Very few female artists have been recognized in hip hop, and the most popular, successful and influential artists, record producers, and music executives are males. Women who are in rap groups, such as Lauryn Hill of the Fugees, tend to have less advantages and opportunities than male artists.[243] Moreover, female artists have received significantly less recognition in hip hop. Only one female artist has won Best Rap Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards since the category was added in 1995.[244] In addition, African American female hip hop artists have been recognized even less in the industry.[245] Salt-N-Pepa felt when they were establishing themselves as a successful group, they had to prove doubters wrong, stating that "being women in hip hop at a time when it wasn't that many women, we felt like we had more to prove."[246]
The hip hop, hardcore rap, and trap scenes, alongside their derivative subgenres and subcultures, are most notorious for having continuously celebrated and promoted drug trafficking, gangster lifestyle, and consumption of drugs and alcohol since their inception in the United States during the late 1980s–early 1990s.[247][248][238][249]
As well, the hip hop music community has been criticized with accusations of homophobia and transphobia.[250] Hip hop song lyrics contain offensive, homophobic slurs (most popularly the pejorative term "faggot") and sometimes violent threats towards queer people, such as rapper DMX's "Where the Hood At?", rapper Eazy-E's "Nobody Move", rap group Brand Nubian's "Punks Jump Up to Get Beat Down".[251] Many rappers and hip hop artists have advocated homophobia and/or transphobia.[252] These artists include Ja Rule, who in an interview claimed, "We need to go step to MTV and Viacom, and let's talk about all these fucking shows that they have on MTV that is promoting homosexuality, that my kids can't watch this shit,"[253] and rap artist Erick Sermon, who has said publicly, "[Hip hop] will never accept transgender rappers."[254]
Until the 2010s, hip hop music has excluded the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. This has perpetuated a culture in hip hop that is prejudiced towards queer and trans people, making it a tough culture for queer artists to participate in.[250] Despite this prejudice, some queer/genderqueer rappers and hip hop artists have become successful and popular in the 2010s. One of the more notable members of the LGBT community in hip hop is Frank Ocean, who came out in 2012 and has released critically acclaimed albums and won two Grammy Awards.[255] Other successful queer hip hop/rap artists include female bisexual rapper Azealia Banks,[256] pansexual androgynous rapper and singer Angel Haze,[257] lesbian rapper Siya,[258] gay rapper/singer Kevin Abstract,[259] and genderqueer rapper Mykki Blanco.[260]
This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Having its roots in reggae, disco, funk and soul music, hip hop has since expanded worldwide. Its expansion includes events like Afrika Bambaataa's 1982 releasing of Planet Rock, which tried to establish a more global harmony. In the 1980s, the British Slick Rick became the first international hit hip hop artist not native to America.[citation needed] From the 1980s onward, television made hip hop global. From Yo! MTV Raps to Public Enemy's world tour, hip hop spread to Latin America and became a mainstream culture. Hip hop has been cut, mixed and adapted as it the music spreads to new areas.[261][262][unreliable source?]
Early hip hop may have reduced inner-city gang violence by providing an alternative means of expression to physical violence.[263] However, with the emergence of commercial and crime-related gangsta rap during the early 1990s, violence, drugs, weapons, and misogyny, were key themes. Socially and politically conscious hip hop has long been disregarded by mainstream America in favor of its media-baiting sibling, gangsta rap.[74]
Black female artists such as Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott, and MC Lyte have made great strides since the hip hop industry first began. By producing music and an image that did not cater to the hyper-sexualized stereotypes of black women in hip hop, these women pioneered a revitalized and empowering image of black women in hip hop.[264] Though many hip hop artists have embraced the ideals that effectively disenfranchize black female artists, many others choose to employ forms of resistance that counteract these negative portrayals of women in hip hop and offer a different narrative. These artists seek to expand ways of traditional thinking through different ways of cultural expression. In this effort they hope to elicit a response to female hip hop artists not with a misogynist lens but with one that validates women's struggle.[265]
For women, artists such as Missy Elliott, Lil' Kim, Young M.A. and others are providing mentorship for new female MCs. In addition, there is a vibrant scene outside the mainstream that provides an opportunity for women and their music to flourish.[70]
These notions are, of course, vaguely ridiculous. There was plenty of mediocre hip hop in the ‘90s, and there are plenty of talented rappers making music today. But it must be said, the ‘90s were a time of intensely productive and inventive hip hop output; A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders and Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang were released on the very same day in 1993! This is a rough guide to the decade’s alternative rap, which, to generalise, tended towards jazzy samples, socially activist lyrics, and a generally lighter and more self-deprecating demeanour than gangsta rap, in whose shadow it has often found itself.
Like many a white boy, ATCQ was my route into hip hop – their jazzy, mellifluous sound made them hard to dislike. Their rap was often socially conscious and activist, taking on issues such as date rape and the use of the N-word in the black community. They were also central members of Native Tongues, a loose, Afrocentric collective which put out upbeat, jazz-influenced hip hop in the ‘80s and ‘90s. As often as not, though, it was simply good music about being young and famous, or indeed about nothing in particular. 'The Chase Part II' sees Phife Dawg and Q-Tip engaging in playful bragging with effortless chemistry over a laid-back sample lifted from an obscure Steve Arrington track.
