There are 3 prompts. Each one should be a successful academic essay, from introduction to conclusion. Use the article to provide at least one quote from relevant text. Please give the outlines of each one before the essay. In the beginning of the quarter

Geography of American rap: rap diffusion and rap centers

Kenneth French

Published online: 14 October 2015

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Abstract The goal of this paper was to contribute to

the interdisciplinary research that linked place and

music by conducting a brief geography of rap. Rap

music grew from the isolated Bronx in the 1970s and

became a mainstay in popular culture today. Hip hop

music was noted for its strong sense of place, as rap

credibility (what ‘hood do you represented), identities

(e.g. Flo Rida), and local slang (e.g. sippin’ sizzurp in

Houston) were often geographically-based. This

research described the various spatial meanings of

rap, mapped the diffusion of hip hop music, and

identified rap centers. Cartographic analysis was based

on the hometowns of 1124 rappers and the release dates

of their debut albums from 1979 to 2015. The diffusion

of rap followed the hierarchical diffusion pattern by

leapfrogging from one major urban area to another.

Keywords Rap � Cultural geography � Music geography � Sense of place � Diffusion

Introduction

Rap music in America grew from isolated urban

neighborhoods in the 1970s to become a mainstay in

the landscape of popular music today. Behind the

catchy beats, lyrics offered glimpses into a world

where poverty, police brutality, gang-related violence,

and other urban social ills were commonplace. Rising

from these ignored urban environments were prideful

voices calling for social change to ‘fight the powers

that be,’ as Public Enemy put it. Prominent in rap

music was a strong attachment to place, as rap

credibility, identities, and local slang usages were

often geographically linked. Given the popularity of

this musical form, it was somewhat surprising that

geographical research on rap music in America has

received scant attention (Graves 2009; Carney 2003).

Most gaps in the geographic research of rap were filled

by scholars across various disciplines (Forman 2000,

2002; Mitchell 2001; Hess 2009; Westhoff 2011).

More analysis could be done on the importance of

place in rap music, mapping the spread of rap in

America, and to describe local styles in major hip hop

centers. The goal of this paper was to contribute to the

existing interdisciplinary research on rap by providing

a geography of hip hop music to date.

Music studies

A few music geographers (Kruse 2005; Hudson 2006;

Johansson and Bell 2009) have added to music studies

with research that successfully linked music and place.

The subfield of music geography has generally

overlooked rap music, thus restricting the field by

focusing on other music genres, such as country and

K. French (&) Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-

Parkside, Kenosha, WI 53141, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

123

GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272

DOI 10.1007/s10708-015-9681-z

folk (Gill 1995). Leyshon et al. (1995: 19) warned that

the ‘‘problem with the standard historical geography

of rap… [is t]he assumption that to place rap is to explain it risks denying the mobility, mutability, and

global mediation of musical forms.’’ Geographical

research on rap followed a traditional approach by

identifying cities that have prominent rappers and rap

groups (Carney 2003). Graves (2009) described a

historical geography of rap by distinguishing folk

culture aspects of hip hop from popular culture

features of rap music. Placing rap music has been

mainly filled by non-geographers due in part to the

‘Spatial Turn’ in the humanities. Scholars from

anthropology, communication studies, cultural stud-

ies, and musicology studied the importance of geog-

raphy in music (Leonard and Strachan 2010; Bennett

2000). In terms of rap research, Murray Forman’s

book The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place

in Rap and Hip-Hop (2002) was the seminal piece

noting the importance of space and place in the genre.

Tony Mitchell’s edited volume of Global Noise (2001)

offered various examples of rap outside of the United

States. These works notwithstanding, there were many

research opportunities to explore the diffusion of hip

hop music within America.

According to the Encyclopedia of Human Geogra-

phy (Warf 2006: 107–109), there were two types of

diffusion: contagious diffusion and hierarchical diffu-

sion. The former described the transmission of a

phenomenon from one person to another, while the

latter described the spread of a phenomenon from one

city to another in a leapfrog manner. Contagious

diffusion depended on people directly sharing ideas

with each other or by migrating from one locale to

another. Hierarchical diffusion relied on the use of

technology to spread a feature from the hearth to more

distant places. Anthropologists Peterson and Di Mag-

gio (1975) noted the diffusion of country music

popularity across America was linked to the spread of

country radio stations and not solely on the migration

of Southerners away from the South. Likewise,

geographers have studied the origin and distribution

of rock and roll music by noting cities where

musicians were born (Ford 1994; Butler 1994). These

studies described the spatial patterns of music in

America without mapping the location of artists over

time. Music studies could be enhanced by mapping the

diffusion of artists based on their hometowns and the

dates their first albums were released. Understanding

the origins of rap and its various meanings can provide

context to the diffusion of rap.

Origin of rap

Rap music originated on the streets of American inner

cities; however, the roots of rap were deeper than this

urban surface. Rap has ties to West African griots, or

folk poets, who had an oral tradition described in

written records in the 11th Century (Hale 1998). These

praise-singers were known for communicating stories

and historical accounts through the use of song. Due to

the forced migration of Africans to the Americas,

many African traditions developed into African

American traditions. Aspects of ‘playing the dozens’

or ‘yo’ mama’ jokes were prevalent in rap battling. In

this verbal game of trading insults, a crowd judges who

wins or loses based on the humor and causticity of the

barbs (Jemie 2003). Feuding and trading insults

between rappers and rap centers were prevalent in

the history of rap music.

In addition to African continental heritages,

African American political and art movements have

shaped the formation of rap music (Rabaka 2012). For

example, another precursor to rap music was spoken

word poetry—popularized by the Black Arts Move-

ment of the 1960s (Sablo Sutton 2004). Performance

poetry, including its modern manifestation of slam

poetry, related to the delivery of rap lyrics in that the

recitation style was as important as the poem itself.

Rhythmically, rap had ties to the blues, jazz, neo-soul,

and R&B traditions. The background beats and sounds

of rap, or its musical samples and breaks, were

predominately from these African American musical

genres. Rap music celebrated the use and/or re-

working of preexisting musical elements to create

the foundation of a rap song (Williams 2013).

The birthplace of rap in New York City was tied to

another African-based tradition. The act of toasting, or

the improvised speaking over beats, was a Jamaican

musical tradition that found its way to the multicul-

tural borough of the Bronx. DJ Kool Herc, a Jamaican-

American, brought toasting and a large sound system

to block parties in the ‘Boogie Down’ Bronx (Chang

2005). Early hip hop consisted of party music—using

turntables to extend danceable sections of songs—as

illustrated when DJ Kool Herc performed at his

sister’s party in the recreation room at 1520 Sedgwick

260 GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272

123

Avenue apartments (Fig. 1) in August, 1973 (Kosa-

novich 2014: 53–54). According to Tricia Rose

(1994), hip hop culture, which encompassed fashion,

break dancing, graffiti art, and rapping, ‘‘attempts to

negotiate the experiences of marginalization, brutally

truncated opportunity, and oppression within the

cultural imperatives of African American and Car-

ibbean history, identity, and community’’ (Rose 1994:

21). The origin of rap was born from fusing African,

Caribbean, and African American traditions to express

modern inner city experiences.

