In retrospect, the moment is a clear turning point, for the South and for Atlanta in particular, but the latter was still trying to figure out its musical identity. Artist behind OutKast iconic album covers shares perspective ahead of hip-hop's 50th anniversary.What hip hop teaches us about the 1996 Summer Olympics.About the South's bit part in 'Fight The Power: How Hip Hop Changed The World'.Teaching the significance of Southern hip-hop.Queering the mic: The lack of representation in hip-hop creates challenges for LGBTQ Atlanta rappers. Amid these opposing truths, Atlanta teeters but never falls from its pedestal. It is a legacy built on resistance, but also compliance. The legend of "Black mecca" - of the "rap capital" - is crafted by both locals and transplants, and classism is essential to its narrative, as income inequality separates Atlanta's Black elite from those living in housing projects. Its unique perspective is born of a place that is as fascinating as it is complicated. That is how its hip-hop scene became the center of the rap universe, the last semblance of a monoculture. Its Black culture feels singular, yet mirrors other Black experiences, throughout the South and elsewhere in the nation. Nudy and Savage, who is currently on tour with Drake, have risen because their music feels both ways at once: authentic and hyperlocal, and yet deceptively accessible and ubiquitous. The song, with its wordless hook ("Boaw, boaw, boaw, boaw") and hypersexual lyrics nodding to raunchy Atlanta jams of the past, is insanely catchy, but there is also an Easter egg within: 21's verse strikingly reimagines the local 2006 hit " Bubble Gum" by K-Rab and D4L. "Rappers I monkey flip em with the funky rhythm I be kicking/Musician, inflicting composition/of pain I'm like Scarface sniffing cocaine/Holding a M-16, see with the pen I'm extreme, now/Bullet holes left in my peepholes/I'm suited up in street clothes/Hand me a nine and I'll defeat foes/Y'all know my steelo with or without the airplay/I keep some E&J, sitting bent up in the stairway/Or either on the corner betting Grants with the celo champs/Laughing at baseheads, tryin' to sell some broken amps/G-Packs get off quick, forever n***** talk s***/Reminiscing about the last time the Task Force flipped/N***** be running through the block shootin'/Time to start the revolution, catch a body, head for Houston/Once they caught us off-guard, the Mac-10 was in the grass and/I ran like a cheetah with thoughts of an assassin/Pick the Mac up, told brothers, "Back up," the Mac spit/Lead was hitting n*****, one ran, I made him back flip/Heard a few chicks scream, my arm shook, couldn't look/Gave another squeeze, heard it click, "yo, my s*** is stuck"/Try to cock it, it wouldn't shoot, now I'm in danger/Finally pulled it back and saw 3 bullets caught up in the chamber/So now I'm jetting to the building lobby/And it was full of children probably couldn't see as high as I be/(So what you saying?) It's like the game ain't the same/Got younger n***** pulling the triggers, bringing fame to their name/And claim some corners, crews without guns are goners/In broad daylight, stickup kids: they run up on us/4-5's and gauges, Macs, in fact/Same n***** will catch a back-to-back, snatching your cracks in black/There was a snitch on the block getting n****s knocked/So hold your stash 'til the coke price drop/I know this crackhead who said she's got to smoke nice rock/And if it's good, she'll bring you customers in measuring pots/But yo, you gotta slide on a vacation, inside information/Keeps large n***** erasin' and their wives basin'/It drops deep as it does in my breath/I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death/Beyond the walls of intelligence, life is defined/I think of crime when I'm in a New York state of mind.For evidence of Atlanta's continued ability to produce music that feeds both the underground and the mainstream, look no further than Young Nudy's single "Peaches & Eggplants," with his cousin, the stoic cutthroat 21 Savage.
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