This song is held together by one of my favourite samples in hip hop history, a beautifully sad saxophone lick taken from 'Today' by Tom Scott and the California Dreamers. (Incidentally, the California Dreamers were also sampled, this time alongside Gábor Szabó, in People Under the Stairs’ excellent 'San Francisco Nights'.) 'They Reminisce Over You' was written following the death of the artists’ friend Trouble T Roy in a freak accident at a concert in 1990. C.L. Smooth uses the track to pay tribute to his friend and reminisce more generally about his childhood. While he notes the challenges he and his family faced – an absent father, an alcoholic grandfather, a teenage mother – there’s no anger either at these or the loss of his friend, only a fuzzy nostalgia and wistfulness which proves remarkably moving.
Digable Planets may not be the best known of hip hop acts, but their music is emblematic of the fusion of jazz and hip hop that artists such as Gang Starr and ATCQ had been experimenting with since the late ‘80s. Their extremely laid-back style, however, belies their radical political message – their music is full of references to Marx, the Black Panthers and the Five Percent Nation. They released two LPs, Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space) in 1993, and Blowout Comb the following year, the title of the former being a reference to Jose Luis Borges’ A New Refutation of Time, giving an indication of their bohemian and intellectual proclivities. This seven-minute track, which concludes Blowout Comb, sees them at perhaps their smoothest.
The title track from 93 ‘Til Infinity (no prizes for this one’s year of release), though superb, sadly tends to overshadow the other gems in this exceptional album, including this one. Lyrically and in terms of rhyme complexity, Souls of Mischief were far ahead of most of their early ‘90s competitors. Like many other alternative rap acts, they drew much of their musical inspiration from jazz – this song features a wonderful solo from trumpeter Bill Ortiz, who claims he was brought in to replace a sample which was too expensive for the East Oakland group to clear. Sadly, I haven’t managed to track down the original song (please let me know if you do!). Despite their affinity with Native Tongues-aligned groups such as The Pharcyde, their sound has something more of a menacing edge, without entering into theatrical braggadocio territory.
De La Soul’s 1989 debut 3 Feet High and Rising catapulted them to a stardom that they never quite suited due to their sheer eccentricity – for instance, one of the group’s two main rappers goes by Trugoy, an anagram of yogurt, apparently one of his favourite
foods. Initially all peace signs and Afrocentricity, they largely ditched their hippy image following their debut album and were capable of more serious and darker work such as Stakes Is High, released in 1996. They never lost their playful side, however, or the weirdness of their stream-of-consciousness rapping. Producer Prince Paul’s sample of Michael Jackson’s 'I Can’t Help It' gives this song an infectiously bouncy feel.
Alternative hip hop in the ‘90s was dominated by the East Coast, though acts like Blackalicious and the aforementioned Souls of Mischief gave it a Californian presence. Common (formerly Common Sense) put Chicago on the map. His sophomore album, Resurrection (1994), also includes 'I Used to Love H.E.R.', a broadside against gangsta rap which led to a dispute with Ice Cube, culminating in the diss track 'Westside Slaughterhouse', and Common’s response 'The Bitch In Yoo' – neither of which covered their writers in glory. Aside from this feud, however, Common’s musical talent is exceptional. Here, he raps over a sample of Ahmad Jamal’s terrific cover of 'Dolphin Dance'. His confident, intricate flow speaks to a youthful optimism and swagger which, in fairness, was well earned – not many could write an album this good, especially at the tender age of 22.
Representing Philadelphia, also the home of The Roots, rapper Bahamadia got her break in the early ‘90s when she came to the attention of Gang Starr’s Guru. Her debut LP Kollage arrived in 1996, and though it failed to achieve huge commercial success, was a critically acclaimed and greatly respected effort. Her flow is supremely smooth, at times vaguely reminiscent of Nas’ associate AZ, and is well-matched by the selection of jazzy samples, handled largely by Gang Starr and The Beatminerz. Other standout tracks from this album are '3 Tha Hard Way' and the dreamy 'Spontaneity'.
Mos Def was one of the leading figures of the late ‘90s resurgence of conscious hip hop, alongside the likes of Common, The Roots, Erykah Badu and Talib Kweli, with whom Mos wrote the excellent Black Star album. It’s hard to say which is better out of this album and his first solo work, Black On Both Sides (1999). Perhaps the strongest track on either LP, however, is 'Mathematics', an astonishingly forceful and wide-ranging denunciation of American racial capitalism, spanning from the crack epidemic to mass incarceration and the surveillance state. Much of what he raps about remains just as relevant today as it was at the turn of the century. This really is one of the most lyrically rich songs written, and it bears repeated listening. A brilliant song from a brilliant rapper.
Eric Barber Digital MarketingFemale rappers dominate the mainstream space in 2021. Artists such as Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, and Nicki Minaj often own the Billboard chart. However, they only offer one view of the female rap landscape. Before rap was the world’s most popular musical genre, several groundbreaking women blazed a fiery trail for others to follow. The story began with MC Sha-Rock of the Funky 4 + 1, often credited as the first female rapper on wax. Following her lead, Roxanne Shanté, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, J.J. Fad, and Bahamadia busted through the doors so other women could flourish. Take a listening journey through hip-hop’s matriarchy.