Meanings of rap

While the historical-cultural roots of rap influence the

morphology and outer characteristics of the art form,

the meanings of early rap music were tied to a

description of inner city life in America, as both an

expression of joy and as an articulation of oppression.

The first hit that put rap on the popular culture scene

was Rapper’s Delight (1979) by The Sugarhill Gang.

The song described a party atmosphere filled with

hyper-masculinity and self-boasting, themes still

prevalent today. In the song, Master Gee rapped,

‘Well, my name is known all over the world/By all the

foxy ladies and the pretty girls/I’m going down in

history/As the baddest rapper there could ever be.’

A more powerful use of rap was ‘conscious rap,’

where rappers often provided commentaries about

social injustices (Watkins 2005: 21). In The Message

(1982) by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five,

Melle Mel rapped about a poor urban economy with

double digit inflation and unemployment, junkies

beating people for money, and a deficient educational

system. The frustration felt in the song built up to the

chorus: ‘It’s like a jungle sometimes/It makes me

wonder how I keep from going under.’ Recently,

Chicago rapper Common demonstrated social aware-

ness in the Oscar-winning song Glory (2014), by

linking the past protests in Selma, Alabama to those in

Ferguson, Missouri after the Michael Brown shooting.

Commenting on social issues and calling for change,

Melle Mel and Common were what Cheney (2005)

would call ‘‘raptivists.’’

These examples illustrated the significance of rap,

which provided a voice for the marginalized—a strong

factor in the global appeal and acceptance of this

musical form. Groups that do not have political or

economic power can express their local situations to

the wider community, country, and world through the

medium of popular culture. As rapper Nas said, ‘All I

Need is One Mic, One Beat, One Stage’ (One Mic,

2001) to express the urban context he inhabited. For

global youth, as Tony Mitchell noted, ‘‘rap music and

hip-hop culture have in many cases become a vehicle

for various forms of youth protest’’ (Mitchell 2001:

10). In this youthful dissent there were prideful

descriptions of growing up at the margins of society.

The positive messages and meanings found in rap

music tell part of the story. Rap music has been

justifiably condemned for misogynistic lyrics and

music videos, homophobia, promoting drug use, and

the glorification of violence (Rebollo-Gil and Moras

2012; Gourdine and Lemmons 2011; Hobson and

Bartlow 2008; Herd 2009). Controversy surrounded

misogynistic rap lyrics and videos, where women were

degraded in rhymes and sexually exploited on screen

(Adams and Fuller 2006). The hyper-masculine ten-

dency of rap often led some rappers to express

homophobia in lyrics by ‘demasculinizing’ another

rapper (Rose 2008: 236–242). Rap music was criti-

cized further for its glorification of violence and the

admiration of criminal activities, which propagated

negative stereotypes about American inner cities. In a

random sample of 632 rap songs from platinum selling

albums (selling over 1 million units), Kubrin (2005)

found that close to 65 % of the rap songs from 1992 to

2000 referenced violence.

A reason for the popularity of violence in rap was

tied to the marketing to middle-class, suburban

Fig. 1 1520 Sedgwick Avenue apartments in the Bronx [photo by author]

GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272 261

123

audiences whom fanaticize about the ghetto life.

Commercialization of hip hop transformed rap away

from African American experiences (Blair 1993) and

rap lyrical content shifted away from grassroots

themes when major record labels bought out indepen-

dent rap labels (Myer and Kleck 2007). Lena (2006),

in analyzing rap lyrics from 1979 to 1995, noted that

major labels featured rappers with lyrics emphasizing

street credibility (often tied to drugs and violence) and

a ‘‘hustler’’ protagonist. In the documentary Hip Hop:

Beyond Beats & Rhymes (2006), young rappers felt

pressure to express violent and hyper-masculine lyrics

to get signed to a record deal. Rappers included violent

themes in rap music, often with the backing of major

record labels, to authenticate their real or imagined

urban struggle. This sense of place marker was one of

many aspects of geography within the hip hop

community.

Geography in rap

There were strong connections between rap music,

identity, and senses of place. City of origin was an

important spatial identity marker in hip hop songs,

music videos, and fashion (e.g. clothes that supported

local sports teams, music video locales, etc.). Wiz

Khalifa was proud of his city in Black and Yellow

(2010) by rapping about the common colors of the

professional sports teams in Pittsburgh. Bay Area

rapper Tupac mentioned various cities in California

Love (1995) and Jay Z’s Empire State of Mind (2009)

was an ode to places within New York City. Further,

place names became popular references in hip hop and

occur at multiple geographic scales. Rappers had pride

in their regions (East Coast, West Coast, ‘Dirty South,’

and Midwest) and were identified in song. These rap

regions were self-evident among American rappers:

for example, at the beginning of Hip Hop is Dead

(2006), Nas called to ‘NYC, Dirty South, West Coast,

Midwest, let’s go!’

At the city level, Snoop Dogg represented the LBC

(Long Beach City) and Kanye West rapped about Chi-

Town or The Chi (Chicago). Nelly put St. Louis on the

rap map with Country Grammar (2000), where he

embodied place with: ‘Sing it Loud (What?)/I’m from

the Lou’ and I’m Proud.’ In fact, Nelly’s debut album

cover depicted the rapper in front of the Gateway

Arch. Atlanta rapper Ludacris sang about area codes—

another popular geographically-based marker in hip

hop culture. Rapper Drake referenced ‘6’ in several

rap songs as a spatial marker for Toronto—the digit is

the common number in the city’s 416 and 647 area

codes. In comparison, several Toronto’s suburban

neighborhoods use the 905 area code. At the street

level, Warren G referenced the intersection of ‘21 and

Lewis’ in Los Angeles. The importance of geography

in rap can also be seen in the actual names of famous

rappers, as the T in T-Pain stands for Tallahassee, the

D in D-12 represents Detroit, and it’s obvious what

state Flo Rida called home. Legitimacy as a rapper was

based on what ‘hood you represented, either at the

neighborhood, city, or regional geographic scales.

