Southern hip-hop or Southern rap, also known colloquially as Dirty South music, is hip-hop music from the Southern United States. As hip-hop spread beyond its origins in New York City, several Southern cities began developing their own hip-hop scenes in the 1980s. After some early commercial successes like 2 Live Crew and the Geto Boys, Southern hip-hop broke into the hip-hop mainstream more fully in the 1990s, spurred on by acts like Atlanta's Outkast and New Orleans' Master P and Juvenile. This growth continued in the twenty-first century, making the South into one of the most prominent regions in hip-hop.
Southern hip-hop encompasses a wide range of styles, including subgenres such as trap, crunk, and bounce, among others. Typical characteristics of the Southern hip-hop sound include a focus on bass-heavy beats; relatively little use of sampling, in favor of live or synthesized instrumentation; and a decreased emphasis on lyrical complexity, instead incorporating other vocal styles such as call-and-response chants or heavily processed singing. Much Southern hip-hop is targeted toward environments like nightclubs, and popular dances such as twerking have emerged in close connection with the genre.
The most prominent cities in Southern hip-hop include Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans, Miami, and Memphis. Many of these cities' hip-hop scenes were initially ignored by major record labels; instead, Southern hip-hop has a strong tradition of launching local independent labels, such as Houston's Rap-A-Lot and Swishahouse or New Orleans' No Limit and Cash Money. Southern hip-hop artists have also been quick to embrace novel distribution methods, such as mixtapes or Internet platforms such as SoundCloud, to release music outside of the traditional record label ecosystem.
Overall characteristics
Although Southern hip-hop includes a number of localized scenes with distinct styles, there are nevertheless stylistic commonalities that have been observed throughout the region. Most Southern hip-hop music places less emphasis on lyrical complexity than other regions do, instead prioritizing vocal styles that encourage audience participation, such as call-and-response chants or catchy choruses that can be sung along with. Southern rappers also assert connections to their home communities by foregrounding their accents and their regional slang. Thematically, music focused on partying and dancing has been viewed as characteristic of Southern hip-hop. At the same time, other branches of Southern hip-hop embraced gangsta rap and have been described as pioneers of hardcore hip-hop.
Musically, Southern hip-hop displays inspiration from other Southern music styles, such as gospel and blues. Influential artists from throughout the South have also been described as incorporating elements of funk. Bass-heavy percussion, especially that produced by the Roland TR-808 drum machine, is viewed as a cornerstone of much Southern hip-hop. According to some performers, Southern hip-hop is also more likely than other regions to use live instrumentation rather than samples.
History
1979–1992: Beginnings
The first notable Southern act to release hip-hop music was the Sequence, a South Carolina–based group who signed to Sugar Hill Records. While attending a Sugarhill Gang concert, the Sequence encountered Sylvia Robinson and impressed her with their music. Sugar Hill subsequently published the Sequence's single "Funk You Up" in late 1979. However, rather than perform or record in South Carolina, the Sequence moved to New York City to participate in the more established hip-hop scene there. In the 1980s, hip-hop subcultures began to coalesce in several Southern cities, but early artists in these environments tended to affiliate themselves with city-level or neighborhood-level communities instead of claiming a pan-Southern identity. "Southern hip-hop" was not yet regarded as a distinct, coherent concept, nor was it taken seriously by New York rappers or the mainstream music industry, who tended to disparage noticeably Southern variants on hip-hop as unsophisticated or backward.
Miami was one of the first Southern cities to achieve wider popularity with its local hip-hop style. The city already hosted a number of independent record labels that focused on traditionally black music genres such as disco, which positioned it well to begin publishing rap. The genre of Miami bass emerged in the 1980s, deriving from electro and from the city's reggae-influenced DJing culture. MC A.D.E.'s 1985 single "Bass Rock Express", followed by 2 Live Crew's "Throw the D" in 1986, were foundational tracks in shaping Miami bass. The style also expanded beyond Miami itself, with early Atlanta hip-hop artists like Raheem the Dream displaying strong Miami bass influence in their music. Miami's early hip-hop community was heavily connected to the city's nightclub and strip club scenes, and the local style came to be defined by sexually charged lyrics. This reputation for vulgarity culminated when U.S. District Court Judge Jose Gonzalez ruled that 2 Live Crew's 1989 album As Nasty as They Wanna Be was obscene and illegal to sell. Gonzalez's ruling led to a legal battle, which concluded when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned the obscenity finding. As a result of their victory in the obscenity case, followed by another victory in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. two years later, 2 Live Crew and its leader Luther Campbell have been credited as "First Amendment champion[s]" who "made it safe for hip-hop as we know it to exist". Campbell has also been described as a formative influence on the musical styles, bawdy themes, and independent distribution practices popular throughout later Southern hip-hop.
