The South Is Rap's Past, Present And Future

It's a famous scene by now: André 3000 in a purple dashiki, Big Boi in an Atlanta Braves jersey, the pair ascending the steps of the stage at the 1995 Source Awards to accept the trophy for New Artist of the Year amid a flurry of boos from a less-than-pleased audience. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine OutKast catching jeers in any room of self-proclaimed hip-hop lovers. Yet here they were, just over a year removed from their debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, still underdogs, still unwelcome, still outcasts. There's a saying that history is written by the victors, and André 3000 foretold a million stories that night when, on enemy territory, he proudly issued a proclamation, or a prophecy: "It's like this, the South got something to say."

To understand the fire in André 3000's belly in that moment is to understand the ways in which Southerners, particularly Black Southerners, have been scorned and ostracized. It's to know what it is to walk into rooms thousands of miles from home and heart carrying centuries' worth of collective projected shame and have to decide whether to turn it up or off. The election year attitudes that have emerged about Black folk in the South — like — reveal how they are often othered or erased in mainstream imaginings of the region until suddenly they're seen, called on to . Get it