Tag: So So Def

With a career that began in his teens, Dupri was one of the youngest producers to ever land a Billboard No. 1. Then he did it again . . . and again: 11 times, to be exact.

SwaVay grew up listening to Jermaine Dupri’s music. Now, as he raps on his Dupri collab “Back to the Trap Freestyle,” he is rising above the rest with the Atlanta legend in his corner.

Hot 97.5—now called Hot 107.9—celebrated its legendary First Birthday Bash 30 years ago, with The Notorious B.I.G. and Outkast in attendance. It changed the music scene in Atlanta and helped put the city on the map as a hip-hop proving ground—and in its early days, it was powered largely by young people.

For years, I’ve covered how radio and record-label execs flock to Atlanta’s Black strip clubs in search of the next superstar, like Future. I also remember when local radio caught on to “Old Town Road” after Atlanta’s Lil Nas X got people talking with TikTok memes. These are the stories that come to mind when I consider how R&B and rap became the most listened-to music genre in the United States—and how Atlanta made that possible.

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.