You can have different tastes. But NYC is the Mecca. It was the dominant nucleus in the 80's and 90's. Ignoring what NYC was doing is like ignoring what the 90's Chicago Bulls were doing. You got your chest out following Chris Webbers career while with Golden State and The Bullets while totally dismissing Jordans career in the 90's. That's how y'all sound.
Like any city before clear channel, we sought out our own cities music first. The casual listeners were listening to regional music, and whatever out of region stuff coming on the radio.
We loved biggie and pac, but that didn’t compare to our love of so so def, OutKast, goodie mob, intoxicated, shy d, Kilo Ali, Raheem, Memphis artists, Houston artists, NO artists, Luke/ 2 live, etc. Houston and NO was the same way, they had their own full suite of artists and a very healthy music scene with its own sound. I lived in those cities too, growing up.
It was city/region first until there were no regions at all. The average listener didn’t really give a fukk. Hip hop heads in major southern cites just loved hip hop, especially from their own region. My brother and I listened to Biggie, Pac, Wu, a little Jay, and Nas when we could get our hands on the cassette tapes. We might as well had melted our “Nas is Like” single, we played it so much. Pre ‘97 older cousin put us on the NYC stuff that wasn’t on the radio because he was super close with our cousin from Harlem. If it wasn’t for that we probably wouldn’t have heard it until much later on the Internet. As much as we loved those our most beloved tapes were “Atliens”, UGK’s “Ridin Dirty”, “Movin on” by Playa Fly, and “World Domination” by 3-6.
When illmatic dropped You’d be hard pressed to find anybody in Atlanta that knew more Nas outside of “it ain’t hard to tell”; these were people who loved rap. Most of the NY music we heard came from singles being huge radio, or family/friends from NY. We played music from our own cities, then Regions, and anybody who came down to promote and build a relationship with us. Miami, Memphis, Chicago, Houston, and New Orleans built with us early, Bad Boy built a huge relationship with Atlanta too. Pac was basically a honorary resident, Snoop and Suge visited a lot.
HBCU College campuses helped a lot with NYC artists like Wu, Nas, and Jay they were able to bleed into a lot of southern cities off straight word of mouth.
We understand and recognize that NYC and its sound was first, but once everybody got their own shyt they weren’t the end all be all for other regions and major cities. We might even love and respect it more than its current crop of artists and tastemakers.
No way a NYC regional act would be able to have those types of features in 2004. He had prime Melyssa Ford in one of his music videos for his debut album, how was Jada a regional act 50