The trail of women MCs traces back to MC Sha-Rock. She rapped with Jazzy Jeff, Guy Williams, Keith Keith, The Voice of K.K., and Rodney Stone as part of the Funky 4 + 1 on the 1980 disco-infused single “That’s The Joint.” Arranged by jazz musician Clifton “Jiggs” Chase and produced by Sugar Hill Records’ Sylvia Robinson, the song samples A Taste of Honey’s “Rescue Me.” Beastie Boys famously sampled the track for 1989’s “Shake Your Rump” from Paul’s Boutique.
Roxanne Shanté was just a mouthy, rebellious teenager when she joined the Juice Crew. As a member, she performed alongside East Coast greats Mr. Magic, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, and Marley Marl, among others. In 1984, she unleashed “Roxanne’s Revenge” in response to U.T.F.O.’s “Roxanne, Roxanne” single about a woman who refused to get seduced. It not only marked one of the earliest diss tracks by a woman on record, but it would also ignite the Roxanne Wars, hip-hop’s first official rap beef.
In the 1980s, Sweet Tee and DJ Jazzy Joyce signed to Profile Records, the label responsible for Run-DMC, DJ Quik, and Rob Base and DJ EZ-Rock, to name a few. In 1986, they dropped their breakthrough single “It’s My Beat.” The tune came with a shoutout to their “Casio and drum machine” over Herby Luv Bug’s Roland TR-808 banger.
“Supersonic” by MC JB, Baby D, and Sassy C isn’t just rap’s first platinum hit. The song also played a pivotal role in introducing West Coast gangsta rap to the mainstream. The late Eazy-E instinctively knew the world wasn’t ready for N.W.A’s brazen attitude—but J.J. Fad was the solution. With their bubblegum raps and innocence, Eazy-E knew J.J. Fad would help break down the barriers for Ruthless Records to begin its takeover.
With a focus on the often taboo topic of addiction, “Poor Georgie” finds MC Lyte digging deep to paint a portrait of a man struggling to beat the odds. Produced by DJ Doc, it samples Toto, The Supremes, Michael Jackson, Jimmy Spicer, and Eric B. & Rakim. The track is a sonic patchwork quilt of diverse sounds, all sewn together by MC Lyte’s unexpected bravado.
From the moment Queen Latifah called out sexism on “U.N.I.T.Y.,” the legendary New Jersey MC asserted herself as an impenetrable force. She refused to allow any man to degrade her. The song’s unmistakable horns and jazzy samples come from The Crusaders’ 1974 single “Message from the Inner City.” “U.N.I.T.Y.” remains one of the most recognized women-empowerment anthems in hip-hop history.
From the moment Queen Latifah called out sexism on “U.N.I.T.Y.,” the legendary New Jersey MC asserted herself as an impenetrable force. She refused to allow any man to degrade her. The song’s unmistakable horns and jazzy samples come from The Crusaders’ 1974 single “Message from the Inner City.” “U.N.I.T.Y.” remains one of the most recognized women-empowerment anthems in hip-hop history.
The Lady of Rage came up at a time when West Coast G-Funk was the soundtrack of an era. Despite being from Virginia, Rage easily fit in with her Compton and Long Beach counterparts. 1994’s “Afro Puffs” wound up being the perfect introduction to the tough-talking MC—despite her initial hesitancy. Crafted by fellow Death Row artist Dr. Dre, the song takes notes from Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s 1977 hit “Love That Will Not Die.” That song provides the backbone of the dark and menacing beat for The Lady of Rage to flow over.
Bahamadia exploded onto the Philadelphia hip-hop scene with her 1996 debut Kollage. The album contained the standout track “Unknowhowwedu.” Using samples from A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Chase, Part II” and Schoolly D’s “Gucci Time,” producer Ski Beatz delivered a timeless, boom bap beat.
As always, Lauryn Hill murdered her verse on the 1996 Fugees single “Ready Or Not.” With lines such as, “While you out there imitating Al Capone/I’ll be Nina Simone and defecating on your microphone,” Ms. Hill was out for blood. Borrowing heavily from the Delfonics’ “Ready Or Not Here I Come (Can’t Hide From Love),” the song also contains a sample of Enya’s “Boadicea.” In fact, the inclusion almost led to a lawsuit. However, once the new-age singer realized it wasn’t gangsta rap, The Fugees were able to settle out of court.
While more of a Neo-soul chanteuse than an MC, Erykah Badu fully embodies hip-hop. This is especially the case on the 2002 Brown Sugar single, “Love Of My Life (An Ode To Hip Hop)” featuring her ex, Common. Ms. Badu fires off a dizzying 16 midway through the video, proving she’s packing innate rhyming skills in her “30, 26, 36-and-a-half” frame, too. Plus, look for the Roland R-8, which makes a brief appearance in the accompanying visual.
Rapsody released the masterful EVE in 2019. The album pays tribute to numerous powerful Black women who have inspired her throughout her life. On “Aaliyah,” Rapsody mourns the lack of diversity in the landscape of mainstream rap. “When Aaliyah was alive/It was cool to be a tomboy,” she raps over a slick, boom bap beat. At the same time, she reminds us there’s room for more than one type of female rapper, and baggy jeans and hoodies are still allowed.
Lyrics are essential in any genre, but perhaps they are the most important when it comes to building a strong rap song. After all, rap songs and hip-hop music rely heavily on lyrics, rhythm, and rhyme, whereas other genres divert more attention to melody.
Hence, you don't just need to know how to write a song in order to create rap songs, you need to know specifically how to write a rap song. Thankfully, we've built a step-by-step guide so that just about anyone can become great at writing rap. We'll cover what makes a great rap song, how to make rap music and a few helpful pointers below.
