Crunk and place

Southern hip-hop is strongly informed by the significance of place, a sensibility that comes both from a geographic ethic that surrounds national rap production and a very Southern understanding of culture that is both regional and localized.

When I came to the South, I was surprised by the North Carolina pride – I know several people with North Carolina tattoos, for instance. Growing up I never felt rooted to Washington, DC, or to Maryland, where I lived most of my life just across the border, attending school in DC and hanging out with friends from DC, Maryland, and Virginia. Maybe we didn’t have a keen sense of place because we were at the confluence of these three places, crossing daily, never really thinking about the geographic distinctions except to claim that Virginia drivers were definitely the worst. But I also think it’s because the Northeast doesn’t see itself as a cultural region. I can’t think of anything concrete that belongs to the North, but I can think of a hell of a lot of Southern particularities. Sweet tea, grits, y’all, soul food, barbeque, Cheerwine, tobacco, blues, gospel, bluegrass, zydeco, slavery, the confederate flag, lynching, Jim Crow, and the list goes on (I never said they were all good.)

So perhaps Jason Berry’s quote, ("popular music . . . springs from an organic culture: the lyrics, rhythms, and dance patterns reflect a specific consciousness, the values of a given place and time,") has more credence in the North, where we don’t engage place in the same way as you folks down here. I guess East Coast/West Coast reppin’ rappers might disagree, so maybe it’s just missing the point about hip-hop generally, but certainly about hip-hop in the South.

Although Southern hip-hops artists definitely exist in their time and place, reflecting those values in their lyrics and actions, they are also in conversation with their history(ies) and global movements (be they musical or political). Afro-diasporic aesthetics permeate crunk, for example, from the call-and-response to the use of repetition and variation [see Lil’ Jon’s Get Low and OutKast’s ATLiens for two.] Other musical traditions are consciously engaged as well, like in OutKast’s use of the B-52s song Bombs Over Baghdad in B.O.B.

B.O.B. is a great demonstration of the ways in which hip-hop artists are making pointed and specific decisions about what cultural elements to engage with – the B-52s are from Georgia as well. David Banner thinks critically about place too, devoting an entire album to his home state of Mississipi. OutKast creates an album (re)claiming the ATL. Goodie Mobb sings about the Dirty South and Soul Food. And Lil’ Wayne sings about New Orleans on any number of tracks, Tie My Hands being one of the most moving.

So Southern hip hop artists aren’t just being impacted unknowingly by their place(s), they are seriously considering it – it’s values, history, food, crime, culture, music, and it’s possibilities for change. Perhaps, in the process, they are even changing it themselves.

What you really know about the Dirty South?

The Dirty South is raw – like an open wound it pusses with the inflammatory lyrics of crunk, the black body’s immune response to the violence of (white) history.

Growing up in Washington, DC, I heard that the biggest mistake we ever made was not letting the South secede. Although this was meant as a statement of liberal frustration with white Southern bigots in solidarity with African Americans, it was also part of a cultural representation that reduced black Southerners to merely a group of the oppressed.

Now, after two years of living in the South, my y’alls are mocked back home as part of a lesser vernacular, even as I use the academic discourse of my women’s studies courses to explain why I prefer its gender neutrality over “you guys.”

So for me, the Dirty South is simultaneously a fucked up place I’m glad not to have to claim and a space I badly want to enter. OutKast’s song “Rosa Parks” illustrates this dichotomy perfectly:


Ah ha, hush that fuss
Everybody move to the back of the bus
Do you wanna bump and slump with us
We the type of people make the club get crunk


We all know the nasty history of that moment, the degradation so many African Americans faced as a result of that injustice and the many other daily oppressions of segregation. But, on the other hand, I wanna be in the back of that bus. I mean, it seems like that’s where all the fun is happening, at least in this particular representation.

OutKast and other crunk artists are in many ways firmly rooted in the “Jim-Crow” car of DuBois’ railroad journey – they consciously create in the context of historical and current marginalization. But they are also generating a metamorphosis of that space through the collective energy of a music so powerful that it has left its mark in train stations around the country and across the globe.

In his testimony to Congress during the Imus hearings, David Banner said, “Hip Hop is sick because America is sick.” He also might’ve said, “Crunk is dirty because the South is dirty.”

Tha Carter III - can't stop listening to it!

It would be a cop out to say Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III defies definition, but it would also be foolish to try to box it up. This album is genius because Wayne draws on a broad range of musical, lyrical, cultural, and political traditions, creating art (music) that is unmistakably his own take on these elements. The album is thoughtful, danceable, energizing, and hilarious.

Now, there are certainly some things he says that piss me off (why does a woman always have to be your bitch?), make me cringe (“Call me so I can make it juicy for ya”), or go what the fuck?! (“Rodney King baby yeah I beat it like a cop”), but Lil Wayne wouldn’t have it any other way.

He loves to complicate things, to twist lyrics around in the middle of a phrase, and to tell us that he doesn’t care if we get it (all the while remaining in constant conversation with the public through the continued release of new rhymes to old songs). Although he ends the album with “Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” samples, the album as a whole seems to be saying “you can’t pin me down!” He’s gonna be fast, he’s gonna slow it down, he’s gonna be hard and all about the money, he’s gonna be tender and want to be loved, and he’s gonna talk about humanity and blow jobs.

And that’s what I love about this album. Lil Wayne is always serious about his music, but he never once takes himself too seriously.

One of my favorite songs on the album is Don’t Get It. First off, he samples the Nina Simone song (“I’m just a soul whose intentions are good/oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood), evoking her gorgeous spirit. And then I love the way he enters into this conversation with Al Sharpton directly, but also with Don Imus, Congress, David Banner, Michael Eric Dyson and others by discussing the judgment of hip hop in the context of the inequities faced by black people in this country. He focuses on our (in)justice system and drug laws for a good part of the song.

Wayne then goes into a criticism of Sharpton and the kind of judgment laid on hip hop (Sharpton once proclaimed that hip hop lyrics needed to be more decent):

I mean, given the fact that humanity, well, good humanity rather
To me, is helpin one another, no matter your color or race
But this guy, and people like him
They'd rather speculate before they informate, if that's a word, heh heh
You know, spect before check, anyway
Mean that, I much rather you talk to me first and see if you
Can learn an opinion before you make one
Just my thought of good humanity, Mr. Sharpton (heh heh)

Wayne is rejecting the idea that there is a place for mass denunciations of hip hop without nuanced readings and efforts at deeper understanding. I can imagine he would tell the congressman in the Imus hearing to fuck off, because he doesn’t know shit about hip hop, and, more importantly, because he isn’t trying to know.

I am curious about those first two lines (“I mean, given the fact that humanity, well, good humanity rather/To me, is helpin one another, no matter your color or race”). I think Wayne is saying that we should be looking for ways to lift each other up, rather than to make judgments that bring us all down.

He also weighs in on our classroom conversation about binaries, perhaps personalizing DuBois’ insistence that the world is both ugly and beautiful by saying that we ourselves are both ugly and beautiful. In talking about Sharpton, he says:

But since I am human, I am good and bad as well
But I try my hardest to stay good
And some of the things I do and say may be bad, or just not too good
But I do try
So with that said, I don't fault you, I mean, you're only human
Good or bad, but I also don't respect you
And I don't care if that's good or bad, heh heh

If Wayne’s doing the best he can, that’s more than enough for me.