To use Murray Forman’s words, rap put ‘‘a

pronounced emphasis on place and locality,’’ (Forman

2002: 28) and credibility as a rapper was based on

geography and identity; in other words, ‘who you are’

was answered by ‘where you are from.’ Street cred

was built up geographical since growing up in an inner

city neighborhood and surviving the harsh social

environment authenticated a rapper. Where you are

from was something that a few rappers have to

overcome to be accepted in the hip hop. Mickey Hess

(2009) notes how the Wu-Tang Clan has justified their

street cred in Staten Island—New York City’s least

credible rap borough because of its perception of being

a white community—by rapping about living in the

island’s two housing projects (Stapleton and Park

Hill). Place was critical in providing the legitimacy of

Eminem, who grew up in inner city Detroit (Warren,

MI), while de-legitimizing Vanilla Ice, who did not

grow up in the inner city in Miami. Place, instead of

race, could also be the reason that many in the rap

community do not give white Seattle rapper Mackle-

more more credit. Geography can be used as a

powerful authenticating tool that may have hampered

hip hop’s growth across America. Were rappers

outside of New York City or Los Angeles, irrespective

of their lyrical talents, seen as lacking urban credibil-

ity? If you were not from a poor inner city, could you

claim to be an authority on street life?

Rap feuds based on a sense of place and territori-

ality were common, a fact observed in the infamous

East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry during the mid-

1990s that sadly culminated in the murders of

Notorious BIG (East Coast) and Tupac (West Coast).

The rivalry was encouraged by record labels and

producers, as Diddy’s Bad Boy Records supported

262 GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272

123

Notorious BIG and Suge Knight’s Death Row Records

backed Tupac. Commercialization of hip hop, as

record labels focused on record sales, fostered a

climate of rap feuds since controversy sells. Eithne

Quinn noted that rap rivalries were ‘‘fueled by

geography—the geographies of community, of repre-

sentation, of markets’’ (Quinn 2005: 182). Here the

meaning of rap was territorial: by promoting their

region or place, rappers consequently (directly or

indirectly) constructed all other places as inferior.

Thus, as rap diffused, rap artists from emerging hip

hop centers made it a point to place themselves by

distinguishing their neighborhood from other areas

and rappers.

Data and methodology

The difficulty in mapping the diffusion of rap music in

America was the lack of a current data source on the

hometowns of rap artists. This study attempted to

overcome this limitation by developing a rap database

in a three-step process. First, a list of 1124 rappers was

collected from Wikipedia. As an open-source website,

Wikipedia has been noted for errors and can be

rightfully questioned as a primary source. Thus,

Wikipedia was only used as a starting point to identify

the names of American rappers. The second step

included the confirmation and cross-referencing of

rappers and their hometowns from verified internet

sources: All Music, Rolling Stone, and MTV. The

third step involved noting the year an artist’s debut

album was released by using online album databases

(Discogs and All Music). Using data about albums,

and not mixtapes or EPs (Extended Plays), focused

this research away from the underground rap scene.

The limitations of the created database included a

potential undercount of rappers in America, was

depended upon the biographic accuracy from music

websites, and the exclusion of underground rappers.

This data collection methodology did not claim to

have developed the definitive database of every rapper

in American history.

The diffusion of rap in America can be shown by

mapping the hometown of rap artists based on the year

of their debut album. Debut albums indicated the

potential commercial success of a new rap artist.

Hometowns were used instead of birthplaces since

rappers could move before releasing their debut

album. For example, Tupac Shakur was born in New

York City, lived in Baltimore, and then moved to

Marin City, California when he was a teenager. For

this dataset, his hometown was listed as Marin City (in

the Bay Area) since that was where he became a

successful rapper. Rapper hometowns, with debut

album dates, were then geocoded in a Geographic

Information System (GIS). A query of rap artists by

debut album date in the GIS allowed for the mapping

of rap diffusion by any time periods (e.g. 1980s,

1990s, and 2000s). Rap centers were identified by

mapping all 1124 rappers by their debut album date

from 1979 to 2015. The top ten top cities with the

highest number of rappers were selected and further

understood in terms of their local styles. Also, the

history of each rap center concentrated on the impact

of geography: intra-urban differences and place-based

references in lyrics.

Rap diffusion

In mapping new rap artists based on their debut album

release date (Fig. 2), patterns of growth within and

between urban areas became apparent. In the 1980s,

New York City was the main center of rap by having

64 of the 108 (59.3 %) new rap artists calling the city

home. New York City-area rap pioneers, with pre-

1984 debut album release dates, included The Sugar-

hill Gang, Kurtis, Blow, The Cold Crush Brothers,

Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, and Afrika

Bambaataa. It was not until Philadelphia rapper

Schooly D (1985), became the first non-New York

City metro area rapper to release an album. Los

Angeles was a distant second with 14 rappers having a

debut album in the decade—Ice T and Easy-E released

their debut albums in 1987 and 1988 respectively. In

1987, Oakland rappers MC Hammer and Too Short

were the first Bay Area rappers to release albums. The

only Southern cities that produced popular rappers in

the 1980s were from Miami (2 Live Crew), Dallas

(The D.O.C.), and Houston (Geto Boys).

All of early rap centers continued to develop new

rappers into the 1990s and rap spread to new

metropolitan areas. There were 440 new rappers that

had debut albums in the 1990s. New York City

continued to be the dominant city in developing

rappers and was home to 142 of the 440 (32.3 %) new

rap artists. The next major rap city was Los Angeles,

GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272 263

123

with 77 new rappers with debut rap albums in the

1990s. Popularity of hip hop music ignited diffusion to

smaller urban centers in New Orleans (26 new

rappers), Houston (24 new rappers), Oakland (20

new rappers), and Atlanta (18 new rappers) in this

1990s. Some of the earliest New Orleans rappers with

debut albums included Master P (1991) and Mystikal

(1994). The debut albums of Arrested Development

(1992), Kris Kross (1992), OutKast (1994), and Lil Jon

(1997) helped place Atlanta on the hip hop scene.

There were only a few rappers with albums from the

Midwest in the 1990s. Detroit had eight new rap

Fig. 2 Diffusion of rap music by decade based on

the hometowns of new rap

artists. Rap artist

hometowns and year of their

debut albums were collected

from the following websites:

www.allmusic.com, www.

discogs.com, www.mtv.

com, www.rollingstone.

com, and www.wikipedia.

org

264 GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272

123

artists, including Eminem’s debut album in 1996, and

Chicago developed five new rap artists such as

Common and Twista (both had debut albums in 1992).

Post-millennium growth of rap was seen in South-

ern cities, as Atlanta had emerged as a rival to New

York City in generating new talent. New York City

still produced the highest number of new rappers, with

72 of the 390 (18.5 %) new rap artists being from New

York City. However, the percentages of new rappers

from New York City had declined from 59.3 % in the

1980s to 32.3 % in the 1990s to 18.5 % in the 2000s.

