Topics in Recorded Music: Trap Music and How Atlanta Transformed Global Pop

Catalog description

Nearly three decades after Andre Benjamin – not yet known as André 3000 – declared, "The South got something to say!" amid loud boos at the 1995 Source Awards, Atlanta's influence in hip-hop is no longer in dispute. From its modern music's roots as a version of Miami bass, to Outkast's Southern-fried spin on the gangster rap of California and Texas, to the turn-of-the-century trap boom and beyond, Atlanta firmly established itself as the center of the rap universe in the 2010s, thanks to a blueprint that harnessed culture, technology and geography in equal measure. Recent Atlanta artists like Gucci Mane, Jeezy, Migos, Young Thug, Future and Lil Baby – along with their equally important producers, including Zaytoven, Shawty Redd, Lex Luger and Metro Boomin – built upon the foundation of their Southern rap forebears to change songwriting, music distribution, fashion and more. But as important to the equation were the social and political contexts that enabled (and necessitated) their successes, including Atlanta's status as "the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement" and "the Black Mecca" – and also its interconnected struggles with income inequality, drugs, guns and gentrification. The impact of the city's trap music can be traced through modern hip-hop's digital spread, from Chicago drill to Soundcloud rap, and then back again. This course – with a focus on the years 2013 to 2020, amid the industry-saving domination of platforms like YouTube and Spotify – will explore how and why artists from little or nothing, outside of rap's traditional strongholds of New York and Los Angeles, were ripe to take advantage of the dawn of digital streaming, and how the rise of Atlanta trap – as a sound, a subject and a physical space – affected the city, hip-hop and popular music writ large.