In order to understand how to write a rap song, we need to take a look at what makes a compelling rap song first. Here are some of the music industry standard elements you'll want to include in all of your tracks:
Hip hop music and rap music encompass "telling your truth." In many ways, these genres can be more vulnerable than others since you're essentially putting the story first. The song structure is typically relatively simple, but the rap songwriting process depends heavily on the story of the speaker. In order to write rap songs that hit home, the listener needs to believe you. Everything stems from a story.
Many rappers, DJs, producers and "kids from all over" visit the mall with influential hip-hop folk like Drake and A$AP Rocky among those who have had custom pieces made here. Haggling is acceptable – required, even – and the prices can be gloriously cheap. And it's not just the shopping, Slauson Supermall has some popular restaurants too.
Still hungry? Nocando highlights Delicious Pizza – run by the same guys who launched indie record label Delicious Vinyl in 1987, booming the careers of Pharcyde, Young MC and Tone Loc.
And this isn't just about pizza – they throw and host events, listening parties and regular community get-togethers with outlets on West Adams Street (the more hip hop side of town) and another closer to Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard.
Chef Edwin "E-Dubble" Redway has opened a soul food spot on West Boulevard and Slauson – Grilled Fraiche. E-Dubble is known in Los Angeles for his food trucks (hunt them down on Instagram) and has linked up with and cooked for elite rap artists like The Game, Drake and T-Pain. Roy Choi is a world-renowned chef also linked with food trucks (Kogi BBQ taco trucks) and delicious Korean tacos – and has opened a healthy restaurant in Watts called LOCOL.
Then there's Kaos Network, the famous (and LA's longest running) open mic workshop, an icon close to Nocando's heart as that's where he started, winning "battles" against many emcees. Kaos is now homer to an event called Bananas, a colourful, eclectic night of indie rap and alternative music held every last Tuesday of the month. A visit here could result in spotting the next big West Coast star.
Beat Junkies, the O.G. Turntablists, recently celebrated 25 years as a crew and have now opened the Institute of Sound, a DJ school in Glendale where, on Saturdays, the best mixers, scratchers and selectors in the world of DJing and rap music give classes, tutorial and free workshops. Poo-Bah records and Amoeba Music are must-go record stores
Talking of creative licence, a must-see (and must-do) is the Venice Art Walls where an ever-changing canvas allows people to (legally) express themselves with aerosol paint – though you have to submit your ideas first.
The Fairfax district is the area Nocando calls "the Tigris and Euphrates of cool" – the home of street fashion in the US that ultimately influences what the hip hop world will be wearing in terms of footwear, hats, jewellery, T-shirts and more. Supreme, Pink Dolphin, DOPE, the Hundreds and Crooks & Castles all lodge here, attracting some big name shoppers.
And then there is the Petersen Automotive Museum. With so much of hip-hop music and personality bound up with cars, this museum has the best examples of LA rides, including Gypsy Rose (the original Lowrider which spawned a generation of anti-establishment automobiles) and a cherry Snoop Deville ( the Cadillac made famous by Snoop Dogg).
Seven hundred turkeys, two rappers, and an intermediate number of onlookers had assembled in the parking lot of a Kroger supermarket on Cleveland Avenue, on the scrappy south side of Atlanta. The rappers were Quavo and Takeoff, two of the three members of Migos, the dominant hip-hop group of the moment—known for exuberant, off-kilter tracks, like “Bad and Boujee,” that seem to consist of nothing but interjections. It was the Friday before Thanksgiving, and the two were standing in the back of a U-Haul truck, facing a growing crowd of people who wanted turkeys or pictures or both. Takeoff grabbed a carton and opened it. “We shipping them boxes out,” he barked—Migos can turn just about any handful of words into a memorable refrain.
The turkey supply had already begun to dwindle when one of the event’s organizers arrived, pulling up in an elegant but inconspicuous Range Rover. His name is Kevin Lee, but everyone calls him Coach K, and, in the world of hip-hop, he may be better known than the Duke basketball impresario from whom he took his nickname. In the aughts, Lee managed two of the city’s most important rappers—Young Jeezy and then, a few years later, Gucci Mane—undaunted by the fact that the men had engaged in a bitter and apparently bloody feud. Nowadays, he is both a manager and a record executive, guiding the careers of Migos and a clutch of other young hip-hop stars, including Lil Yachty, who is twenty and calls himself the King of the Youth. Lee is forty-six, an age that offers some advantages of its own. “With this gray beard, I’m a O.G.,” he says. “When I say something, they listen—like, ‘Oh, the O.G. must have been through it.’ ” But he prides himself on being open to whatever musical mania is currently seizing the young people who tend to be his clients, and his customers. “When I visit my friends, I sit with their kids, and we talk about music,” he says. “And my friends be like, ‘How the hell do you understand that shit?’ I’m like, ‘This is what I love, and this is what I do.’ ”
Lee is a former college basketball player, and he walks with a strut that turns out, on closer inspection, to be a limp, the lingering effect of an incident that ended his athletic career. He says that he was visiting some friends, who happened to be drug dealers, when they were raided—not by the police but by rivals with shotguns, who strafed Lee’s leg so thoroughly that he spent a year relearning how to walk. He is, in person, every bit as watchful as one might expect a hip-hop godfather to be, but a good deal friendlier. In Atlanta, his adopted home town, he seems to know and like everyone he comes across.