In the 2000s, Atlanta had 45 new rap artists emerge,

while 39 new rap musicians were from Los Angeles.

Other cities like Philadelphia, Memphis, and Dallas

continued to grow in rap talent over time. Midwestern

rap nodes in St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, and

Detroit continued to gain recognition in the 2000s—as

Chicago rapper Kanye West then noted: ‘You Know

What the Midwest Is? Young and Restless’ (Jesus

Walks, 2004). Interestingly, there were fewer new rap

artists originating from Californian cities, New

Orleans, and Houston in the 2000s. The development

of new rappers in the 2000s spread away from the

largest metropolitan areas near the coast.

The diffusion of rap music progressed from one

major urban center to another in America in a leapfrog

pattern. The spread of rap from New York City to the

other large urban areas benefited from rap music’s rise

in popular culture. Rap music transitioned from being

a fad in the early 1980s to a mainstream musical genre

in the late 1980s with the help of radio stations and

cable television. Television shows Yo! MTV Raps

(started in 1988) and Rap City (started in 1989) were

instrumental in the diffusion of rap music across

middle-class America. Rap music spread with people

traveling away from New York City (contagious

diffusion pattern), however the hierarchical diffusion

pattern described the diffusion of rap more closely. In

the 1980s, rap dispersed from New York City to

distant urban centers of Los Angeles, Houston, and

Oakland in a leapfrog manner. The last rap centers to

develop were cities in the Midwest, which were closer

to New York City than those on the West Coast. If rap

music spread according to contagious diffusion, rap

would reach Chicago and St. Louis before it would

reach Los Angeles and Oakland. Similar to the process

of diffusion in country music identified by Peterson

and Di Maggio (1975), the diffusion of rap music was

disseminated via multimedia platforms and not from a

large migration of people. Future diffusion research of

the 2010s may provide an indication of the growth of

hip hop in America as new cities may develop into rap

centers.

Rap centers

Spatial patterns were apparent when mapping 1124

rap artists by hometown from 1979 to 2015 (Fig. 3).

Three major rap centers emerged: New York City, Los

Angeles, and Atlanta—these metro areas combined to

be home to 50.2 % (or 564 out of 1124) of all rappers

in America (Table 1). The gap to the next tier of cities

was sizable (New Orleans, Houston, Oakland,

Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Miami), as no

other city produced more than 50 rappers with albums.

However, if the Bay Area of California (Oakland, San

Francisco, and Vallejo) was considered as one entity,

then there were 63 rappers from this conurbation. The

relatively lower total number of rappers from the

Midwestern cities of Chicago, Detroit, and St. Louis

was due to the fact that rap diffused into these cities at

a later time. A brief historical geography of the top ten

rap centers was created by identifying selected

rappers, indicating their intra-urban differences, and

referencing place-based rap themes. Many rap styles

that started in one city were often adopted by rappers

from another city over time. Rap music has a long

tradition of copying, from using sampled beats and

imitating rap styles. Also, due to the complexity of

styles and histories in hip hop music, this study only

analyzed a very limited sample of rap artists from each

center.

New York City

New York City was the hearth of hip hop culture and

was home to 314 rap artists to date. Territoriality in

New York hip hop was evident as rappers represent

various sub-city geographies of boroughs. Rap rival-

ries between New York City boroughs started in the

1980s. In representing the birthplace of rap, Bronx

rapper KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions puts

down Queens’ rappers MC Shan and Marley Marl,

with The Bridge is Over (1987): ‘Manhattan keeps on

makin’ it/Brooklyn keeps on takin’ it/Bronx keeps

creatin’ it/And Queens keeps on fakin’ it.’ New York

City rappers were displayed geographical awareness

GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272 265

123

about which neighborhoods other rappers represented.

New York rap music can be geographically divided

amongst the boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn,

Queens, and Manhattan (mainly Harlem).

The South Bronx was the origin of rap music as the

early rap pioneers included DJ Kool Herc, Busy Bee

Starski, and The Cold Crush Brothers. The hearth of

rap music was a part of the Hip Hop cultural

movement—the term Hip Hop was coined by Bronx-

native DJ Afrika Bambaataa (Pabon 2006: 19). A

common occurrence in the 1970s South Bronx was the

block party, using stolen municipal power, which was

used to lessen gang tensions within the neighborhood

(Lamotte 2014). Bronx pride as the birthplace of rap

can be seen in street signs in its urban landscape as

rappers KRS-One, DJ Red Alert, Grandmaster Flash

and The Furious Five, Afrika Bombaataa, and Grand-

master Caz were a few of the hip hop legends inducted

to the boroughs’ Walk of Fame. Bronx rap in the 1990s

included Latino artists such as Fat Joe (founder of

Terror Squad record label) and Big Pun,

Brooklyn rappers in the 1980s included artists such

as Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick, Chubb Rock, and MC

Lyte. Perry (1994: 191) analyzed female rapper MC

Lyte’s video for Stop, Look, Listen (1989) and noted

that she challenged male space by rapping on the street

which countered the negative association of women on

the street corner as being prostitutes. Many famous

Brooklyn rappers had their debut albums released in

the 1990s: Notorious BIG (1994), and Jay Z (1996),

Mos Def (1998), and Talib Kweli (1998). Notorious

BIG drew upon his upbringing in Brooklyn and

constructed some of the most creative clever rhymes.

To the envy of other rappers, he took on a persona that

promoted the fact he sold crack in Brooklyn (he was

arrested at the age of 17) and rapped about the gangster

lifestyle (Collins 2006). After Notorious BIG’s death

in 1997, there was a territorial rap battle in New York

Fig. 3 Total number of rappers with albums by

hometown, 1979–2015. Rap

artist hometowns and year of

their debut albums were

collected from the following

websites: www.allmusic.

com, www.discogs.com,

www.mtv.com, www.

rollingstone.com, and www.

