Young Thug Safe Juicy J Always High Cover Art

Welcome to The South Week at The Ringer. For the next several days, we're celebrating — and reporting on — the richness of the region. You'll find stories from all over the map, exploring topics such every bit the enduring legacy of Confederate monuments in Richmond and Montgomery, the evolution of Charleston barbecue, and the intersection of faith and football in Lubbock. We're also ranking the best Southern rap albums, imagining the André 3000 mixtape we all deserve, and arguing about what even constitutes the South anymore. In the words of 2 great Southerners, nothin' is for sure, nothin' is for sure, nothin' lasts forever.

Let me brainstorm by saying I take a religious objection to prizing one swell Southern rap album to a higher place another; I beloved them similar they're my children. But like children, there are wayward ones, and favored ones, and neglected ones. Meaning, while we're saying that Southern Rap Anthology A is appreciably better than Southern Rap Album B, I practise not accept the legitimacy of the courtroom in which I'm beingness tried. It seems ludicrous non to include Da Drought three or Trap or Dice or Sailin Da' South or any of Gucci'southward tapes, but those were mixtapes, and if nosotros included all of the classic tapes, nosotros'd exist hither until Tha Carter V finally comes out. Sometimes you but need rules. And then a small group of Ringer experts convened, argued, voted, voted again, and did this in the manner we saw fit.

Beneath yous'll find our Southern rap album ranking; feel free to yell about your favorite that nosotros left off. (Don't @ united states of america; submit a brusque — as in, nether 150-give-and-take — blurb in defense force of your fave via this form, and we might simply publish your rebuttal.)
— M icah Peters

20. Master P — Ghetto D (1997)

Hip-hop critics tend to talk similar Atlanta inherited hip-hop'due south heart of gravity from New York, as if in that location wasn't a 10-year stretch when Georgia'south crunk rappers and trap pioneers shared power with Louisiana'due south bounce hoodlums. It was a glorious fourth dimension divers by tacky album encompass fine art, diamond dentistry, synth claps, baggy fashion, and Silkk the Shocker flows that defied time signatures and physics. Ghetto D is the most comprehensive overview of the No Limit diaspora's stars (Percy, Mystikal, Mia X, C-Murder, and Silkk), its virtues (money, independence), and its emotional range (Tasmanian rage, the blues, everything in between). "Brand 'Em Say Uhh" to "Goin' Through Some Thangs" is perhaps the most trigger-happy tonal whiplash that a rap album has ever accomplished, and all the same both those songs are crucial.
— J ustin Charity

19. Future — DS2 (2015)

In one of rap's all-time best heel turns, Atlanta's favorite warbling, lovesick pop star broke bad on his third studio album, transforming into a lean-sipping hedonist for whom the but meaning in life could be institute at the bottom of a Solo cup. The opening notes of DS2 — the fizzing of the soda bottle, the mixing with cough syrup into a deadly confection, the Sprite-commercial-level cheese of that thirst-quenched "ahhhhhh" — are the sounds of a man falling into a pit of radioactive ooze and emerging as a supervillain. Coming on the heels of his broken engagement with Ciara, the album saw Future embracing all of his basest desires — namely drugs, sexual practice, and violence. These are common fixations in rap, merely rarely are they presented in such a disaffected stupor. The album's lack of moral urgency was its own statement about what'southward left to care almost in our world, and Metro Boomin's dour production ensured that the "no hugging, no learning" directive would remain consistent throughout (the closest we go to romance is a track called "Rich $ex"). DS2 captures a subversive but alluring way of coping with grief, and information technology helped advance the nihilist bent that currently predominates in Southern hip-hop. When nosotros look back at this decade of sullen young rappers, suffocating cocky-assimilation, and sparse production, we'll run into DS2 as the pattern.
— Victor Luckerson

18. Rich Boy — Rich Boy (2007)

Rich Boy is non what makes Rich Male child important. I am really into his voice and flow, simply that's beside the point. Rich Boy was a canvas, and Polow da Don was the painter. And you tin can't tell the story of Southern hip-hop without mentioning Polow da Don. When I beginning heard this album, I thought it was the greatest piece of music I had ever listened to. That had a lot to do with a guy from Interscope playing me this tape at a squirrel-killing volume, telling me it was the greatest slice of music I had always listened to. Simply that's the best mode to listen to Polow-produced tracks: Information technology'due south at the point of shattering your ear drums that you really feel their ability.