When Lee turned into the parking lot, he was met at once by an acquaintance who was, like countless young people in the city, an aspiring musician. “I D.M.’d you a song,” she said. “Now I caught you in real life. I’ma keep D.M.’ing you until you get tired of me.” Lee responded with a warm but noncommittal smile, and asked where he should put his car—the crowd was filling up all of the closest parking spaces. She laughed and gestured toward a tow-away zone in front of the supermarket. “This Cleveland Ave.,” she said. “You ain’t got to park right.”
The location of the turkey giveaway had been moved twice that afternoon, from a school to a day-care center to this parking lot, because no one was eager to contend with the crowds that would be sure to come. Between the popularity of Migos and the popularity of free turkeys, no advance notice was required, and, if some unsuspecting shoppers were surprised to be offered a turkey, none of them seemed particularly shocked by the sight of Quavo and Takeoff holding court in a U-Haul. Atlanta is the hip-hop capital of the world, which means that it is full of worldwide stars who are also—and perhaps primarily—neighborhood guys. Quavo, who is twenty-six, grew up in Gwinnett County, northeast of the city, with Takeoff, who is twenty-three, and who is Quavo’s nephew. The third member, Offset, is twenty-five, and he is Quavo’s cousin, although he may be better known, these days, as the fiancé of Cardi B, who this year became the first reality-television star to find a place on hip-hop’s A-list. Her show was “Love & Hip Hop: New York,” on VH1; her breakthrough hit was “Bodak Yellow,” which owned the summer. Offset’s proposal was made, and accepted, onstage during a concert in October. Their wedding hasn’t yet been scheduled. “Everybody’s calling about it,” Lee says. “I think maybe we should shoot a movie, put it out on Valentine’s Day. I mean, ‘Girls Trip’ just did thirty million in one weekend.”
Offset never made it to the Kroger parking lot, but none of the attendees were complaining, especially not the ones staggering away beneath the weight of their free turkeys. Lee waded into the crowd and greeted his business partner, Pierre Thomas, known as Pee, who is a decade younger, and noticeably more cautious around people he doesn’t know. Thomas is relatively new to the music industry, having evidently been successful in his first career, which he declines to discuss. “He come from the streets,” Lee says, by way of explaining why neither of them will explain more. Unlike Lee, who grew up in Indianapolis, Thomas is from Atlanta, and, when the two began working with Migos, Thomas’s local reputation was a great asset—he was known to the proprietors of the city’s clubs as a generous patron, and an unusually well-connected one. “It all came together,” Lee says. “My skills, his credibility.”
Lee and Thomas launched their company in 2013. Its name, Quality Control, reflects the different sensibilities of its founders: Thomas wanted something starting with “Q,” to honor a friend of his who had been shot to death; Lee was inspired by a tag on the pocket of his designer jeans. For a time, their base of operations was a small, freestanding brick building up the street from the Kroger, which they turned into a bunker-like music studio. “Bricked up all the windows, because the music game dangerous,” Thomas says. The studio was in a residential area, and some of the neighbors resented the constant traffic and the occasional altercations; not long after a bullet shattered the window of a nearby house, Quality Control was forced to move. The company’s new headquarters is a purpose-built suite of offices and recording studios, tucked into an industrial corner of a burgeoning neighborhood near midtown. Lee drove there after the giveaway, which he judged a success, not least because it reflected the same unpolished quality that he prizes in music. A friend called, and Lee described what had happened, sounding exuberant. “We did it in the hood, man,” he said.
In the course of Lee’s career, and in some significant part because of it, Atlanta has gone from being a regional music hub to hip-hop’s cultural home, the city that sets the musical agenda for the rest of the country. But, compared with Nashville, which hosts both the lucrative country-music industry and a thriving country-tourism industry, Atlanta is much less corporate. The hip-hop scene remains stubbornly decentralized; there is a profusion of great rappers and producers, but little in the way of major institutions, unless you count the city’s strip clubs, as you probably should. The big companies remain, for the most part, in New York and Los Angeles. “There are no labels here—no major labels,” Lee says. With Quality Control, he is trying to change that. The company has a full-time staff of eight, and operates as a joint venture with the Capitol Music Group, which is part of Universal; the label’s artists include Stefflon Don, a British vocalist who recently scored her first Top Ten U.K. hit. Lee and Thomas also run a management firm, Solid Foundation, which represents clients such as Trippie Redd, a rising hip-hop star. The firm is also aiming to move its clients into television and film—Lee sees no reason that Lil Yachty should not have his own sitcom.
The goal, for Lee, is not just to build a company but to help build up Atlanta, a city that has transfixed him ever since he first began visiting, in the nineties. One afternoon, he took a call from Ryan Glover, a longtime friend and local entertainment executive. (Glover was formerly the president of Bounce TV, a network targeting African-Americans, which was recently acquired by E. W. Scripps, the media conglomerate.) They reminisced about the old days, and Lee recalled the excitement of arriving in the city for the first time. “I remember coming down here and thinking, These brothers driving Benzes? Off of music? I’m coming to Atlanta!” They talked about supporting a friend named Keisha, who turned out to be Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was running for mayor. Bottoms, like the previous five mayors of Atlanta, is African-American; in this and other ways, she fits Lee’s vision of the city as a place where black people can become successful without becoming anomalous. “There’s no feeling like when I’m coming back to Atlanta, I’m in that airport and I see all those black people with jobs,” he says. “When I travel to Phoenix or to Chicago, or even Indianapolis or Cleveland, Orlando—when you walk into those airports, it’s a few of us. But when you come to Atlanta it’s like, Whoa!”
