Tag: hip-hop

Today, Japan boasts the second-largest music market in the world, valued at more than $2 billion. Even in a booming industry crowded with competitors from K-pop to J-pop, Atlanta artists continue to cultivate loyal fans in Japan, while Japan’s own cultural exports have inspired artists here in the rap capital of the United States.

Artist DL Warfield's latest endeavor is Cyphers, a mixed-media homage to the B-boy culture he grew up in. The circular works include the four elements of hip-hop fashioned in the tradition of Arabic mehndi and Moorish damascene patterns.

Every rapper’s lyrics should be cross-examined with empathy to explore this country’s inequities and examine the real disparities that exist. We live in a country, however, where rap lyrics are used to prosecute individuals, rather than examine the systems of oppression.

With hundreds of credits, including OutKast and Goodie Mob’s debut albums Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and Soul Food, TLC’s “Waterfalls,” and En Vogue’s “Don’t Let Go (Love),” Rico Wade helped to expand Atlanta’s imprint in music, reaching global heights. With OutKast and Goodie Mob, Wade was part of mainstreaming Southern hip-hop, expanding its boundaries and perimeters.

Hulu’s new original documentary Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told tells the story of how a 1983 picnic for Atlanta HBCU students in the meadow at Piedmont Park became, by the mid-1990s, a national Spring Break destination for hundreds of thousands of young people each April. Here’s five things highlighted in the new Hulu doc that even long-time Atlantans might not know about Freaknik’s enduring legacy.

The 90-minute feature film, directed by Ryon and Tyson Horne and written by AJC journalists Ernie Suggs and DeAsia Paige, had its world premiere Thursday night at Center Stage theater in Midtown and began streaming on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s website on Friday. The doc features exclusive interviews with T.I.; Jermaine Dupri; Arrested Development; Goodie Mob; DMC of Run DMC; Lil Yachty; Atlanta mayors Andrew Young, Kasim Reed, Keisha Lance Bottoms and Andre Dickens; Sleepy Brown; DJ Toomp; and many others.

Atlanta hip-hop would not be what it is today without the Atlanta University Center. It’s a bold statement, but one that rings true—the roster of artists, DJs, and music executives who’ve graced the AUC campuses is a veritable who’s who of the music industry, and the AUC has been instrumental in molding the fabric of Atlanta’s hip-hop culture.

Even for fans who missed out on the instantly iconic bobblehead—which featured Big Boi and André 3000 sitting in a red Cadillac, decked out in custom Braves jerseys and caps—OutKast night at Truist Park was a grand slam.

But perhaps the clearest example of the Caribbean’s influence on Atlanta hip-hop is OutKast’s classic song on its third studio album, Aquemini: “SpottieOttieDopaliscious,” described by Andre 3000 in the second verse as a "fine, bow-legged girl . . . fine as all outdoors."

The installations at the Museum of Design Atlanta’s new exhibition, Close to the Edge: The Birth of Hip-Hop Architecture, include experimental visualizations, development proposals, facade studies, and building designs. Each riffs off of hip-hop’s methodologies—deejaying, emceeing, b-boy dancing, graffiti, remixing, sampling—to translate hip-hop’s energy into built form.