Houston is another city to have built a flourishing local hip-hop community in the late 1980s. One of the most pivotal moments in the growth of Houston's hip-hop scene was the establishment of Rap-A-Lot Records, which was founded by James Prince and Cliff Blodget in approximately 1986. Prince assembled the Geto Boys as the label's flagship group. The Geto Boys became increasingly successful over the late 1980s, leading Def American Records to sign them and release the 1990 remix album The Geto Boys to national audiences. The album's offensive lyrical content caused the business relationship between Def American and Rap-A-Lot to collapse; however, Prince secured another national distribution deal for the following Geto Boys album, 1991's We Can't Be Stopped, which became the group's breakthrough project and increased the prominence of Houston's broader hip-hop scene. Matt Miller of Emory University has argued that the Geto Boys' success during this era was partially a product of their ability to replicate the styles of New York and Los Angeles hip-hop:
Early hip-hop communities also arose in other Southern cities during the 1980s and early 1990s. Memphis and New Orleans are two examples of cities whose hip-hop styles began to take shape at the start of the 1990s. Both cities were influenced by the 1986 Showboys single "Drag Rap"; artists isolated a drum loop from the song, dubbing the resulting loop the "Triggerman beat". In Memphis, DJ Spanish Fly popularized "Triggerman" as a complement for a burgeoning local dance trend called the Gangsta Walk, in which participants would march in concentric circles around the dance floor. From there, the Triggerman beat spread to New Orleans, where it was combined with Cameron Paul's "Brown Beats" to become a core building block of bounce music's sound. "Where Dey At", a 1991 live recording by DJ Irv Phillips and MC T. Tucker, became one of the first bounce tracks to achieve popularity; the following year, a studio version of the same song was recorded by DJ Jimi, further raising bounce's profile.
1992–2000: Mainstream breakthrough of the "Dirty South"
In the 1990s, Atlanta grew to become one of the primary centers of Southern hip-hop. Producer Jermaine Dupri was one of the first to achieve mainstream commercial success with Atlanta-based hip-hop, launching the careers of teenage rap duo Kris Kross and parlaying their success into a label called So So Def Recordings. While Kris Kross' music deliberately limited its use of regional signifiers, they nevertheless served as a proof of concept that successful hip-hop could come from Atlanta. LaFace Records, which was established in Atlanta in 1989 and initially focused on publishing R&B music, thus turned its attention to hip-hop as well. LaFace connected with Rico Wade of the Organized Noize production team, which also put the label in contact with Wade's fellow Dungeon Family acts, Outkast and Goodie Mob. Outkast pursued a style with a distinctively Southern aesthetic, incorporating live instrumentation inspired by genres such as funk, soul, and gospel; other hip-hop subgenres like G-funk had built upon similar reference points, but Outkast diverged from them by adopting an "earthy, down-home, celebratory vibe" instead of G-funk's aggressive posture. On the back of their 1994 debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, Outkast was awarded Best New Rap Group at the 1995 Source Awards. The New York–based crowd booed Outkast upon their receipt of the award, leading group member André 3000 to make the following remarks in his acceptance speech:
André 3000's words have come to be described as a rallying cry for Southern hip-hop, inspiring its artists to view themselves as a unified front willing to stand up to Northern disapproval. In particular, his word choice—stating that "the South got something to say" instead of highlighting a more localized region—has been identified as a significant step towards fostering a pan-Southern hip-hop community. The year 1995 also saw Goodie Mob release their debut album Soul Food, which popularized the term "Dirty South" through a song by the same name. While the term "Dirty South" had been in occasional use previously, primarily using "dirty" to refer to sex or criminality, Goodie Mob reframed it as a criticism of the region's history of racism and governmental corruption. After this usage rose to popularity, the "Dirty South" concept began to be widely embraced, both by Southern artists seeking to establish their legitimacy or regional affiliations and by external commentators seeking to characterize the region's sound. As the "Dirty South" label entered wider use, its meaning became less focused; some artists and commentators returned to using the phrase "Dirty South" to describe sexual or party-focused music, while others used it metonymously to refer to broader cultural tropes like Southern hospitality. Nevertheless, the term has remained in common use to signify an artist's authentic Southern identity.