Lil Wayne’s hook-“Every time I come around your city, bling bling”-is responsible for birthing one of the most iconic expressions of wealth in rap history. Thanks to the proliferation of bounce music and early successes from Juvenile and the Hot Boys, Cash Money Records was already a force in Southern hip-hop when this single from B.G.’s Chopper City in The Ghetto brought the Hot Boys-B.G., Lil Wayne, Juvenile, and Turk-and the Big Tymers-label boss Birdman and house producer Mannie Fresh-together to stunt over fast-paced synthetic horns about watches that cost as much as mansions. But in the summer of 1999, six rappers from New Orleans changed the way we’d talk about it forever. There are so, so many rap songs about jewelry: acquiring it, flexing with it, hoarding it, even beating people with it. Smooth player-pimp shit for the streets and clubs took hold in Atlanta and Memphis with groups like OutKast and 8Ball & MJG.Ĭash Money / Universal B.G.: “Bling Bling” (1999)

In Houston and nearby Port Arthur, DJ Screw slowed rap to a syrupy crawl and UGK told introspective tales of street hustling. Louisiana had bounce, its own take on bass-heavy dance music, as well as now-legendary labels Cash Money and No Limit, which nurtured local talents into national stars. In Florida, rap mixed with the pounding dancefloor rhythms of bass music. Of course, the South is more than one place, and its rap music is more than just one thing. But while the two coasts were battling for supremacy, the South was gearing up to sweep the competition. California threw its hat in the ring with hardcore gangsta rap before turning the BPM way down and the blunted grooves way up with G-funk. After giving birth to the genre two decades earlier, New York entered the ’90s with an emphasis on dusty sample-based beats and gritty realism.

In the early 1990s, as hip-hop mutated and expanded, most ears were focused on the East and West Coasts.

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