Rich Boy arrived on the scene with "Become To Poppin'" with an intoxicating Totó La Momposina sample backing his liquid Alabama flow. His was a distinctly Southern drawl, but it was malleable. Polow understood this, and on Rich Boy's major label debut (after an incredible Gangsta Grillz tape), he used the MC'south vocalization as only another instrument in a psychedelic, globe-trotting symphony. He produced a majority of the record, including "Boy Looka Here," which features bleacher-stomping bass drums, marching band horns, and a friggin' mandolin, besides as the one hit that the rapper is still remembered for: "Throw Some D's." One of the most infectious Southern rap tracks this side of "International Players Anthem," "Throw Some D's" is a glorious ode to rims, and information technology's a New Moving ridge ear worm that would make Prince jealous.

Maybe Rich Boy will become downwardly every bit a footnote in rap history, but Polow's music should exist studied for years to come.

— Chris Ryan

17. 8Ball & MJG — Comin' Out Hard (1993)

Nestled somewhere between Mike Conley–Marc Gasol and Elvis Presley–Scotty Moore in the hierarchy of essential Memphis duos, 8Ball & MJG make music that rolls slow simply can creep upward on you fast. Their debut, recorded on the inexpensive and with pocket-size equipment, is one of most suffocating, intoxicating albums of its time. And the effortlessly furious tension — marked by drug talk, armed robbery, and pimping — set the template for a plainspoken Southern gangsta gothic that would come up to dominate rap 15 years later. Recorded for Tennessee impresario Tony Draper's Suave House Records, Ball and G's debut presaged nearly everything outside of Texas and Miami — particularly Memphis'southward 3 6 Mafia (which preceded it by two years), and its lionization in Hustle & Menstruation (by more a decade). Without them, in that location is no Greenbacks Money and no Lil Wayne, no Jeezy or T.I., no Clipse or Gucci Mane, no Immature Thug or Kodak Black. There'due south no Due south as nosotros know it today.
— Sean Fennessey

16. Mystikal — Let's Get Prepare (2000)

In his review of Mystikal's 1997 album Unpredictable, the critic Robert Christgau deemed the volatile MC "the only No Limit rapper with a mode worth talking about." Despite his uncharitable Northern bias, Christgau had a point. Being a No Limit soldier had its limitations. The dynamism of Mystikal'southward singular growl — raucous and unbridled, nonetheless somehow precise and self-independent — felt burdened by the label's penchant for quantity over quality. Mystikal had memorable songs for No Limit, just they were outnumbered by generic-sounding tracks bloated with obligatory cameos from tank hangers-on.

As it turns out, Unpredictable would be the kickoff of only two Mystikal releases for No Limit. His start mail service–No Limit project, Allow'due south Get Set up, was a revelation. Out went Silkk, Fiend, and Mac; in came Pharrell and Outkast. "Shake Ya Donkey" and "Danger," both produced past the Neptunes and by far Mystikal'south biggest hits, sprung the rapper into the mainstream. The Neptunes, who contributed four tracks in all, had the right idea on how to best complement Mystikal'southward flow: lay a sparse, bass-heavy runway and get the hell out of the manner. His voice was a dish that needed very little seasoning. Mystikal would preach to you, then berate you, then serenade you — all in the same verse, with an free energy that made Busta Rhymes seem similar a wallflower. Rather than being diluted on the double-platinum Let's Go Ready, Mystikal'south trademark sound was only amplified. "The Man Right 'Chea" rightfully became the man everywhere.
— Donnie Kwak

