![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() When Ludacris arrived in Atlanta in the early ’90s, the city’s potential as a rap hub was in its nascent stages. He’d move to Chicago for middle school, and spend a year in high school in Virginia (just down the interstate from where the Neptunes and Missy Elliott and Timbaland and Magoo were inventing their own vision of Southern hip-hop) before matriculating at Banneker High. He was born in 1977 in Champaign, Illinois, a city whose musical output is mostly limited to REO Speedwagon and Alison Krauss. His outfits in the club were ridiculous and so conspicuous, and his name was Ludacris.įor a guy who made maybe the definitive Atlanta party song, “Welcome to Atlanta” - a bonus track on the CD version of Word of Mouf - it might surprise you to learn that Ludacris didn’t actually grow up in Atlanta. 3 on the pop, leaving only a rapper named Eminem above him as the best-selling rapper of 2002. He would be, for a time, undoubtedly one of the biggest rappers on earth, and his second album would top the Billboard rap charts, and hit No. He made music meant for tearing up clubs and rolling blunts, with a voice as booming and clear as it was when he was reading ad copy as a radio DJ and beats as unpredictable as Swisher guts falling into the crevices of your car’s upholstery. It should also focus on the world-dominating artists too voluminous to mention here that made Southern rap the dominant sound of rap music this century, to the point where even Canadian superstars have to ask Atlanta rappers to help bolster their hits.īut there’s a missing link in that evolutionary chart, that onward Sherman’s March toward sonic progress, a rapper who, after the singular and unprecedented success of OutKast, proved Southern rap’s chart dominance was no passing fad, no exception to the rule. When the history of Southern rap is written, it will inevitably focus, rightly, on UGK and Geto Boys, OutKast and Goodie Mob, 2 Live Crew and Three 6 Mafia, artists who took the molasses flow of Southern heat, the legacy of blues and soul and the unique patterns of Southern club music, and translated them into an entirely new vernacular of hip-hop. ![]()
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