In a way, Indianapolis, where Lee grew up, was also a music city: the site of a pressing plant, operated by RCA Records, which was one of the world’s largest record manufacturers, until it shut down, thirty years ago. Lee’s mother and grandmother both worked there, which meant that he had the best music collection in the neighborhood; he remembers hearing an eight-track recording of “King Tim III (Personality Jock),” a 1979 B-side by the Fatback Band that is generally regarded as the first hip-hop record ever released.
BarbercraftHis mother had a friend in Harlem, and sometimes brought Lee, her only child, along to visit; there, he learned all he could about hip-hop, which still seemed like a peculiar subculture. As he grew older, his tastes broadened further. At seventeen, he and his friends began driving to Chicago, three hours away, and bribing doormen in order to get into the night clubs where a danceable new style called house music was being forged. House music remains Lee’s genre of choice, despite his career; more than one streetwise rapper has been shocked, on entering Lee’s car, to encounter some dreamy club classic from the eighties—say, “Mystery of Love,” by Mr. Fingers. Even after he moved to Atlanta, Lee found that local house clubs provided a pleasant respite from the hip-hop scene, where he was starting to build his reputation. “That was Kevin’s world,” he says. “And then Coach would go to the Bounce, in Bankhead”—a legendary night club, in a legendarily rough-and-tumble neighborhood—“and fuck with the drug dealers.”
Although his mother had a steady job, Lee grew up in a neighborhood he describes as a “ghetto.” He was a gifted enough athlete to get a scholarship to Saint Augustine’s, a historically black college in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was a decent basketball player, and a better than decent party promoter, helping to organize “two-to-sixes,” late-night, locked-door events that drew revellers from throughout the region. After college, he returned to Indianapolis, where he tried and failed to start a record company; then he made his way to Atlanta, where he worked as a special-ed teacher. He reconnected with a childhood friend, Alan Henderson, who played for the Atlanta Hawks, and they formed a label called Hendu Entertainment, which was an education—although not, for Henderson, a cheap one. For a while, Lee managed a hardworking local hip-hop provocateur named Pastor Troy, and then, in a studio, he met a charismatic rapper from a small town called Hawkinsville, who named himself Lil J, at first, and then Young Jeezy.
In the early aughts, Atlanta hip-hop, long defined by the exuberance of OutKast, and by a string of delectable party records, was growing slower and meaner, following the lead of an emerging star, T.I., who declared, in 2001, that he rapped “for the niggas and the j’s in the trap.” The j’s were junkies, and the trap was one of the tumbledown houses that often served, in Atlanta, as dealers’ headquarters. (“Trap” became a verb, too: trapping was what trappers did in the trap.) It was the dawn of what came to be known as “trap music,” a term that Lee doesn’t embrace: to him, this was simply the latest iteration of Atlanta hip-hop—characterized, as hip-hop often has been, by lyrics that presented a stylized version of street life. This was the world that Young Jeezy, too, chronicled in his rhymes. He favored tracks full of grand, gothic keyboard lines, and he made his words memorable by using fewer of them, drawing out his raspy syllables, or taking a few beats off for added emphasis.
As Young Jeezy rose to prominence in Atlanta, he established a high-profile alliance with the Black Mafia Family, which was both a hip-hop crew and, more consequentially, a criminal enterprise that used Atlanta as the hub of a multistate cocaine-distribution network. The group’s leader, Demetrius (Big Meech) Flenory, appeared alongside Jeezy in his first video, which was filmed during the weekend-long birthday party of a top B.M.F. leader, who rented a Miami Beach hotel for the occasion. “It was very helpful,” Lee says now; the relationship made Jeezy’s rhymes more believable. “If you was in the city at that time, and you went out and you seen B.M.F., the shit Jeezy was talking about really was happening—it was like a fuckin’ movie.” Lee says that Flenory, in order to outdo all the little big guys who were throwing money around in night clubs, once hired a helicopter to drop thirty thousand dollars on the crowd outside Birthday Bash, an annual hip-hop concert.
Although B.M.F. had a record label, Jeezy was never signed to it, and Lee says that he always kept Jeezy’s business affairs separate from his social life. (Jeezy’s alliance with the crew eventually frayed, leading to a flurry of resentful interviews and rhymes; virtually all the B.M.F. leadership, including Flenory, wound up in federal prison.) But Jeezy’s association with B.M.F. had a mixed effect on his early musical career. “Radio wouldn’t fuck with us,” Lee says—stations didn’t want to be seen to be endorsing B.M.F. or its activities. As a form of grassroots promotion, Lee connected Jeezy with a neighbor of his, DJ Drama, who was known for putting together unlicensed CD compilations of recent hits; they were called mixtapes, after their cassette-only predecessors. In 2004 and 2005, DJ Drama and Young Jeezy released “Tha Streets Iz Watchin” and “Trap or Die,” a pair of mixtapes that were really unofficial albums, full of tracks you couldn’t get anywhere else. (To promote “Trap or Die,” Lee took out radio ads that declared a national holiday: “All traps closed today.”) The mixtapes were hailed as underground classics, and hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of them were given away or sold, contributing to the success, in 2005, of Young Jeezy’s major-label début—and contributing, too, to the rise of the mixtape as arguably hip-hop’s most important format. Many of Young Jeezy’s fans found that they preferred his tapes to his official albums; some even grew to love DJ Drama’s tendency to interrupt the music with full-throated salutations, known as “drops”:
For all the niggas in the streets! All the niggas in the hood! I don’t care if you’re in the A-town or your town—it’s how we get down! Young Jeezy! DJ the fuck Drama! Shout to Coach K!