wikipedia.org

Table 1 Top 15 cities with the highest number of rappers, 1979–2015

Rank City Number of rap artists

1 New York City 314

2 Los Angeles 162

3 Atlanta 88

4 New Orleans 48

5 Houston 43

6 Oakland 41

7 Philadelphia 38

8 Chicago 31

9 Detroit 30

10 Miami 25

11 Memphis 17

12 Boston 13

13 San Francisco 12

14 St. Louis 11

15 Vallejo, CA 10

Rap artist hometowns and year of their debut albums were

collected from the following websites: www.allmusic.com,

www.discogs.com, www.mtv.com, www.rollingstone.com, and

www.wikipedia.org

266 GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272

123

City between Brooklyn rapper Jay Z and Queens

rapper Nas. The rivalry was a battle over the ‘King of

New York’ rap title and involved various songs and

freestyles that insulted the opposing rapper. The feud

was a commercial success for both rappers as people

purchased records to hear how each rapper disre-

spected the other. This territorially-based controversy

dissipated as Nas and Jay Z overcame their dispute,

especially when the former was signed by the latter to

a Def Jam record deal. Nas was one of several rappers

in the 1990s that continued the rap tradition from

Queens. Rap artists and groups such as Run DMC

(1984), Salt-n-Pepa (1986), and Young MC (1989)

had debut albums before 1990. Rap reached wider

audiences when Run DMC rapped over a sample from

Aerosmith’s rock song Walk this Way (1986). Newer

Queens rap artists from the 2000s included G-Unit

(tied with rapper 50 Cent) and Nicki Minaj. Part of 50

Cent’s street credibility was the fact that he was shot

nine times in 2000 on 161st Street in Jamaica, Queens

(Birchmeier 2015).

Many rappers from the borough of Manhattan

hailed from its Harlem neighborhood—a neighbor-

hood near to the South Bronx. Early Harlem rap

innovators included Kurtis Blow and beatboxer Doug

E. Fresh. In the song Rappin’ Blow, Part 2 (1980),

Kurtis Blow stated: ‘I’m Kurtis Blow on the micro-

phone/A place called Harlem was my home.’ Another

famous rap group from Manhattan in the 1980s was

the rap group The Beastie Boys—members were from

affluent families. Stratton (2008) argued that The

Beastie Boys’ Jewishness was central to their success

and they brought rap to a mainstream, white American

audience. One of their songs was No Sleep till

Brooklyn (1987)—a party anthem heard across Amer-

ica. The song geographically referenced Brooklyn, a

major center for hip hop, and not their home borough

of Manhattan. Was geography used to authenticate

their rap credibility to wider rap audiences?

Los Angeles

In its formative days, 1980s Los Angeles rap was

known for the development of Gangsta Rap. The main

neighborhoods to develop rappers were Compton,

South Central, and Long Beach City. The local social

tensions within Compton added to the rap themes

introduced by the rap group NWA. Their place-

referenced album Straight Outta Compton (1988), and

commercially successful film of the same name

(2015), violently described an urban environment

filled with police brutality and gang hostilities. This

subgenre of rap, Quinn explained, ‘‘continually elab-

orated highly appealing and marketable expressions of

authentic place-bound identity… [and] at the same time, intimated the wider context of insecurities about

place and the displacing features of post-Fordist

capitalism that precisely drove such expressions’’

(Quinn 2005: 67). Key members of NWA, such as

Easy-E, Ice Cube, and Dr. Dre, were influential in the

West Coast rap scene. Critically-acclaimed rapper

Kendrick Lamar continued Compton’s rap tradition,

as Los Angeles locales and streets were prominently

featured in his album good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012).

His King Kunta (2015) lyrics, and subsequent music

video locales, indicated Kendrick Lamar’s sense of

place: ‘Stuck a flag in my city, everybody’s screamin’

‘Compton’/I should probably run for Mayor when I’m

done, to be honest.’ Geographical markers used in Los

Angeles were similar in importance to those rappers

from the various sub-city areas of New York City.

The Los Angeles rap scene was tied to its G-Funk or

Gangsta Funk beginnings. Dr. Dre influenced this style

and advanced the careers of several Long Beach City

rappers such as Warren G, Nate Dogg, and Snoop

Dogg. He produced Snoop Dogg’s first album Dog-

gystyle (1993). A common theme in Snoop Dogg’s

music over the years was the recreational use of

marijuana. A similar theme can be found in the songs

from Latino rap group Cypress Hill—named after a

local hangout on Cyprus Avenue in the South Gate

neighborhood of LA (Cypress Hill 2015).

Another inner city neighborhood of Los Angeles

famous for rap was South Central—rappers Ice Cube

and the rap group The Pharcyde call this area home.

Former NWA member and creative rap lyricist Ice

Cube’s street credibility was questioned on two fronts:

family status and geography. Ice Cube had been

criticized for coming from a two-parent family (sadly

seen as a negative for some in the hip hop community)

and was bussed out of his South Central neighborhood

to Taft High School in the San Fernando Valley

(Hilson-Woldu 2008: 14–26). These factors were used

by some to question his Gangsta background, espe-

cially noting that he did not know many Crip gang

members from his neighborhood. Nonetheless, Ice

Cube lived in South Central and knew about the social

climate of Los Angeles.

GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272 267

123

Atlanta

A major criticism of the marketing of ‘Dirty South’

rap in Atlanta was that it obscured the real social and

economic problems in the South (Grem 2006). Many

of the rap styles in Atlanta rap do not focus on the

social ills within Southern inner cities. The rap styles

Atlanta included up-tempo beats, Snap Rap, Trap,

and Crunk. Atlanta’s rap group OutKast had a strong

sense of place in their music and they titled their

debut album: Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

(1994). The group was known for their rapid rhymes

and up-tempo drum and bass beats—for example,

listen to Bombs over Baghdad (2000). The heavy

drum and bass sounds were musical traditions that

came to Atlanta from Jamaica via Miami. A devel-

opment heard in Atlanta-based music and dance in

the 2000s was called Snap Rap. In this subgenre,

finger snaps instead of drum beats served as percus-

sion, and rap songs and associated dances in Lean

Wit It, Rock Wit It (2006) by Dem Franchize Boys

and Crank That (2007) by Soulja Boy Tell’em

demonstrated the movement. Popular dances, such as

The Dougie, The Bernie, Nae Nae, and Whip Dance,

were influential in bridging the gap between hip hop

and mainstream cultures. Atlanta teenager Silentó,

with his commercially successful song Watch Me

(2015), referenced several Southern-based hip hop

dances mentioned above. Southern Trap, a mixture of

electronic dance music and rap, spread in the DJ

world and led to the Harlem Shake internet memes

and viral videos in 2012.

Starting in Memphis and then becoming popular in

Atlanta, Crunk rap was a feel-good subgenre of rap

linking music in strip clubs and the Southern under-

ground rap industry (Westwood 2005). Strippers

wanted feel-good songs to get the audience excited

and local DJs provided these hip hop beats. Even

though the etymology of Crunk was unknown, the

combination of ‘crazy’ and ‘drunk’ were commonly

used to describe this rap style about partying. The

distinctiveness of Crunk was the expression of emo-

tions in a yell: as the self-proclaimed King of Crunk,

Atlanta rapper Lil Jon screamed ‘yeah!,’ ‘what?!,’ and

‘okay!’ in numerous songs. In Southern rap parlance,

‘turn up’ or ‘turnt up’ refered to partying while getting

drunk and/or high. In the lyrically simple song Turn

Down for What (2013), Lil Jon wonders why anyone

would want to stop partying. The Crunk rap subgenre

was the antithesis of blues music, where musicians

often used groans to express their feelings of sorrow.