15. Trina — Da Baddest Bitch (2000)

In the unfairly siloed mural of "female person rap," the women of New York loom large. It's Brooklyn-bred MC Lyte, Lil' Kim, Foxy Brown, and Young Thousand.A who have dominated airwaves and public dialogue alongside Queen(s) bee Nicki Minaj and Bronx icons Remy Ma and Cardi B; Lauryn Hill and Queen Latifah are both from Bailiwick of jersey. Just since 2000, only ane person has been Da Blue-chip Bitch. Miami's Trina, née Katrina Laverne Taylor, changed the game when she dropped her debut album. Da Blue-chip Bitch fused all the slick, feminine vulgarity of Kim's Hard Cadre with Miami bass and heavyweight features to mesmerizing effect. The album was assuming, brash, and undeniably catchy. Nearly 20 years afterward, information technology's withal the blueprint for assertive, ass-shaking rap that positions — and celebrates — its artist as both discipline and object.

Trina came out swinging, "representin' for the bitches," on the titular track (and pb unmarried). She was and is a star, full stop, no qualifiers needed, only Trina never shied away from reminding you that being a adult female simply fabricated her floss even harder. There is no "Feeling Myself" without "Da Baddest Bitch," no "Bodak Yellow" without "Brawl Wit Me."

Trina flipped the script on the male gaze with confidence and bounce. "Pull Over," the anthology'due south Trick Daddy–assisted second unmarried, features Trina subverting street harassment past interweaving Trick Daddy's chorus ("Whoop! Whoop! / Pull over that ass is too fat") with her own self-affirmations:

This ass even make Black Rob say whoa
I got a fatty donkey nann nigga can't pass up
Juvenile couldn't even back this azz up
Bone don't y'all know lil' mama fully loaded
I got a fat ass and I know how to tote it

Trina's music dances in the gulf betwixt her power and desire to pleasure men. Sure, you can expect in wonder, but don't for a moment think she wasn't looking at herself offset.
— H annah Giorgis

14. Three Six Mafia — Underground Vol. 1 (1999)

In the mid-'90s, yous gave Three six Mafia fans the right of mode. Yous were adjacent in line? Cool. This guy is wearing a T-shirt of a grouping that has a song called "Now I'm High, Really Loftier" that really doesn't sound similar being high, unless your thought of being high is slumber paralysis. Give him some room. Underground Vol. 1 is a compilation of some of the Memphis group's early work, and it is probably the hardest listen on this list. Long before "Stay Fly" and the celebrity that came with it, Triple 6 made this music at a time when it felt similar there was bodily distance betwixt regions, both in terms of sound and sensibility. So while there are touches of Houston, New Orleans, and even L.A. in the music, the songs on Hush-hush sound like they were made in a unlike dimension. It is not … pleasant, by whatsoever ways.

Only it is a triumph of DIY inventiveness over big studio admission and major label budgets. And information technology'due south a monument to a agglomeration of people—Juicy J and DJ Paul, forth with Project Pat, Gangsta Boo, and others—working exterior the industry, doing whatever the hell they wanted, at a time correct earlier the South became the audio of hip-hop. It is a regional masterpiece, and the region is hell on earth.

— Chris Ryan

13. Clipse — Lord Willin' (2002)

It might be churlish of me to do so, but I categorize Lord Willin' as a "Southern rap album" with an asterisk. Malice and Pusha T were born in (and heavily influenced by) the Bronx; Virginia Embankment natives Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, who produced the entire thing, might too have been from Mars. No "Virginia audio" (outside of Timbaland and Missy) existed for these guys to glom onto, then the two duos — Clipse and the Neptunes — just created 1 of their ain. The result was the most fruitful MC-producer marriage since Guru and DJ Premier.

