Rap music from New York and Los Angeles once ruled the charts, but nowadays the southern sound thoroughly dominates the radio, Billboard, and MTV. Coastal artists like Wu-Tang Clan, Nas, and Ice-T call southern rap “garbage,” but they’re probably just jealous, as artists like Lil Wayne and T.I. still move millions of copies, and OutKast has the bestselling rap album of all time.
In Dirty South, author Ben Westhoff investigates the southern rap phenomenon, watching rappers “make it rain” in a Houston strip club and partying with the 2 Live Crew’s Luke Campbell. Westhoff visits the gritty neighborhoods where T.I. and Lil Wayne grew up, kicks it with Big Boi in Atlanta, and speaks with artists like DJ Smurf and Ms. Peachez, dance-craze originators accused of setting back the black race fifty years. Acting both as investigative journalist and irreverent critic, Westhoff probes the celebrated-but-dark history of Houston label Rap-A-Lot Records, details the lethal rivalry between Atlanta MCs Gucci Mane and Young Jeezy, and gets venerable rapper Scarface to open up about his time in a mental institution. Dirty South features exclusive interviews with the genre’s most colorful players.
Westhoff has written a journalistic tour de force, the definitive account of the most vital musical culture of our time.
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Journalist and hip-hop enthusiast Westhoff delivers a fascinating exploration of the musical and personal terrain of what has come to be known as the Southern sound of rap by such artists as Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, and Ludacris. Westhoff convincingly details how Southern rap music—"party music, full of hypnotic hooks and sing-along choruses"—took over from dominant East Coast and West Coast rap styles by replacing "normal rap structures and metaphor-heavy rhymes... in favor of chants, grunts and shouts." In fact, the beauty of Westhoff's descriptions of the genre as a whole and various songs in particular will make old fans as well as newbies want to search out and play classic CDs such as OutKast's "Aquemini" and "Kings of Crunk" by Lil Jon. And Westhoff's personal trips to the home bases of each artist he presents show how the personalities of the artists reinforce their music, which leads to scenes such as Lil Wayne's equally impassioned and hilarious defense of his fast-paced, workaholic lifestyle: "What am I supposed to do, take a vacation? This is the vacation right here." (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review
"Unprecedented in its research of the origins of Southern Hip-Hop, this gem is key to understanding the catalyst that caused the 21st Century Dirty South explosion." --The Source
"Dirty South is packed with lively reporting and colorful social history. But [it] doesn't shy away from the bigger questions." -- Rolling Stone
"Dirty South is a must-read for anybody interested in hip-hop's ever-growing role in America's cultural consciousness." --Zack O'Malley Greenburg, Forbes
"Even if you only barely recognize the names in the full title...you can still understand and enjoy Ben Westhoff's new book." --Andrew Matson, Seattle Times
"[A] consistently entertaining and enlightening chronicle of hip-hop below the Mason-Dixon line." --Martin Caballero, Dig Boston
"A fascinating exploration of the musical and personal terrain of what has come to be known as the Southern sound of rap." —Publishers Weekly
"Westhoff offers an excellent introduction to hip-hop in the South that will be informative and enjoyable for both newbies and those familiar with Southern hip-hop...A great introduction to Southern hip-hop, and a fun book for those familiar with the genre and its artists." —Library Journal
"Packed with lively reporting and colorful social history...doesn't shy away from the bigger questions. Westhoff grapples with Southern rap's troubling racial politics and takes on the critics." —Rolling Stone
Ben Westhoff is an award-winning journalist, the music editor at L.A. Weekly and senior music editor at Voice Media Group. His 2011 book on southern hip-hop, "Dirty South," was a Library Journal best seller, and he is also the author of "New York City's Best Dive Bars." His feature profiles, investigative stories, and music journalism have appeared in the Village Voice, Spin, Oxford American, New York Observer, Pitchfork, and others, as well as the web editions of The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, and NPR.
Let's go back to 1995 when Andre Benjamin, one half of super group Outkast, said these words - "....The South got something to say!" They had just received their award for Best New Group at The Source Awards, and the audience was not pleased - as their booing showed. The audience could not accept that a group not from the East or West could win a hip-hop award. They must've not known about the Dirty South!