Secondary centers

Emerging secondary centers offered new subgenres on

rap music by mixing local musical traditions and

referencing local slang. The fourth largest hip hop

center was New Orleans, centering around two major

labels: No Limit Records and Cash Money Records.

New Orleans rappers Master P (founder of No Limit),

Birdman (co-founder of Cash Money), Mystikal, and

Juvenile found commercial success by 1995. Lil

Wayne was a popular rapper, and due to a recent

dispute, a former member of Cash Money Records. He

embodied place identity by having ‘Orleans’ and the

New Orleans Saints Fleur-de-lis logo tattooed on his

face. Lil Wayne (aka Weezy) grew up in the Holly-

grove neighborhood of New Orleans and raps in

Hollyweezy (2015) that he was ‘Too Hollygrove to go

Hollywood.’ Hip hop culture continued to diversify, as

the New Orleans gay culture was known for partying

to Bounce music, a dance-orientated rap subgenre

(Miller 2012).

The fifth largest rap center was Houston—where

pre-1990s artists included the Geto Boys and Scarface.

Houston was noted for the rap subgenre of ‘chopped

and screwed,’ where up-tempo beats were abandoned

for slow background grooves. DJ Screw (hence the

style name) popularized this method by taking current

rap hits and re-mixing them by slowing the music

tempo down. Slim Thug, Paul Wall, and Mike Jones

represented H-Town by rapping over these chopped

and screwed beats—for example, in their song Still

Tippin’ (2005). Adding to the lexicon of Houston rap

was the local drug usage that was referenced as

‘sippin’ sizzurp,’ The reference was to Purple Drank

or Lean, a mixture of prescription-strength cough

syrup (consisting of promethazine and codeine) and

soft drinks. Hart et al. (2014) surveyed 2349 under-

graduates and linked Purple Drank drug use to fans of

hip hop music. This popular Southern drug has been

linked to the deaths of DJ Screw and Port Arthur,

Texas rapper Pimp C, among others.

The sixth largest rap center to develop artists was

Oakland, California—extending to the entire Bay

Area included rappers from San Francisco and

Vallejo. The sexually explicit lyrics of Too Short put

Oakland on the map in the late 1980s. Another early

268 GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272

123

rap pioneer from Oakland is MC Hammer, whom

found commercial success in 1990 with his song U

Can’t Touch This. Also in 1990, Digital Underground

became popular with the song The Humpty Dance.

Tupac, who started as a dancer for Digital Under-

ground, became an iconic rapper from the Bay Area.

His music touched on rap themes of partying, the

‘Thug Life,’ family togetherness, and political acti-

vism (Stanford 2011). Some of the themes of rap in the

Bay Area revolved around the development of the

Hyphy Movement (similar to Crunk in the South) in

The Bay Area. The style, which was distinguishable

by its unique local slang, was short for hyperactive,

which referred to getting drunk or using drugs to ‘get

stupid’ and ‘go dumb’ (Jones 2006). Rap songs

mentioned ‘ghost riding the whip,’ the local phe-

nomenon of drivers walking and/or dancing outside of

their slow moving vehicles. For rappers engaged in the

Hyphy movement, such as E-40, the music provided

an expression of their local culture to a wider

audience. E-40 popularized the slang ‘-izzle’ suffix

in the West Coast rap lexicon, with ‘fo’ shizzle’

meaning ‘for sure’ as one example. This rap dialect

became more popular when West Coast rapper Snoop

Dogg adopted it and used this vernacular in his lyrics.

Another early East Coast center for rap music was

Philadelphia—with artists like Schooly D and DJ

Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince debuting albums in the

1980s. The latter represented West Philadelphia and

were known for their popular hit Parents Just Don’t

Understand (1988). The Fresh Prince, aka Will Smith,

parlayed his musical success into acting success, as his

TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air led to various

blockbuster movie roles. Influential Philadelphia hip

hop band The Roots produced several albums in the

1990s and were known for being the house band for

several rappers’ live performances. Ruff Ryder rapper

Eve places her hometown of ‘Philthadelphia’ on

several of her early raps. In 2013, rappers Cassidy

and Meek Mill continued the tradition of doing the

dozens by releasing songs insulting each other.

The eighth and ninth ranked centers of rap were

found in the Midwest, Chicago and Detroit respec-

tively. Chicago’s own Kanye West—equally known

for his creative beats, big ego, and controversial public

outbursts—worked with musicians from various

musical genres. Kanye West collaborated with Adam

Levine of Maroon 5, former Beatle Paul McCartney,

and French electronica group Daft Punk. Kanye

West’s song and video Homecoming (2009), featuring

Coldplay’s Chris Martin, was an ode to Chicago. The

song personified Chicago and ended with: ‘Jump in the

crowd, spark your lighters, wave ‘em around/If you

don’t know by now, I’m talking ‘bout Chi-town!’

Kanye West did not shy away from his middle-class

upbringing, as the educationally-themes titles of his

first three albums noted: The College Dropout (2004),

Late Registration (2005), and Graduation (2007). Had

geography as an authenticating tool in hip hop become

less important over the years? The diversity of

Chicago rap was seen with Lupe Fiasco, a creative

lyricist who became prominent with his ode to

skateboarding in Kick, Push (2006) and for being the

official musician of the U.S. Soccer Federation.

Detroit rapper Eminem, a member of D-12, became

famous for his criticisms of popular culture icons and

for his alter-ego Slim Shady. Eminem’s rap credibil-

ity, which is difficult for a white rapper to achieve,

came by his ascension through Detroit’s underground

rap battle scene (fictionalized in the movie 8 Mile, a

road that historically separated African Americans and

whites). The film described a poor rapper from a trailer

park who participated in rap battles, where rappers

created rhymes that insulted their rap competitor

(similar to playing the dozens). Other Detroit rappers

include D-12 artists, Slum Village, Royce Da 50900, and Big Sean. Royce Da 50900 raps about being the King of Detroit in Rock City (2002) and proclaimes: ‘If you

hate me/You hate the D,’ proving that it was difficult

to separate the identity of a rapper from the geographic

area they represent.