"Grindin'" — Clipse'southward bracing commencement single, a lunch-table knocker on HGH — was their clinical mission argument: "We sell coke way meliorate than yous." That mantra pervades Lord Willin', their debut album, a veritable technicolor dreamcoat of drug rap. Pusha T and Malice made themselves the stars of a crime ballsy that was fit for an fine art house, its clever menace carefully enunciated and elegantly composed. There are no skippable tracks on Lord Willin', only a succession of crescendos: peak Neptunes, again and again and over again. Every song could have been a single, and it remains a shame that "Gangsta Lean" wasn't. Then is it a proper Southern rap album then? Well … come to think of it, Gang Starr repped Brooklyn, yet Guru's from Boston and Premier's from Texas. OK, lose the asterisk.
— D onnie Kwak

12. Lil Wayne — Tha Carter 2 (2005)

I'one thousand not going to talk nigh "Shooter." It's keen, and Robin Thicke is on it, and I've considered getting "if nosotros too uncomplicated, then y'all don't get the basics" tatted on my chest. No, not seriously.

The second Carter installment wasn't primarily produced by Mannie Fresh like the beginning was, and was proof plenty that he could do this [points to platinum certification, no. 5 debut on the Billboard Hot 200] on his own. Wayne exported that chunk of the work — finding complements to his phonation, which was gaining weight — outside of Cash Money. At that place was Cool & Dre, the Runners, and two songs by the Heatmakerz. "Hustler Musik," Top-1 sturdiest rap songs ever made — we'll merely have to disagree on this — was produced past T-Mix, who started out making songs for 8Ball & MJG.

This was around the time Wayne was rapping like he was possessed. He lapsed into that on Tha Carter ("When we hungry you look similar pie / Sweetness potato-donkey nigga you lemon meringue, apple tree custard / Cherry jelly, don't make me get the biscuit busta"), but here he was more than deliberate, in a way that was scary. Look at the third verse from "Money on My Mind":

There ain't a stain on these Pradas
I'thousand just being minor
Got me a goddess
Show her how to split it
She notwithstanding down
And she don't get none of the profit
Wheel around the city, permit the tints hide me
"That's a cold motherfucker, whoever within it"

He stretches and swallows vowels, the rhymes double back onto each other. It's every bit mystifying as a marksman using a mirror to pick someone off from backside cover, every bit effortless (and needless) as draining a three on a fast break. He said he was the best rapper alive on "BM J.R." and "Bring It Back" a year prior; this time around you had no choice but to have it seriously.
— 1000 icah Peters

11. Scarface — The Diary (1994)

Might I say 2 things please? Kickoff: It is truly unacceptable that Scarface, the 2nd-most intoxicating and bright r-a-p-p-e-r Southern rapper ever, has merely one anthology on this list. I don't get it. I don't become it and I don't like. The Fix should be on here. (Correct effectually this time ii years ago, Noisey, Vice's music offshoot, asked Scarface to rank all of his albums. He ended upwardly settling on The Fix for first place, followed by The Diary for 2d.) I suppose there's maybe an argument to be fabricated that The Gear up was the least Southern-y of all of Scarface's albums, and so since this is a thing nearly the best Southern rap albums and then it had to exist left off. And if you desire to practice that, then sure. Become for it. You'd be incorrect, only get nuts.

Second: I'one thousand at least glad that the i Scarface anthology that did get in on hither is The Diary, which was his first masterpiece and also the most daring and artistic album of his career. The Diary was dark and somber and insightful and incredible. All of the songs felt similar they'd been dragged through a graveyard, or like they'd been washed in sin and bleakness, which only sounds similar a stupid way to draw music if y'all've never heard "I Seen a Man Die," because on that song he swung his vocalization back and forth like it was a sickle, and I don't recollect anyone'south been able to pull off that feeling quite every bit well ever since. You could probably say that about the unabridged album, really.
— Shea Serrano

ten. Geto Boys — Nosotros Can't Be Stopped (1991)

