Matt Miller, Dirty Decade: Rap Music and the U.S. South, 1997-2007; Southern Spaces

For music critics and journalists, the "Dirty South" became shorthand for the growing numbers of rap artists from the former Confederate states. Sometimes appearing as a geographical referent, at other times the Dirty South described a genre of music. On the website allmusic.com in 2008, the Dirty-South-as-genre appeared as "a stoned, violent, sex-obsessed and (naturally) profane brand of modern hip-hop," the anonymous writer asserting that OutKast and Goodie Mob "were the best the genre had to offer, since both their music and their lyrics were much sharper than such contemporaries as the No Limit posse." Allmusic.com also features an entry for "Southern Rap," offering an overview of the most successful artists from the South with no attempt at thematic or stylistic unification.

The 2008 entry for "Dirty South" on Wikipedia, while lacking the dismissive tone of allmusic.com, is hardly more helpful. As part of a larger entry on "southern hip-hop" that features a series of subgenres or local styles, Dirty South is listed as "the biggest and most popular genre of southern rap," which itself is "just a general term for Rap made in the South." "Dirty South rap," write Wikipedians, "is largely characterized by its bouncy, upbeat, exuberant, club-friendly tunes and simplistic, heavily rhythmic lyrical delivery." "Dirty South" is also used as a geographical referent, "a term for the South minus any states whose Southern character is debatable." The shifting boundaries of "the South" in these definitions, and the fact that this uncited characterization of Dirty South as a discrete genre is not generally shared by music journalists, scholars, or artists who have commented on the subject, underscore the difficulties of dealing with a concept as mutable and adaptable as "Dirty South."

A close reading of The Source's "Dirty South" reveals a puzzlingly conflicted mixture of connotations and perspectives. On one hand, the South represents a sort of hip-hop time machine through which a lost paradise can be regained. Citing the "fun factor" and the way that the "communal spirit of the artists and their music resonates with the masses," editor Kim Osorio enthused, "whether it's a packed club or a backyard BBQ, there's a whole other world of hip-hop down in the Dirty Dirty." Touching on traditional notions of (white) southern gentility and New South boosterism (Atlanta once proclaimed itself "the city too busy to hate"), she continues,

cats from the third coast got some manners. The idea that you can do your thing, get your money and still not hate on the next man (or woman). At least in the South, they understand that hip-hop has grown enough for all of us to eat. Look at how many people Cash Money, No Limit and the Dungeon Family have put on over the years. It's common practice down South to spread the wealth.46

Field Mob, Light Poles and Pine Trees CD cover

One need not look far for contradictions to this vision of a feel-good communal South with rural undertones. Osorio's "Southern hospitality" — marked by "manners" and a willingness of southern artists and labels to "stick together" —lies over an imagined potential for lethal violence."There's no need for studio gangstas and desk thugs. 'Cause if you bark up the wrong tree, you just might getcha jaw broke, wig split, neck snapped . . . or forehead poked out . . . thinking this is just rap."47 In her commentary, violence, community, and rap authenticity combine to form a highly problematic vision of the South and its rap music. Describing the action in Three 6 Mafia's "very successful, graphic, straight-to-video movie" entitled Choices (2001), producer and rapper Juicy J offers a similar perspective: "[the film] is basically how it goes down in Memphis . . . It's not a pretty scene. A lot of these small towns got crazy niggas killing and cutting each other's throats."48

Rural imagery marks the work of this
Albany, Georgia-based group (2006, Geffen).

While Juicy J's comments call into question some of the glib assertions about the South made earlier in the issue, The Source's article on Three 6 Mafia reveals the persistance of another kind of place-based essentialism related to an organic paradigm of reflection with regard to the relationship of music and place. The group's "dark sound" based in satanic or macabre lyrical imagery (often voiced in "monotone chants") and "scary, eerie beats" represent, a writer in The Source remarked, "a reflection of their surroundings. With Tennessee bordering nine different states, it is an ideal distribution center for all things corporate and criminal . . . [Memphis] is rife with extreme poverty and gang activity."49 While it seems just as logical to connect a "dark sound" (or contemporary Memphis conditions) to the historical legacy of racism and poverty in the Delta region, either explanation conflicts with Kim O.'s assertion that "it's the fun factor that seems to be the selling point for the New South."50 What is noteworthy here is not that The Source's editors and writers ignored the contradictions among the multiple meanings subsumed into the Dirty South imaginary. Artists and producers, as well as national audiences, often did the same. Rather, it is the fact that historically rooted imagery and media-fueled fantasy remain so close to the surface of southern rap, its performance, interpretation, and evaluation. Rappers like Three Six Mafia or Lil Jon, as well as music critics, revisit a variety of southern imaginaries that predate the rap era.