VMP Magazine

The 1995 Source Awards are legendary mostly because they signaled the apex of the East Coast/West Coast hip-hop rivalry. They’re where Snoop Dogg called the East Coast out for not having love for him and Dr. Dre, they’re where Bad Boy’s Puff Daddy proclaimed he was going to die in the East, and they’re where Death Row impresario Suge Knight delivered his famous “Come to Death Row” speech. But they’re also where Andre 3000 and Big Boi, a pair of funky upstarts from Atlanta who rhymed together as OutKast, were booed after they won the Source Award for Best New Artist. Rather than backing down or acting defensive, Dre squared up to the mic and proclaimed, “The South got somethin’ to say, and that’s all I got to say.”

Three Stacks’ words were profoundly prophetic. Though for much of the '90s hip-hop was dominated by New York and Los Angeles, as time has passed, rap fans have actually discovered that there are actually several other cities in America, and that those cities have been creating rap music for quite some time. And while Atlanta has been the focal point of the rap industry for the past decade and a half, hip-hop has only been kind to the south in retrospect. For the better part of the ‘90s, the south had to fight tooth and nail to prove Andre’s words true. When national record labels wouldn’t sign southern artists, they made their own labels. When major touring cities weren’t interested in booking them, they’d chart their own tours. When New York rap—so concerned with jazz—and the funk-leaning Los Angeles wouldn’t accept them, they forged their own traditions, informed by soul and the blues, with lyrics that proudly illustrated the good, the bad, and the ugly of the southern experience.

Before we get into the actual list of southern hip-hop records you should own on vinyl, a couple more notes. One, there are lots and lots of cities in the south, and each of them have produced lots and lots of great music—this could have easily been a list of ten New Orleans or Houston records—so I tried to keep the list both geographically diverse and sonically representative. Two, there’s a truly galling number of southern rap classics that just straight-up aren’t available on vinyl. Records such as Juvenile’s 400 Degreez, DJ Screw’s June 27th, Boosie’s Youngest Of Da Camp, and Waka Flocka’s Flockaveli are all in their own ways vital albums, and the fact that they are unavailable on vinyl is almost impossible to understand.

If hip-hop has a Constitution, buried somewhere within its depths, there is surely a clause stipulating that if you reach a certain echelon of success, you have to make a Christmas song. Part of why the “Christmas Rap Song” trope is so enduring is that it allows rappers to use holiday cheer as a weapon to deflate the overblown machismo and bluster that often serves as the backbone of the gangster rap persona while also indulging in it––what is a rapper like Jim Jones gate-crashing your Holiday party doing if not injecting danger into a holiday that in many ways defines our nation’s sanitized, capitalist impulses?

There were a few Christmas rap songs that I wanted to include on this list but, regrettably, have not been released on vinyl–– “Ghostface Xmas” and The Ying and the Yang of the Holidays, I’m looking at you two––but if you want to amuse your little cousin and horrify your parents through playing vinyl this holiday season, this here list is a good primer. It would be unfair to say these tracks have not aged well, because they were not meant to be good in the first place––Snoop Dogg was under no illusions that “Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto” was not up to snuff with his contributions to Dr. Dre’s The Chronic––but that doesn’t mean they aren’t all charming, original, and funny as hell.