The cover of this album is a picture of Bushwick Bill being pushed on a hospital gurney past the two other members of the group — Scarface and Willie D — after he survived a gunshot to the head. The Geto Boys brought the same type of bracing honesty to their music, with 14 incredibly raw tracks about life in Houston and the criminal offense-filled environs where all three grew up. The song everyone knows is "Mind Playing Tricks on Me," in which they talk about how the paranoia that comes with their lifestyle can turn toward madness. The Geto Boys were Due north.Westward.A without the glitz and glamour, and while they didn't have the aforementioned crossover appeal, there was more than eye and substance to their lyrics, which is why they had such a lasting bear on on the rap scene in Texas, and throughout the S. Scarface, who went on to a legendary career as a solo artist, is the unquestioned star of the grouping, merely Willie D and Bill can more than hold their ain.
— Jonathan Tjarks

9. Goodie Mob — Soul Nutrient (1995)

The group that coined "the Dirty S," Goodie Mob preside over the history of Southern rap — specifically southwest Atlanta — like the great thinkers in Raphael'southward "The Schoolhouse of Athens": casually wise, devotedly unresolved. Soul Nutrient, the quartet's debut, may not seem similar the near influential piece of work in the genre'southward history, with its gruff meditations on a life without privilege and a sound design that recalls wooden cuckoo clocks and the hurry around a Thanksgiving dinner. But Cee Lo, T-Mo, Big Gipp, and Khujo were a mighty counterweight to their funkier labelmates Outkast, as interested in life on the ground as a transfiguration in the sky.

In that location has never been a song like Soul Food's masterpiece "Cell Therapy," and at that place never will exist. It is paranoia and acrimony writ big. "Expect out for the man in tha mask / On the white pony," Gipp raps in the song's fourth and last poetry, after disquisitions on Hitler's genocide from Khujo, a devastated vision of a community destroyed by drugs from Cee Lo, and a cocky-incriminating portrait of an addict by T-Mo. When the song appeared in 2016'southward Moonlight as a theme song for the grown Black, it marked a hardening, a hard-won maturation. Goodie Mob's members were in their early 20s when they recorded Soul Nutrient, just even then they knew something almost of us can't.
— Sean Fennessey

8. Missy Elliott — Supa Dupa Fly (1997)

You'll never hear it described equally such, but Missy Elliott's solo debut, Supa Dupa Fly, was the seminal visual album of the '90s. Its iconography is inextricable from its source material — immediately identifiable in the vein of Michael Jackson'due south "Thriller" and world-building like Janet Jackson'due south Rhythm Nation 1814. It says something about an artist when their most quintessential representation can be seen 10 seconds into their debut single'southward music video: Missy, clad in a billowing black handbag, every bit baggy equally her music, the shades covering her face peacock, unfurling into a sort of crown.

Her visual album didn't demand a 30-minute short film, or even an 11-minute music video. At that place were no long-form ambitions here, considering, if we're being existent, that would've just belabored the point: Missy was the future; our fearless, Gmail-repping planetary crusader seven years earlier Gmail was created. Packed within her four-infinitesimal videos were some of the most indelible images of my childhood. Our world wasn't ready for the world she'd merely spawned. Sure, plenty by that point in the mid-to-late '90s had fetishized the Y2K aesthetic, but she gave that sensibility a rightful domicile — in her distorted alternate reality. Compared with Missy's subsumption of the fad, you were either playing dress-upward, or you were playing take hold of-up.

Supa Dupa Fly celebrated its 20th birthday in July, and information technology remains one of the most self-bodacious debuts I've ever listened to. It's a prismatic expect at femininity in all its musculature and vulnerabilities, flowing as seamlessly as Missy herself does through the realms of rap, R&B, and pop. It didn't hurt that she had Timbaland, a childhood friend and coconspirator who knew exactly the scope of what she was hoping to build.

