(Note to reader: This is one of two reflections that I wrote when taking my Southern Hip-Hop class at Kennesaw State University. The class was taught by Dr. Regina Bradley and this reflection was submitted on September 26, 2019. Within the text I write about my experience with Hip-Hop/Rap in general up until that time and give a brief description of what I had learned in the class up until that time.)
Southern Hip-Hop culture is a new experience in learning for me. My interest in learning the importance of new music and how it was adopted is always a continued study. Through the course of these studies, both in acquiring my undergraduate degree, twenty years ago, and my graduate studies at the present time, I have learned the process of examining all aspects of musical listening including beat, instrumentation, lyrics, historical analysis and culture. My experience of listening to Hip-Hop music and the culture is sporadic. Southern Hip-Hop is even more nebulous because of my interest in other styles of music at a time when this music was first coming about.
My first exposure to Hip-Hop or Rap, as we called it in my teenage years, was from my friends exposing it to me in my high school days in the late 1980’s. My exposure was to the Beastie Boys, 2 Live Crew, M. C. Hammer, L.L. Cool J, M. C. Shy D., J. J. Fad and Salt ‘N’ Pepa. I listened to the Beastie Boys mostly, focusing on their first mainstream album, Licensed To Ill. I would later hear their second album Paul’s Boutique, which I believe now to be their crowning achievement. I don’t believe I focused as much on the lyrics of Hip-Hop during this time as much as I did the beat. Never did I think about the culture that the music came from either. My college years taught me to acknowledge this.
After graduation from high school and my move to acquire my undergraduate degree in music, I totally forgot about my interest in the Hip-Hop music of my high school days. I joined the jazz band in college and there was no turning back. I tried to immerse myself in all aspects of jazz but certain eras of this beautiful music attracted me, especially the Bebop era. Also I gained an interest in Brazilian music, in which certain genres of this music are usually categorized in the United States under the jazz genre, especially Bossa Nova. Our jazz band performed a lot of this music that influenced me.
Because of my interest in jazz I left Hip-Hop far behind and didn’t really get back into it outside of occasionally searching for the old album’s I listened to in high school such as 2 Live Crew’s Is What We Are or M.C. Shy D.’s Comin’ Correct in ’88.
I am excited to have a music class such as Southern Hip-Hop Culture because it coincides with my love of music. Upon the beginning of the class, I not only listened to the examples required for the course but also set my Spotify settings, while driving in my car, to such Southern Hip-Hop artists as Outkast or Goodie Mob, to listen to more examples outside of what was required. The group I was most familiar with upon enrolling was Lil’ Jon and the East Side Boyz, reason being I had a friend who actually was hired to drive their tour bus in the early 2000’s and who came to visit me at my apartment in Sandy Springs during that time, in the bus, after he had dropped the band off at their hotel for a night’s stay.
Comparing the Hip-Hop music, I listened to in high school with the Southern Hip-Hop music and culture that I am learning about now, one thing I notice is the lyrics of earlier Hip-Hop music seems to be less intensive in subject than the Southern Hip-Hop listening examples that are required in class. I guess, like any music, lyrics evolve over time. The examples of Southern Hip-Hop seem to be more about the life of the southern black man and the plight of working class black people as opposed to the lighter subject matter of love and relationships of earlier Hip-Hop. It seems that through the course of the history of Hip-Hop music in general, the subjects that rappers expressed about became more to the point and had deeper lyrics. Through the understanding of the evolution of Southern Hip-Hop, because of the post-Civil Rights movement, it gives a better understanding of how the lyrics evolved.
To understand the emergence of Southern Hip-Hop is to understand the evolution of the African American southern culture of the United States. The first era is the Antebellum period institution of slavery. The brutality of this system is well known to the prominent races of this country. Once the American Civil War was over in 1865, the period of Reconstruction began and, as a result, the introduction of the Jim Crow laws imposed on African Americans living in the southern United States remained in effect until the passing of the Civil Right Act of 1964. Many stories are abound of racial segregation during these years, from lynching’s of African-Americans, the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 Mississippi by white supremacists, to segregated schools, water-fountains and restaurants. Much literature is written about these years.
The third period to bring about the much-needed change of the plight of African Americans was the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. Many fought for the rights of African-Americans, both black and white. African-American activists included Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers. White activists included Senator Robert Kennedy, the Unitarian-Universalist minister James Reeb and civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo. All of the aforementioned were murdered for their belief in equality, with Reeb and Liuzzo murdered in the march on Selma in 1965.
What the observer can see from these three events is that the history of the south in the United States is not linear. Changes have been made in the way of positive laws but whether these laws have been upheld has been a different set of circumstances. The history of the African-American in the United States shows a constant refusal to accept these laws by certain groups, most notably white supremacists. As Dr. King said in his famous speech of April 3, 1968, the day before his life would be cut short by an assassin’s bullet, “I’ve been to the mountaintop.” According to our professor, Dr. Regina Bradley, that mountaintop ain’t flat. It is fraught with turmoil, considering that the “mountaintop” means pure and complete racial equality.
