A Lazy Tour of Atlanta and Georgia Rap Songs

Courtesy of Youtube and the Dirty South, here's a few highlights with my comments. Please keep in mind a lot of these songs don't have bad words bleeped out.

I moved to Atlanta 12 years ago, just when Outkast released ATLiens. Me and you, your mama and your cousin too... This song says it's about movement, but then refuses say where it's going. It's an aimless, winding, cruising song. It's like a sequence of incomplete impressionist paintings.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyPKvpfyKWU

ATLiens was a huge landmark. Other Atlanta rappers started getting noticed. A friend of Outkast and the Goodie Mob, rapper Cool Breeze put out this massive local hit, packed with guest stars, in 1999. You may recognize Cee-Lo, now with Gnarls Barkley. I cannot stress enough how awesome this song is. It's frenzied and bursting with energy but in complete control at the same time. It's ridiculously ambitious and richly cinematic. You get an amazing sense of multiple stories all weaving back and forth, destinies colliding, a crisis upon us. Brotherman!


http://youtube.com/watch?v=aUQ3uSNXb2Q

In 2002 Nappy Roots, a Kentucky/Georgia group, has a breakthrough summer hit. This is a beautiful, soulful, plaintive song. It's intellectual and earthy at the same time; deeply southern, anti-materialist, multiracial. It's not just all about fast life in the big city. Them country boys on the rise...


http://youtube.com/watch?v=U5jybNySBmo

Here's the last flowering of truly good and innovative Atlanta hip-hop. The Dungeon Family album is full of incredible songs. This happens to be my favorite, mainly because of the monstrous beat with the scratching.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=YpWMRkilki0

Here's another Dungeon Family offshoot, the Purple Ribbon All-Stars. The hook spirals into your brain, and from there the song goes straight to the lungs and the groin.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7228o6cF1Y

The Ying Yang twins are good at party anthems. Their music is rather brainless and clownish. I have a soft spot for this early song of theirs, however. I think it's because it's about being stupid and jerk-ish solely for the sake of being stupid and jerk-ish. Plus, the part in the video where Big Gipp is rapping on top of plastic-covered furniture is hilarious. If you're getting tired now, skip the video.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=B_GrT-p5c_A

This is Bonecrusher (what a silly name), T.I. (recently jailed on a machine gun charge) and Killer Mike. It's one of those really violent songs where the whole point is bragging about big, big penis-guns. Nevertheless, I'm going to include it because it was a huge hit, and represents the newer kind of Atlanta song. I hated this song when it was on the radio, but sometimes I feel a bit nostalgic for it. Why? I guess it's the cinematic feel, and the bells. This song is about urban violence, but it could just as well be a gothic tale... the hero standing outside the ruined mansion under a full moon with a shotgun in one hand and a chainsaw in the other, screwing up his courage to kick down the door, yelling to himself, "I AIN'T NEVER SCARED"...


http://youtube.com/watch?v=fF6UYdZASc8

Here's an earlier Ludacris song. I don't think he's ever done a truly excellent or important song, although he gives it a good try here, but his delivery is always perfect and his stuff is really, really fun. This is his funnest and most Atlantaest song.

(No Embedding)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KpKZ1aWB_OE

Here's T.I.'s newest song. I heard he's going to fulfill his 1000 hours of community service by going around telling kids not to make the same kind of mistakes he made. That's the kind of stupid decision we've come to expect from the Dekalb County criminal justice system. That's not punishment, that's a publicity tour! I'd like to see him in an orange vest by the side of the highway picking up trash. Then I'd roll down my window and bonk him on the head with a well-aimed apple core. That being said, I actually like his new song. It's the organ sample and the drumbeat that make it good.


http://youtube.com/watch?v=mLVycH6w8FM

That's it for now... and I'm not going to put any crunk music up, I can't stand that stuff!