"Me and Timbaland, ooh, we sang a jangle / We so tight that you go our styles tangled," Missy rhymes in the beginning poesy of "The Rain." Over Tim'due south skittering, stuttering beats and oblong, digi-stretched grooves, Elliott and her esteemed featured guests presented the Bitch Era as the way of the future. Virginia'southward identify in the Dirty Due south'south hip-hop continuum might be disputed, but in 1997, Missy floated above regionalism, sexism, and but about everything else. She helped expand the outer limits of the genre and was comfortable enough to go really weird with information technology — which might too be the motto for the history of Southern rap.
— D anny Chau

7. Out chiliad ast — Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994)

Way before they were pop stars, André 3000 and Big Boi fabricated their debut with an anthology that helped put Southern rap on the map in 1994. It may not be the best Outkast album, only it'southward their most grounded. Still teenagers when it was released, Large and Dre were primarily focused on girls, cars, and drugs, though at that place was still enough of the social consciousness and musical experimentation they would become known for. This album is the blueprint upon which an entire generation of Atlanta rappers congenital their mode — and it still bangs more than 20 years later. "Thespian'southward Ball" would exist a hitting if it were released today, and "Git Upwardly, Git Out" is but as relevant to kids now as it was to their parents. Hearing Southernplayalistic is like watching Michael Hashemite kingdom of jordan at UNC; the seeds of greatness were in the soil, fifty-fifty if they hadn't fully bloomed still.
— J onathan Tjarks

6. Young Jeezy — Permit'due south Become It: Thug Motivation 101 (2005)

Thug Motivation 101 is a neat album, simply here'due south my i regret about its legacy: There are people who weren't live when it dropped, then they've forever missed out on the astounding excitement surrounding the release of TM 101. Of a sudden every Escalade speaker in the Southern U.S. flooded streets and highways with these large, brassy anthems that sounded like aught rap radio had ever earlier played to expiry. Jeezy was just different. His vocalism, his demeanor: He was a loudmouth with a certain, authoritative caution near him. He was unapologetically simplistic. He was also a goddamn genius. T.I. came in the game riffing on a certain traditionalist, East Coast lyrical fashion, and then Jeezy launched a revolution confronting it. There are traces of crunk music in TM 101, but Jeezy is such a slick talker, his vocalisation is so hoarse, and his perspective then wise that you'd never error him for Pastor Troy. Plus, Shawty Redd had Jeezy sounding similar a 21st-century cowboy with half dozen marching bands at his back.
— J ustin Charity

5. T.I. — Trap Muzik (2003)

"I'm this far from being a star / And just that shut to quitting," T.I. rapped on a song called "I Can't Quit," and he didn't, and soon he was a superstar. Trap Muzik brought to a shut Clifford Harris Jr.'s brief career as an underdog, a brusque Atlanta firebrand with an underperforming debut (2001's I'chiliad Serious) behind him and a chart-topping megawatt career merely over the horizon. His starting time big hits are here, from the swaggering "24's" to the absurdly rousing "Safety Band Man," wherein producer David Banner builds an ascending organ-riff-and-children's-choir stairway to sky, or at least to the upper half of Billboard'due south Hot 100.

T.I.'s lethally charismatic drawl sells everything on Trap Muzik, from "Bezzle" (a pummeling summit with Bun B and 8Ball & MJG) to "Doin My Job" (a gorgeous chipmunk-soul canticle produced past a young Kanye Due west). "T.I. vs. T.I.P.," meanwhile, is a heated carve up-personality pep talk between the volatile hole-and-corner hero and the business organisation-minded crossover superstar, each worried one was going to screw it up for the other, a conceit so juicy a few years later on he'd make a whole album near it. The song's ameliorate. T.I. would go on to greater heights, commercially and maybe fifty-fifty critically. Simply this is equally lean and hungry as he ever sounded, in function because it wasn't however articulate that he'd ever be fed.
— Rob Harvilla

iv. Lil Wayne — Tha Carter 3 (2008)

