Since Outkast’s declaration, dozens of Atlanta-based artists have hit the Billboard charts, while the television and motion picture industry has exploded here.
Trap music, pioneered by T.I., and initially offering street tales of drug dealing and strip clubs, influences everything from dance to country, while being perfected by the likes of Migos, Young Thug, Future, Gucci Mane, Lil Yachty and Young Jeezy. There’s even an interactive museum here that gives a nod to the city’s trap music scene with artwork and exhibits.
On television, for better or worse, Bravo and VH1 have taken slices of Atlanta’s black culture — the wrong slices, some would argue — and turned them into modern soap operas like “The Real Housewives of Atlanta,” “Love and Hip Hop Atlanta” and “Married to Medicine,”
“I felt really proud that everyone was listening to music from Atlanta. I was even briefly proud that we had our own Housewives show – briefly,” said Jones, who grew increasingly frustrated by the portrayal of black women on the show. “I remember when it first came on, I would watch it all the time just to hear Kandi’s accent. It made me feel so at home, wherever I was. Kandi (Burris) was from southwest” Atlanta.
On average, about 40 film and TV projects are happening at any given time in Georgia. While a recent state audit suggests that the economic benefits of Georgia’s popular and lucrative film tax credit have been greatly inflated, the economic impact was still close to $3 billion in 2016.
All of that also has an impact on local businesses. Sometimes restaurants like Midtown’s 26 Thai Kitchen, which has only been open for three years, reap the benefits of being on reality shows.
“We have been told from several customers that they heard about us from ‘Love and Hip Hop,’ and we are so grateful for the added awareness that these shows bring us,” said Niki Pattharakositkul, owner of 26 Thai Kitchen, who has also been featured on “Growing Up Hip Hop Atlanta.
In the scripted realm, Stone Mountain’s Donald Glover has taken a darker, more cynical look at fame in a city packed with wannabe rappers and actors through the lens of his critically acclaimed FX show “Atlanta.”
Tyler Perry Studios has built a dozen soundstages that the company rents to other production companies. Films including Black Panther and First Man have shot scenes in these buildings. The 50-year-old Perry has raked in more than $1.1 billion in domestic box office gross from his 22 films and more than 500 episodes of TV. SPECIAL to AJC from Tyler Perry Studios.
Photo: SPECIAL to AJC from Tyler Perry Studios.
But if anyone has painted a particular vision of Atlanta’s black culture to big ends, it’s Tyler Perry, who, in 1992, spent his first three months in Atlanta homeless and sleeping in his Geo Metro.
The 50-year-old mogul channeled his faith and prolific storytelling skills into successful comedies and dramas, raking in more than $1.1 billion in domestic box office gross from his 22 films and generating more than 500 episodes of TV.
His gleaming new
Tyler Perry Studios is a 330-acre testament to his ambition.
“While everybody was fighting for a seat at the table talking about #OscarsSoWhite, #OscarsSoWhite, I said, ‘Y’all go ahead and do that,’” Perry said at the 2019 BET Awards. “But while you’re fighting for a seat at the table, I’ll be down in Atlanta building my own.”
‘Do you know Luda?’
But some, like GSU’s Hobson, are cautious. When he travels, people always note that he lives in Atlanta.
“They always ask, ‘Do you know Luda? Do you know NeNe?” Hobson laments, referring to rapper and actor Ludacris and NeNe Leakes of “Real Housewives of Atlanta.” “There is no conversation about the Atlanta University Center. They don’t ask if I know Fahamu.”
Maurice Hobson, a professor at GSU and author of “The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta.” Hobson said Atlanta’s past and current claims as a “black mecca” were built on four pillars: “black education, black economics, black politics and black expressive culture.” (Tyson Horne /
tyson.horne@ajc.com)
Photo: Tyson Horne /
tyson.horne@ajc.com
Hobson’s fear is that Atlanta’s black cultural contributions will become narrowly defined. Take trap music, for instance.
