Master P on the cover of XXL Magazine, Vol. The understanding of the "Dirty South" and southern rap music generally finds articulation in the already familiar stereotypes of the South as variously backwards, abject, slow, corrupt, communal, down-to-earth, rural, or oversexed. The passage of "Dirty South" from the specific context in which it emerged to a wider, popular culture resulted in a significant diminution of nuance in the discourse surrounding it. The Dirty South spread from a relatively insular rap music subculture to a wider, popular usage during the late 1990s along with the acceleration of investment on the part of major music corporations in the rap scenes of several large southern cities, including Atlanta, New Orleans, and Houston, as well as Memphis, Miami, and Virginia Beach. The Dirty South was forged in conversation with older or alternate modes of imagining the South, spanning a continuum from Gone with the Wind-flavored Confederate apologetics at one end to the idea of the South as a unique African-American homeland on the other. This multidimensionality encompassed ideas of a racist, oppressive, white South historically continuous with slavery a 'down-home' black South marked by distinctive speech and cultural practices a sexually libidinous South a rural, bucolic South a lawless, criminal South and a sophisticated urban South. 1 Matt Miller, "Rap's Dirty South: From Subculture to Pop Culture," Journal of Popular Music Studies 16:2 (2004): 175-212.
The concept of the Dirty South as elaborated by the Goodie Mob and other rappers and producers in several of the major cities of the South was complex, contradictory, and multidimensional. Introduced in a 1995 song by the Atlanta-based group Goodie Mob, the idea of the "Dirty South" spread quickly throughout the rap music subculture and industry, and by the early years of the twenty-first century moved into more general usage in a variety of contexts not directly related to rap. Throughout, musical and visual examples provide contextual support. The essay concludes with a foray into the visual culture of the Dirty South, revealing how rap music imagery has affirmed, critiqued, and confounded received ideas of the South. He explores the Dirty South as a geographical imaginary, and examines the widespread appropriation and adaptation of the trope of "dirtiness." Next, Miller turns to the emergence and marketing of "crunk." Crunk, like the Dirty South, is a contested and problematic intersection of musical style and spatially keyed identities. Through an examination of artists, music, promotional imagery, scholarly writing, and journalism, Miller surveys rap scenes in several southern cities. These years saw southern artists rise to national prominence, with a related surge in major label interest and investment in southern rap, a process encapsulated and expressed by the idea of the Dirty South. During the decade of 1997–2007, rap music produced in cities such as Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis, Miami, and Houston transformed the margins into the rap mainstream.