My favorite moment on 2008's Tha Carter Iii (which is unlike from favorite song) is "Dr. Carter," which ostensibly takes cues from the Common "I Used to Love H.E.R." school of personifying hip-hop then running a grand miles with her on your dorsum. Swap out the histrionics of Common'due south complaining and swap in a folding chair and the original Milton Bradley version of Operation. Then necktie ane of Wayne's arms behind his dorsum. So press play. Tha Carter III was hyped to be Lil Wayne's statement album. What emerged was a dizzying display of irrational confidence and sheer force of personality that shattered the preciousness of the "Greatest Rapper Alive" mantle.

Irrational conviction got him a song with Jay-Z as the coheadliner. Irrational confidence is what brought Kanye Westward to his doorstep with so many beats Wayne had to tell Kanye to go habitation and quit sending him shit. Irrational confidence is "Lollipop," a half-court, fuck rap, I'm the King of Pop now heave that landed him a Grammy and bent elevation-40 radio beveled, where information technology'southward been left ever since.

Irrational confidence is following that upward with "A Milli," a siren song and invitation to your favorite rapper's favorite rapper and everyone in betwixt to Wayne'south domain for a freestyle open run … that simply happened to cleft the top 10 in the Billboard Hot 100. Irrational confidence is what turned the Fire fighter into the Human Torch. Wayne knocked the game off its high horse and set an example for the adjacent generation. Genius doesn't accept to feel forced. Just printing play.

In 2012 I think obsessing over Young Thug'south I Came From Nothing 2 mixtape. The album's best track (and still, in my opinion, one of Thug's all-time, total stop), "Go on in Touch," is pure Wayne-influenced pop, but without the winking, nudging subversion. It was earnest and sweetness, and weird, and rough around both the edges and its cadre. The kids have been listening. The kids are alright.
— Danny Chau

iii. Juvenile — 400 Degreez (1998)

Mostly speaking, about rap and flexing, the cars are already paid off and at least a agenda year out from hitting the market. The thought is that you lot tin can't just walk into any former dealership and purchase one. Merely on "Flossin' Flavour," in 1998, when cars barely had smart keys, Mannie Fresh was boasting about having a machine from 2010. Not only would you need to accept a guy, yous'd also need a time machine.

Mannie was, equally they say, on another other shit. The story goes something like this: Juvenile heard a song — a Mystikal dis track, "Drag 'Em 'Northward' tha River" — that Mannie Fresh produced for UNLV, Cash Coin'southward start supergroup. About then and in that location, Juvenile decided he needed to be wherever Mannie was at. Their first joint effort, Solja Rags, was locally popular, and together they banged out Juvenile'southward third and most successful album to that signal (it went platinum), with the strangest atomic number 82 single rhythmic radio had e'er laid ears on. "Ha" barely has any rapping on it; information technology'south Juvenile talking at you, with his easily, about how yous shouldn't exist pushing your luck west of the Ponchartrain Pike. On Magnolia Street, near the C.J. Peete Projects, to be specific, earlier information technology was renamed Harmony Oaks.

400 Degreez bottles the absurdity, the severity, and the rank unpredictability of existing in the parts of New Orleans tourists don't go there to come across. How do you talk nearly all of those things and audio seasoned just not resigned, and somehow, at the same fourth dimension, triumphant, invincible? Daring you lot to try, even. Juvenile was atypical; a storyteller who lived every i of his stories and growled them from a porch you weren't immune to set foot on unless you knew somebody. With a rag tied effectually his neck and wearing Girbaud jeans, probably.