“Trap comes from crack cocaine and the militarization of the police. It is not a beautiful thing, but we glorify it and go over to the Trap (Music) Museum like it is cool, but it is not cool. That has harmed our people.”
Scholars like Hobson are trying to bring attention to the city’s rich art, literature and theater scene, in addition to its music industry.
“The influence of Atlanta is more complex than people realize. (Black) music is considered Atlanta, but the other fine arts are not,” said Jones, who returned to Atlanta in 2018 to teach creative writing at Emory University. “The fine arts are associated with formal education, even though you don’t need a formal education to appreciate Radcliffe Bailey’s work or to read my novels. Music is a lot more democratic.”
The city is home to an untold number of black authors, playwrights and artists, including
Fabian Williams, a visual artist who is a North Carolina native but has more than 20 outdoor murals in town.
Fabian Williams, an Atlanta muralist, has more than 20 works of art scattered around the city. in 2019, his mural of Colin Kaepernick was destroyed on the eve of the Super Bowl, giving him a viral moment that he wasn’t expecting. “What was happening during the Harlem Renaissance is happening here. We just don’t have the critics to write about it,” Williams said. “I get a lot of love in Atlanta, but I got told ‘no’ so much that I just started doing stuff on my own. Opportunities came my way because people around the world were talking about me.” (Tyson Horne /
tyson.horne@ajc.com)
Photo: Tyson Horne /
tyson.horne@ajc.com
As great as Atlanta is, Williams said, it would be “even more dominant,” if funding sources and support were available for artists.
“On the one hand, you have complete freedom. You don’t really have people who say you can’t do something,” said Williams, who moved to Atlanta in 2001. “So we make up things as we go. We have unrestricted creativity.”
But Williams said the downside of that is that with so little support, things don’t “blow up as quickly as they should.”
“What was happening during the Harlem Renaissance is happening here. We just don’t have the critics to write about it,” Williams said. “I get a lot of love in Atlanta, but I got told ‘no’ so much that I just started doing stuff on my own. Opportunities came my way because people around the world were talking about me.”
‘I am returning to that world’
Between 1997 and 2018, Jones lived in Iowa, Tennessee, Illinois, Texas, Las Vegas, Washington D.C., New Jersey and New York. Every move for Jones, whose first novel was “Leaving Atlanta,” was an effort to get back to Atlanta.
When she was living in Brooklyn, people acted as if she got there on “the Underground Railroad,” she said. She constantly had to defend her status as a Southern writer.
“A friend read the draft of ‘American Marriage’ and said to me, ‘Why are you still writing that world?’ You live in New York now, you know all kinds of people,’” said Jones, who grew up in the Cascade area. “I felt like she was saying that the world that means so much to me, which is Atlanta, isn’t cosmopolitan, isn’t sophisticated like New York. I took that into my heart, and I thought not only am I writing that world, but at the very first opportunity I am returning to that world.”
Emory Professor and acclaimed author, Tayari Jones, poses in her Atlanta home. (Tyson Horne /
tyson.horne@ajc.com)
Photo: Tyson Horne /
tyson.horne@ajc.com
When Oprah announced that “American Marriage” had been selected for the book club, Jones started packing her bags for Atlanta.
“
I moved home, ultimately, for my art,” Jones said.
Last week, before the cold weather set in, she sat on her porch and weighed her dinner options. Ella Fitzgerald cooed gently out of her sound system.
A Fahamu Pecou hangs on her wall.
Upcoming trips to Portugal and Dubai are on her calendar, following similar jaunts to Sweden, Italy and the United Kingdom to promote “An American Marriage.”
Her latest, an Audible called “Natural Light,” is due out this month.
“Atlanta is a cultural beacon,” she said as Ella gave way to Sarah Vaughn. “You think about Stacy Abrams and the fact that she was the first black woman to be a gubernatorial candidate of a major party in any state. People like to look at the fact that she didn’t win as evidence that this is still the South. But the fact that she was the candidate was also the South. We are in many ways are on the cutting edge of progress.”
it's a WHITE owned business that stole the recipe from Black folks in Nashville,TN.
