Word: southernization
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You’ve probably never heard of Barrie. The capital of Southern Ontario’s cottage country has a population of 125,000 and is largely undistinguished among the hundreds of other communities of its size that dot the landscape just north of the 49th parallel. Except that tomorrow, Barrie will host Canada’s Live 8 concert, featuring performances by Bryan Adams, Céline Dion, Gordon Lightfoot, the Barenaked Ladies, and the Tragically Hip, among others...
...anymore. The South is finally where hip-hop's at. These days, the biggest acts on Billboard's urban charts and on MTV are Southerners like the Ying Yang Twins, Ludacris, Mike Jones and, of course, Atlanta duo Outkast, which last year became the first hip-hop act to win a Grammy for Album of the Year. The cutting edge of Southern music: a danceable, rapid-fire, bass-heavy rap (frequently blended with R&B) called crunk, fine-tuned and marketed by loud, gold-toothed former DJ Lil Jon and popularized partly through his massive and spectacularly vulgar...
...Just how Southern has the urban-music scene become? Four of the 10 rap artists who got the most airplay last year were from the South. These days, the rappers from the lower states have clothing lines, accessories, even branded beverages (Lil Jon's energy drink is called Crunk Juice), not to mention alliances with the biggest pop artists. The Ying Yang Twins have collaborated with Britney Spears, and Destiny's Child commissioned Atlanta rapper T.I. on a recent single. Lil Jon has produced big crunk hits for Atlantans Usher (Yeah!) and Ciara (Goodies...
...career in film and on TV (he plays dad to his real-life son on Nickelodeon's Romeo) and 11 albums, the latest of which, Ghetto Bill: The Best Hustler in the Game, came out last week. His theory is that people are attracted to the sort of levity Southern rappers provide. "It's like Southern hospitality. People can party together. When you bring a Southern artist to your town, it's not about Crips or Bloods," he says. "We're able to get money from everybody...
...course, Southern rap didn't just crop up overnight. America got a taste of what the down-home base could deliver in 1989, when Miami's Luther Campbell and his 2 Live Crew rampaged with the hit Me So Horny. But that era's strip-club-and-gospel sensibility was a little too jarring for mainstream tastes, and Campbell ended up retreating to Florida. That didn't daunt innovators like Speech of Arrested Development, Missy Elliott and the Neptunes--all from the South...