The Hip-Hop of the south does bring a new form of legacy concerning the Civil Rights movement. It de-romanticizes it through the lyrics. It shows that the mountaintop has not been achieved and there are still many problems to be worked out. Dr. King and other civil rights activists shared that hope of reaching the mountaintop. Many forms of Southern Hip-Hop music came about after the Civil Rights movement. These southern artists largely went unnoticed until the 1995 Source Awards ceremony in which Dre, of the Hip-Hop group Outkast said “the South got something to say.” From then on people began to notice and new forms of Hip-Hop came out of the south. An example of one of these forms was trap music, which became a style of Hip-Hop that was developed in the late 1990’s and hailed from Atlanta and Miami. This style had a melancholy ambience to the lyrics.
Another popular form of Southern Hip-Hop is Crunk, which emerged in the early 1990’s and became popular years later in the 2000’s. The lyrics are in the style of call and response and the tempo is more upbeat than other forms of Hip-Hop, which made it popular to play in dance clubs. One of the prominent groups that perform Crunk is the aforementioned Lil’ Jon and the East Side Boyz.
Southern Hip-Hop is also known as Dirty South. It is a blend of former rap styles with a focus on the lifestyles of African American southern life in its lyrics. The five major cities that Southern Hip-Hop dominates are Atlanta, where the Dirty South was born, New Orleans, Memphis, Houston and Miami. Atlanta came to the forefront of the style and two reasons exist to formulate its listening public, first, the death of West-coast rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996 and the focus and saturation of the two most popular areas of Rap music at the time, the West Coast and East Coast.
When Southern Hip-Hop came about, not only did artists come from the urban areas of these five cities but other artists were inspired from the rural cities of the south. For example, Bubba Sparxxx, a rural rapper from LaGrange, Georgia and Field Mob, a Hip-Hop group from Albany, Georgia, had something to say also. Also the states of North Carolina and South Carolina expressed their style of Hip-Hop music through artists such as Petey Pablo.
Sonic geography defines Southern Hip-Hop music. It’s important to understand that certain cities, such as Atlanta, are separated into zones, policing zones. Within these zones are different forms of music coming out depending on the income-based social standing. What comes out of the south side of Atlanta will be different than what is produced on the east side.
Through the beginning class of this course on Southern Hip-Hop I have learned that this music has a culture in itself. I have learned that the five pillars of Hip-Hop are emceeing, DJ-ing, breaking, the art of Graffiti, and knowledge of self-awareness.
DJ-ing is the art of record scratching and mixing the music, which to me has always had a sound that involves talent on the part of the DJ. I think everyone who lived in the 1980’s has tried at least once to perform this art of record scratching on their own turntable at home. I know I have!
Emceeing, or MCing, which I always thought stood for Master of Ceremonies, also stands for Mic Controlling. It is the art of a person on stage getting the dance crowd motivated by rapping lyrics to a beat.
Breaking is the art of dance in the Hip-Hop culture. From my readings online I have found that the idea of breaking came directly from the James Brown song Get On the Good Foot. The dance that is incorporated with this song involves a great amount of physicality and dance ideas based on this song were eventually inserted into early Hip-Hop during the breaks in between lyrics, hence break-dancing. Even though breaking is associated with Hip-Hop, it seems that Michael Jackson dominated the world of breaking in the 1980’s and took on a different and new style from James Brown.
Graffiti is the visual art of Hip-Hop, which involves writing messages and spray-painting pictures and murals in public places. Artists portray their political views or street gangs mark their territory in this form of expression. It has been controversial because of the fact that this art has been expressed in public, and private, places.
The knowledge of self-awareness involves many aspects of the life of Hip-Hop culture. The clothing defines the look of Hip-Hop artists. Also, the act of listening to the music is quite different from the East Coast music as opposed to the south. In the south the “car test” is the most common element of Southern Hip-Hop. If one can “ride” to the music and have heavy bass vibrate the chassis of the car, then it is a formidable music to listen to. I can tell you that through the course of my music listening I have done this, especially when I was in high school. Even now I feel a need to do this sometimes!
Hip-Hop is important also because of the role that it plays in documenting experiences in the everyday life of African Americans. The two books required for reading so far have been very instrumental in helping to understand this experience. Kiese Laymon’s book How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America was especially poignant. In the book Laymon lays out experiences of his own personal life being a black man living in Mississippi through essays and makes us understand, sometimes through harsh instances, what it is like. I find that both Laymon’s book and the reading of our first book, Zandria F. Robinson’s This Ain’t Chicago, were both helpful in understanding the problems involved in the Hip-Hop culture. These two books are a wonderful companion to the listening examples and they give a three-dimensional life to Southern Hip-Hop music.
It’s important to remember that the south is not a monolith, and for that matter the African American people of the United States. After all, many black people from this country have backgrounds that go back many generations to other parts of the world, just as many other people of this country. The same applies to music, especially Hip-Hop. The world of Southern Hip-Hop is not a monolith either.
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