It was Jeezy who encouraged Lee to rename himself Coach K, because of the way he cajoled and nitpicked Jeezy in the studio. And it was Jeezy who ended the first phase of Lee’s career when, in 2008, he fired him, for reasons neither man will discuss. This was a disorienting experience for Lee, whose professional identity had for years been entirely subsumed in Jeezy’s. He bought a night club, worked with some local rappers, and was eventually recruited to manage an old friend who had become the most revered rapper in the city: Gucci Mane, an astonishingly productive and imaginative performer, whose tales of the trap were at once more vivid and more surreal than anyone else’s. Earlier in his career, Gucci Mane had feuded with Young Jeezy, and the feud seemed to culminate in a homicide, in which an associate of Jeezy’s was shot and killed, and Gucci Mane was arrested for murder. (Gucci Mane’s lawyer argued that he had shot the man in self-defense, and the charge was dropped.) Somehow, Lee had guided Jeezy through this dispute without being drawn into it, and, starting in 2009, he spent two years managing Gucci Mane, who released a steady stream of mixtapes even as he darted in and out of jail and rehabilitation programs, fighting an addiction to lean, a liquid-opiate cocktail. Todd Moscowitz was the C.E.O. of Warner Bros., Gucci Mane’s label, and he recalls that Lee was a steady presence during an unsteady time. “He’s really good at keeping the process moving, and not getting caught up in the nonsense,” Moscowitz says. “Every day, if I couldn’t find Gooch, I could find Coach.” Gucci Mane eventually demonstrated, to Lee’s satisfaction, that he was unmanageable, but their friendship endured. Gucci Mane is now free, professedly sober, and more popular than ever. This summer, Lee and Thomas attended Gucci Mane’s wedding. Thomas brought matching diamond necklaces for the bride and groom.
It was Jeezy who encouraged Lee to rename himself Coach K, because of the way he cajoled and nitpicked Jeezy in the studio. And it was Jeezy who ended the first phase of Lee’s career when, in 2008, he fired him, for reasons neither man will discuss. This was a disorienting experience for Lee, whose professional identity had for years been entirely subsumed in Jeezy’s. He bought a night club, worked with some local rappers, and was eventually recruited to manage an old friend who had become the most revered rapper in the city: Gucci Mane, an astonishingly productive and imaginative performer, whose tales of the trap were at once more vivid and more surreal than anyone else’s. Earlier in his career, Gucci Mane had feuded with Young Jeezy, and the feud seemed to culminate in a homicide, in which an associate of Jeezy’s was shot and killed, and Gucci Mane was arrested for murder. (Gucci Mane’s lawyer argued that he had shot the man in self-defense, and the charge was dropped.) Somehow, Lee had guided Jeezy through this dispute without being drawn into it, and, starting in 2009, he spent two years managing Gucci Mane, who released a steady stream of mixtapes even as he darted in and out of jail and rehabilitation programs, fighting an addiction to lean, a liquid-opiate cocktail. Todd Moscowitz was the C.E.O. of Warner Bros., Gucci Mane’s label, and he recalls that Lee was a steady presence during an unsteady time. “He’s really good at keeping the process moving, and not getting caught up in the nonsense,” Moscowitz says. “Every day, if I couldn’t find Gooch, I could find Coach.” Gucci Mane eventually demonstrated, to Lee’s satisfaction, that he was unmanageable, but their friendship endured. Gucci Mane is now free, professedly sober, and more popular than ever. This summer, Lee and Thomas attended Gucci Mane’s wedding. Thomas brought matching diamond necklaces for the bride and groom.
Thomas, like many of the rappers he knows, often talks about hip-hop as an alternative to “the streets”—a way to make money without having to sell drugs. He says that he grew up hard on the west side of Atlanta, the child of drug-addicted parents who sometimes sent him next door, with a pot, to ask the neighbors for hot water for a bath. By twelve, he had become the most reliable person in the house, and so he went to work, building both a rap sheet—he first went to prison at fourteen—and, one surmises, a fortune. During a recent interview for a hip-hop podcast, he was discussing the high cost of launching a new performer when he started to reminisce: “Do you know what I had to do to get my first half a million dollars?” He paused. “I can’t even tell you—but it wasn’t easy.”
Once Thomas had some money, he bought a few buildings and a day-care center, all of which he viewed, quite accurately, as safer investments than music. He got to know Gucci Mane through the Atlanta demimonde, and got to know Lee through Gucci Mane, but he was skeptical when Lee asked him to co-found a record label and to sign Migos: three kids who recorded their music in a grimy basement hideout they called their “bando,” which is a rough synonym for “trap” (it refers to an abandoned house, temporarily commandeered by dealers), and which was also the name of one of their first singles. Like many of the best rappers who have emerged from Atlanta in the past decade, Migos were spotted early on by Gucci Mane. Thomas, in order to sign the group, had to call Gucci Mane, in jail, to get his blessing, which he gave. Thomas stuffed a duffelbag with cash and showed it to the three Migos, as a way of demonstrating how much money he and Lee were willing to invest in the group’s career.