Do I need to proceed selling you on this? Do you or do you not have a Pavlovian response to the first 20 seconds of "Back That Azz Upward," the greatest party anthem ever made ever, of all time? That's what I idea.
— Micah Peters

two. UGK — Ridin' Dirty (1996)

Discussing Ridin' Dirty is always tricky because, I mean, you're talking about the very best rap album from what many (though probably nobody from Atlanta) would contend is the greatest Southern rap grouping that'due south ever been. You lot're talking about the album where Pimp C, always a master producer, reached a level of production brilliance just a teeny, tiny, itsy, bitsy list of producers take always reached; a level of production brilliance so gargantuan that he turned the album from an album into a living, breathing thing; a level of production brilliance and then perfectly crafted that he made Southern rap not only unmistakable, but undeniable. And yous're talking nearly the album where Bun B, who'd flashed greatness on the group'southward first two albums, fully grabbed hold of it and turned in what remains the premier, most perfect, most unbeatable verse in the history of Southern rap (his verse on "Murder"). You're talking about the anthology that directly shaped what happened in Southern rap for at least the following decade (you can draw direct lines from no fewer than four other albums on this all-time-of listing directly back to Ridin' Muddied). Yous're talking about the anthology that gave us what might exist the most bulletproof v-vocal set ever on any rap album, allow lone a Southern rap album ("One 24-hour interval" to "Murder" to "Pinky Band" to "Diamonds & Woods" to "3 in the Mornin'"). So you're talking near all those things, and you have to talk almost them without sounding similar you're existence hyperbolic or like you're exaggerating or like you're beingness anything other than completely serious. It's tricky, if not impossible.
— S hea Serrano

one. Out grand ast — Aquemini (1998)

Outkast goes places. Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik lets listeners ride shotgun through streets of Atlanta. ATLiens blasts them into orbit. Merely Aquemini transfers them to a parallel dimension where time has folded in on itself. A civil-rights-themed political party anthem featuring a 30-2d harmonica hoedown shares infinite with an Motorcar-Tuned screed about the dangers of technology, and it works. A nostalgic, breezy ode to a pair of lost loves is paired with a screeching apocalyptic sequel about the concluding song recorded on earth, and it works. A gospel-inspired dirge nigh the tensions between celebrity and art is followed by a wailing electric guitar solo, and it works. There was no idea likewise strange or genre besides afar for Aquemini, which yet manages to exist more than the sum of its many excellent parts. "People just couldn't understand how we were making the blazon of music nosotros were making," Big Boi said in a 2010 oral history of the album. "By that time nosotros'd gotten to a point where we were in our own earth," André 3000 added.

The Outkast earth is difficult to pinpoint; this is a group that made a prototypical trap song before it was subgenre merely is also existence played at a hymeneals in Nebraska this weekend, without question. Their all-time work always traces dorsum to Atlanta and the centuries of creative contributions by black Southern musicians. Aquemini plumbs this lineage more deftly than whatsoever of their other piece of work, offering an earthy, downwardly-home sensibility spliced with a funky futureshock that feels both retro and forward-looking. (Can some hacker/burglar please get access to the unreleased collaborations between 'Kast and George Clinton?) There'south a reason Outkast albums never sound of their era.

The impact of Aquemini is so disparate that it'due south hard to quantify (besides the ubiquitous "SpottieOttieDopaliscious" horns, that is). The album marked the transformation of Dre into André 3000, the cognitive weirdo who inspired Immature Thug, Lil Yachty, and a whole generation of off-kilter Atlanta rappers. Its sprawling scope smashed notions of what a rap anthology could and couldn't be, paving the mode for modern genre-benders like Kanye West's My Beautiful Nighttime Twisted Fantasy and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. And it firmly discarded whatsoever lingering notions that important rap emerged from simply the coasts, becoming the starting time Southern LP to earn five mics from The Source. Soon enough the growing creative differences between Big Boi and André would crusade an irreparable crevice, merely hither, for the terminal time, the two dope boys were one.
— 5 ictor Luckerson

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Source: https://www.theringer.com/2017/8/21/16170892/southern-rap-album-ranking-south-week