 1987-88."8 Did West Coast artists and audiences initiate this change? Or did they simply hitch their wagons to an emerging trend in rap? What is clear is that the considerable influence of West Coast-based gangsta rap along the lines of musical style, lyrical content, and imagery was paired with a general movement in rap towards an emphasis on "regional affiliations as well as . . . a keen sense of . . . the extreme local."9 As Forman notes, the emergence of a place-based concept of authenticity relates to changes in the conception of rap's narrative voice: "The tendency toward narrative self-awareness and a more early definable subjectivity effectively closed the distance between the story and the storyteller, and the concept of place-based reality became more of an issue in evaluating an artist's legitimacy within the hip-hop scene."10
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As Adam Krims argues, this "poetics of locality and authenticity can work through sound, visual images, words, and media images together."11 Reference to the local in the lyrics and titles of songs such as NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" or 2 Live Crew's "Miami" offers one way of figuring place. On the more abstract level of musical style, the metaregions of rap are tied to regional flavors. Highly mutable and unstable, differences in musical style relate to the different cultural mix at work in various places, as well as to the efforts of empowered individuals or companies. In L.A., African Americans, some with roots in southern states like Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Arkansas engaged with Southern California Latino youth culture, with its mellow soul music and lowrider cars.12 In Miami, another distinct blend formed, as African Americans with roots in the U.S. South formed but one element of a multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, and heavily Caribbean cultural mix. |
A map of Mississippi "places" rapper Dirty South (2001, Hard 2 Hit). |
Rap artists and companies selling their music profited from the place-based authenticity that association with established centers of production provided. However, the strongly felt and expressed sense of place, combined with economic or artistic competitiveness, led these blocs to become increasingly hostile towards one another — as Kelefa Sanneh writes, "the '90s saw the rise and fall of a bitter bicoastal war, which gave way to an explosion of regional styles."13 Many of the most prominent of these local styles were located in various urban areas of the U.S. South.
Essay Sections:
Introduction | Rap
and Place | The Rap Map Unfolds | Rap Scenes and Styles | Marketing | Dirtiness Defined | Dirtiness in Southern Rap | Get Crunk |
Visual Culture | Conclusion | Notes| Recommended Resources