The tenth most populated rap center was Miami,

where controversial rap group 2 Live Crew was known

for their sexually explicit lyrics and legal battles over

censorship. ‘Parental Advisory’ labels were used on 2

Live Crew’s albums of As Nasty As They Wanna Be

(1989) and Banned in the USA (1990). Miami

remained Florida’s major hip hop center, with geog-

raphy being an important identity marker for many

prominent artists. The Carol City rapper Rick Ross

named himself after a drug lord—his lyrical themes

mention drug trafficking and expensive automobiles.

His place-based debut album was titled Port of Miami

(2006). Cuban-American rapper Pitbull’s debut album

was titled M.I.A.M.I. (2004)—using the city’s name to

stand for ‘Money Is A Major Issue.’ Florida rapper

T-Pain was the poster child of the Auto-Tune move-

ment in Hip Hop, where a voice processor was used to

GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272 269

123

correct for off-key sounds. Songs such as I’m Sprung

(2005) and Up Down (Do This All Day) (2013)

exemplified this sing-song genre of rap music that

became popular for many rappers outside of Florida.

In a regional dispute, New York City rappers Nas and

Jay Z, in Hip Hop is Dead (2006) and D.O.A. (Death of

Auto-Tune) (2009) respectively, had criticized the

Auto-Tune movement in rap.

Summary

Rap music started in the Bronx borough of New York

City and diffused to several large inner cities over time.

The diffusion of rap music followed the hierarchical

diffusion pattern of leapfrogging from one large metro

area to another. In the 1980s, rap was mainly produced

in New York City and then diffused to Los Angeles,

Oakland, and Miami. In the 1990s, rap continued to

diffuse and grow in Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, and

Memphis. In the 2000s, Midwestern cities of Detroit,

Chicago, and St. Louis developed more rap artists. This

research showed after mapping 1124 rap artists that

there were three major hip hop centers: New York City,

Los Angeles, and Atlanta. Secondary rap centers were

found in the East Coast (Philadelphia), West Coast (The

Bay Area), South (New Orleans, Houston, and Miami),

and Midwest (Chicago and Detroit). Rappers from these

centers developed local rap styles and used local slang to

portray their locality. Rap music has a powerful

connection to place as rappers legitimized their hip

hop authenticity by constantly indicating where they

grew up in rap songs. Rap artists even incorporated

geography into their identity when creating their rap

names and rap groups. Hip hop music within large urban

areas can be studied for their geographic meanings and

intra-urban rivalries. Future research can build upon this

paper and add to the multidisciplinary approaches that

study the geography of rap music.

Discography

2 Live Crew. 1989. As Nasty As They Wanna Be.

Luke/Atlantic Records.

2 Live Crew. 1990. Banned in the USA Luke/

Atlantic Records.

2 Pac featuring Dr. Dre. 1995. California Love.

Death Row/Interscope.

Beastie Boys. 1987. No Sleep till Brooklyn. Def

Jam/Columbia Records.

Boogie Down Productions. 1987. The Bridge is

Over. B-Boy Records.

Common and John Legend. 2014. Glory. Columbia

Records.

Dem Franchize Boys. 2006. Lean Wit It, Rock Wit

It. Virgin Records.

Digital Underground. 1990. The Humpty Dance.

Tommy Boy.

DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince. 1988. Parents

Just Don’t Understand. Jive.

DJ Snake and Lil Jon. 2013. Turn Down for What.

Columbia.

Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. 1982. The

Message. Sugar Hill.

Jay Z. 2009. D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune). Roc

Nation/Atlantic.

Jay Z. 2009. Empire State of Mind. Roc Nation/

Atlantic.

Kanye West. 2004. Jesus Walks. Roc-A-Fella Records.

Kanye West. 2009. Homecoming. Roc-A-Fella

Records.

Kendrick Lamar. 2012. Good kid, m.A.A.d city. Top

Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope.

Kendrick Lamar. 2015. King Kunta. Top Dawg/

Aftermath/Interscope.

Lil Wayne. 2015. Hollyweezy. Young Money.

Lupe Fiasco. 2006. Kick, Push. Atlantic.

MC Hammer. 1990. U Can’t Touch This. Capitol.

Mike Jones, with Slim Thug and Paul Wall. 2005.

Still Tippin’. Warner Bros Records.

N.W.A. 1988. Straight Outta Compton. Ruthless.

Nas. 2001. One Mic. Columbia.

Nas. 2006. Hip Hop is Dead. Def Jam/Columbia.

Nelly. 2000. Country Grammar. Universal Records.

OutKast. 2000. B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad).

LaFace.

Pitbull. 2004. M.I.A.M.I. (Money Is A Major Issue).

TVT.

Rick Ross. 2006. Port of Miami. Slip-n-Slide/Def

Jam/Poe Boy.

Royce Da 50900. 2002. Rock City. Columbia. Run DMC. 1986. Walk this Way. Profile.

Silentó. 2015. Watch Me. Capitol.

Soulja Boy Tell’em. 2007. Crank That. Interscope.

T-Pain. 2005. I’m Sprung. Konvict/Jive/Zomba.

T-Pain. 2013. Up Down (Do This All Day). Nappy

Boy/Konvict Muzik/RCA Records.

270 GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272

123

The Sugarhill Gang. 1979. Rapper’s Delight. Sugar

Hill.

Wiz Khalifa. 2010. Black and Yellow. Rostrum/

Atlantic.

Compliance with ethical standards

Conflict of interest None.

References

Adams, T., & Fuller, D. (2006). The words have changed but the

ideology remains the same: Misogynistic lyrics in rap

music. Journal of Black Studies, 36(6), 938–957.

Bennett, A. (2000). Popular music and youth culture: Music,

identity, and place. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Birchmeier, J. (2015). 50 Cent biography. All music.

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/50-cent-mn0000919805/

biography

Blair, E. (1993). Commercialization of the rap music youth

subculture. The Journal of Popular Culture, 27(3), 21–33.

Butler, R. (1994). The geography of rock: 1954–1970. In G.

Carney (Ed.), The sounds of people and places: A geog-

raphy of American folk and popular music (pp. 215–244).

Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.

Carney, G. (2003). Rappin’ in America: A regional music

phenomenon. In G. Carney (Ed.), The sounds of people and

places (3rd ed., pp. 93–118). Lanham, MD: Rowman and

Littlefield Publishers Inc.

Chang, J. (2005). Can’t stop, won’t stop: A history of the hip-hop

generation. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Cheney, C. (2005). Brothers gonna work it out: Sexual politics

in the golden age of rap nationalism. New York: New York

University Press.

Collins, M. (2006). Biggie envy and the gangsta sublime. Cal-

laloo, 29(3), 911–938.

Cypress Hill. (2015). About cypress hill. http://cypresshill.com/

about/

Ford, L. (1994). Geographic factors in the origin, evolution and

diffusion of rock and roll music. In G. Carney (Ed.), The

sounds of people and places: A geography of American folk

and popular music (pp. 203–214). Lanham, MD: Rowman

and Littlefield Publishers Inc.