Migos’ music was trap burlesque—they exaggerated and recombined the genre’s essential elements, like irreverent little brothers rummaging through their big brothers’ closets. Lee and Thomas ferried them to appearances at the city’s strip clubs, taking care to leave some cash behind, but the reaction was lukewarm, until Migos released a hit called “Versace,” in 2013. It was mistaken by some listeners for a novelty song, because its composition is so extreme: the members repeat the titular word nearly two hundred times, hammering the name until it sounds like nonsense syllables, and then hammering some more.
“Even though I own the business, I like to have my hands in everything.” This was Lee’s stated explanation for why, early one afternoon, he was driving to a UPS store to pick up packages. The unstated explanation was more convincing: he was expecting a pair of Adidas Yeezy Boosts, the intentionally scarce sneakers designed by Kanye West. Thomas has a weakness for refractive adornment, but Lee’s main vices are European designer clothes and ostentatious sneakers, which are constantly arriving at the Quality Control offices, courtesy of various people who like him, or owe him a favor. Lee and Thomas are a complementary pair: Thomas is willing and eager to stay out late, keeping an eye on the local clubs, while Lee likes to be up by eight, so that he can swim some laps before he starts his day. He is also a practicing vegan, though he doesn’t practice every day.
Lee is aware that he might never have built a label if there hadn’t been someone willing to gamble a duffelbag on an unproved group like Migos. Hip-hop in Atlanta may be an alternative to the streets, but, over the years, it has also been enabled by the streets, which have functioned as an informal, risk-tolerant source of venture capital. In Lee’s view, this helps explain why Atlanta’s hip-hop scene hasn’t been swallowed up by the mainstream music industry. “The money came from out the black market—it came from out the streets—to build the shit,” he says. “You’ve got to do it on your own.”
After the success of “Versace,” Lee and Thomas grew, rather like their clients, irrationally exuberant. “When I seen it happen, I started having all these bright ideas,” Thomas said, one afternoon, cruising through the city in an uncharacteristically low-profile Mercedes-Maybach. (In fact, he was leaving the Gucci store, with a full trunk, and on his way to pick up his Rolls-Royce, which, after an unhappy attempt at customization, was having its original rims restored.) “I was just signing: You want some money, and you can rap? Come on, I got this studio.” Quality Control struck a deal with an upstart New York label called 300 Entertainment, which released, in 2015, “Yung Rich Nation,” an album that was promoted as Migos’ proper début, after a series of warmup mixtapes. The album was a disappointment, entering the Billboard chart at No. 17 and launching not a single track onto the Hot 100. Afterward, Lee and Thomas waged a long legal battle to separate from 300; around the time, in late 2016, when the parties reached an agreement, Migos released “Bad and Boujee,” a song so infectious that it single-handedly reversed Q.C.’s fortunes. Fans made memes out of the track’s mystifying opening lines, which might have described getting high in a stolen car, if they described anything at all: “Raindrops / Drop top / Smoking on cookie in a hotbox.” The track, which was a No. 1 hit, made Migos not just popular but fun to root for. Donald Glover cast Quavo in his TV show, “Atlanta,” on FX, and then, when the show won a Golden Globe, he thanked the group, in his acceptance speech, for making “Bad and Boujee.” Backstage, he added, brightly, “I think they’re awesome—I think they’re the Beatles.”
After trying and failing, early on, to juggle almost a dozen different acts, Lee and Thomas have pared down Quality Control. With its new corporate partner, Capitol Records, Q.C. is under the umbrella of a brand that they would like to think of as an antecedent: Motown. Migos were nominated for a pair of Grammy Awards; their next album is due out sometime early next year. One of their songs, in particular, sounds to Lee like a surefire hit. During a meeting at Quality Control, he paused the discussion to take a call from a well-known producer who had worked on the song, to whom he offered his highest praise. “We got one, man,” Lee said.
On a whiteboard in the office of Tamika Howard, the general manager, notes are written in three colors, for the label’s three primary acts: Migos, an emerging Atlanta rapper named Lil Baby, and Lil Yachty, Quality Control’s other big success story. Lee found Yachty online, prompted by a friend who told him that a local teen-age oddball was doing great numbers on SoundCloud, the music-sharing platform. Yachty rapped or sang in a playful, spaced-out falsetto; he was dark-skinned, with hair that was dyed red, braided, and beaded. Lee liked him immediately; Thomas needed to drive around for a while, listening to Yachty’s tracks, before deciding that he liked him, too. “He’s not a street cat,” Lee says, of Yachty. “But, in the streaming world and online, his credibility was real—he was authentic.” Yachty grew up in the suburbs, and it turned out that Lee knew his father, a photographer, from the music scene, and had gone to college with his mother. Later, after Yachty joined Q.C., he confessed that he had once sent Lee a message on Instagram, and had never heard back. Lee checked his in-box and found the message, which was a lot like the innumerable hopeful messages he receives every day:
I’m Yachty man I’m 18 and i rap. But I got the image and the sound boss! What 80% of the “game” is missing. All I need is that correct “push” ya know? . . . I have a lot of potential boss. And I know your the guy to help me prosper.