But sixteen years later I think it's safe to say that the entire globe now knows what the dirty south had to say and knows a whole lot more about the Dirty South. Why? Because artists hailing from below the Mason-Dixon Line have dominated the hip-hop industry for the last decade, and they have created a new standard for the culture. For those who want to understand how the dirty south changed hip-hop, Ben Westoff has written a new book to tell you all about it. The book is titled Dirty South: Outkast, Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip-Hop. And in it, Westoff tells the stories of the artists and the cities that gave hip-hop its soul.
Dirty South answers Pimp C's question, "What you know about them Texas boys", through the stories of the Geto Boys, UGK, DJ Screw and the SUC, Paul Wall and the Swishahouse movement. Westoff interviewed Scarface and learned more about his tricky mind and he also took a journey with Trae into a Houston strip club to learn more about the SUC.
In Dirty South, Westoff talks about how he stalked Luke Campbell to get an interview and then found out what really happens on stage at Luke's concerts.
From an interview that Westoff conducted with Eightball & MJG, Dirty South is able to decode the term most oft used by southern rappers - pimpin'.... He says that "their use of the [term] "pimpin" in song usually isn't about prostituting women but rather excelling at one's craft, whatever it is."
Westoff gives the reader an inside look of how The Neptunes and Timbaland "reshapped rap, R&B, and pop by merging and flipping them into something entirely."
Dirty South also tells readers how Lil' Wayne rose from an obscure member of the Hot Boys to an international Rock Star!
Other stories in Dirty South include: Nelly, Master P and No Limit, DJ Drama and T.I., Lil Jon, T-Pain, Soulja Boy, and Gucci Mane.
Westoff wrote Dirty South to get to the bottom of why so many people hated southern rap and to defend the genre. The author also went to the cities and to the artists, unlike most journalists or scholars, because he felt that "the story needed to be told from the ground level...not from the perch inhabited by most critics, who tend to be based in the northeast and engage in little actual reporting."
I got a chance to speak to Westoff about Dirty South while he was on tour in Houston. Here is what he had to say about what he found out: "Up in the northeast where I am from there is a lot of hating on southern hip hop, they don't like it, and that is their choice. But the problem that I have is that many people have tried to say that southern rap is a conspiracy. That the big record labels were trying to sign southern artists to dumb down the country and take over the air waves. But what I found from all my reporting was that the opposite was true. All of these southern labels that came up and got really huge like Rap-A-Lot, Cash Money, No Limit, Suave House, and all these other labels. They were all mom and pop type labels that succeeded in spite of the major labels who didn't give them the time of day until they got really big. It was a grass roots organic thing that came up." Dirty South is a good read for hip-hop fans, critics, and scholars. It is a great addition to the growing library on hip-hop culture. Ben Westoff does a superb job in digging to the roots of the southern genre of hip-hop music. Dirty South tells the stories of artists who wanted to join an expressive culture (hip-hop), but were originally denied - so they decided to do it their own way and in doing so created a new standard.
Dirty South was released on May 1, 2011; pick it up to learn more about your Country Cousins.Read more ›
This person clearly hasn't read the book. In fact, they probably haven't even read the table of contents, because Trae (along with DJ Screw) gets his own chapter. In truth, this book delves into all aspects of southern hip-hop and tells an entertaining story. I highly recommend it.
Awesome research, enjoyable read. Uncle Luke, UGK, and Geto Boys chapters were favorites. Obscurest highlight was formation of Ying Yang Twins. Great info
I really enjoyed this book, it has a lot of history of southern rap which I love. I thought it was well written, and interesting. I always wanted to know about DJ Screw, and what happened to Baby. It also tells a lot about writers and producers, I was not aware of all that Timbaland and T Pain have done. I would read another book by this author.
I picked up the book while at my independent book store last week, the author was there doing a reading. I'm not done yet but I've found the book really accessible so far: I am a hip-hop fan but definitely have a lot to learn, and Dirty South gives a great overview of the movement as well as deep-dives into each of the most influential Southern rappers who helped define what we consider pop music today. There are a number of fun, boots-on-the-ground stories, and it's clear that the writer is passionate about his subject. I recommend it highly.
An entertaining read. I'm still not sure why Nelly is in this book and I don't agree with the verdict on DJ Smurf but this book is a quick and entertaining read.