Forman, M. (2000). ‘Represent’: Race, space, and place in rap

music. Popular Music, 19(1), 65–90.

Forman, M. (2002). The ‘hood comes first: Race, space, and

place in rap and hip-hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan

University Press.

Gill, W. (1995). Region, agency, and popular music: The

Northwest sound, 1958—1966. In G. Carney (Ed.), Fast

food, stock cars, and rock ‘N’ roll: Place and space in

American pop culture (pp. 17–41). Lanham, MD: Rowman

and Littlefield Publishers Inc.

Gourdine, R., & Lemmons, B. (2011). Perceptions of misogyny

in hip hop and rap: What do you think? Journal of Human

Behavior in the Social Environment, 21(1), 57–72.

Graves, S. (2009). Hip hop: A postmodern folk music. In O.

Johansson & T. Bell (Eds.), Sound, society and the

geography of popular music (pp. 245–260). Burlington:

Ashgate Publishing Company.

Grem, D. (2006). ‘‘The South Got Something to Say’’: Atlanta’s

Dirty South and the Southernization of Hip-Hop America.

Southern Cultures, 12(4), 53–73.

Hale, T. (1998). Griots and Griottes: Masters of words and

music. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana

University Press.

Hart, M., Agnich, L., Stogner, J., & Miller, B. (2014). ‘Me and

My Drank:’ Exploring the relationship between musical

preferences and purple drank experimentation. American

Journal of Criminal Justice, 39(1), 172–186.

Herd, D. (2009). Changing images of violence in rap music

lyrics: 1979–1997. Journal of Public Health Policy, 30(4),

395–406.

Hess, M. (2009). Hip hop in America: A regional guide. Santa

Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press.

Hilson-Woldu, G. (2008). The words and music of ice cube.

Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.

Hobson, J., & Bartlow, R. D. (2008). Representin’: Women, hip-

hop, and popular music. Meridians, 8(1), 1–14.

Hudson, R. (2006). Regions and place: music, identity, and

place. Progress in Human Geography, 30(5), 626–634.

Jemie, O. (2003). Yo’ Mama! New raps, toasts, dozens, jokes

and children’s rhymes from Urban Black America.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Johansson, O., & Bell, T. (2009). Sound, society and the geog-

raphy of popular music. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing

Company.

Jones, S. (2006). Hyphy pulls a bay area breakout. USA Today,

13 April. http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2006-

04-13-hyphy-main_x.htm

Kosanovich, K. (2014). Just be real: Creating and advertising

hip-hop authenticity in the bronx and beyond. Spaces and

Flows: An International Journal of Urban and ExtraUrban

Studies, 4, 53–58.

Kruse, R. (2005). The beatles as place markers: Narrated land-

scapes in liverpool, England. Journal of Cultural Geog-

raphy, 22(2), 87–114.

Kubrin, C. (2005). Gangstas, thugs, and hustlas: Identity and the

code of the street in rap music. Social Problems, 52(3),

360–378.

Lamotte, M. (2014). Rebels without a pause: Hip-hop and

resistance in the city. International Journal of Urban and

Regional Research, 38(2), 686–694.

Lena, J. (2006). Social context and musical content of rap music,

1979–1995. Social Forces, 85(1), 479–495.

Leonard, M., & Strachan, R. (2010). The beat goes on: Liver-

pool, popular music, and the changing city. Liverpool:

Liverpool University Press.

Leyshon, A., Matless, D., & Revill, G. (1995). The place of

music. Transactions of the Institute of British Geogra-

phers, 20(4), 423–433.

Miller, M. (2012). Bounce: Rap music and local identity in

New Orleans. Amherst, MA: University of Mas-

sachusetts Press.

Mitchell, T. (2001). Global noise: Rap and hip-hop outside the

USA. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Myer, L., & Kleck, C. (2007). From independent to corporate: A

political economic analysis of rap billboard toppers. Pop-

ular Music and Society, 30(2), 137–148.

GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272 271

123

Pabon, J. (2006). Physical graffiti: The history of hip-hop dance.

In J. Chang (Ed.), Total chaos: The art and aesthetics of

hip-hop (pp. 18–26). New York: Basic Civitas Books.

Perry, V. (1994). Feminine or masculine: The conflicting nature

of female images in rap music. In S. Cook & J. Tsou (Eds.),

Cecilia reclaimed: Feminist perspectives on gender and

music (pp. 183–201). Champaign, IL: University of Illinois

Press.

Peterson, R., & Di Maggio, P. (1975). From region to class, the

changing locus of country music: A test of the massifica-

tion hypothesis. Social Forces, 53(3), 497–506.

Quinn, E. (2005). Nuthin’ But A ‘‘G’’ Thang: The culture and

commerce of gangsta rap. New York: Columbia University

Press.

Rabaka, R. (2012). Hip hop’s amnesia: From blues and the

black women’s club movement to rap and the hip hop

movement. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Rebollo-Gil, G., & Moras, A. (2012). Black women and black

men in hip hop music: Misogyny, violence and the nego-

tiation of (white-owned) space. The Journal of Popular

Culture, 45(1), 118–132.

Rose, T. (1994). Black noise: Rap music and black culture in

contemporary America. Hanover and London: Wesleyan

University Press.

Rose, T. (2008). The hip hop wars: What we talk about when we

talk about hip hop—And why it matters. New York: Basic

Civitas Books.

Sablo Sutton, S. (2004). Spoken word: Performance poetry in

the black community. In J. Mahiri (Ed.), What they don’t

learn in school: Literacy in the lives of urban youth (pp.

213–242). New York: Peter Lang.

Stanford, K. (2011). Keepin’ it real in hip hop politics: A

political perspective of Tupac Shakur. Journal of Black

Studies, 42(1), 3–22.

Stratton, J. (2008). The Beastie Boys: Jews in whiteface. Pop-

ular Music, 27(3), 413–432.

Warf, B. (2006). Encyclopedia of human geography. Thousand

Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc.

Watkins, C. (2005). Hip hop matters: Politics, pop culture, and

the struggle for the soul of a movement. Boston: Beacon

Press.

Westhoff, B. (2011). Dirty South: OutKast, Lil Wayne, Soulja

Boy, and the Southern Rappers who reinvented hip-hop.

Chicago: Chicago Review Press.

Westwood, T. (2005). Documentaries: The Dirty South. BBC

Radio 1, 14 March.

Williams, J. (2013). Rhymin’ and Stealin’: Musical borrowing

in hip-hop. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

272 GeoJournal (2017) 82:259–272

123