The New Mouth, New (Post Civil Rights) 'Dirty South'
by R. N. Bradley | Popmatters
“It is officially a new day, I am officially the new mouth, and these are the emcees of a new South!”–Killer Mike, “Reakshon”
After receiving Ben Westhoff’s new book Dirty South: OutKast, Lil’ Wayne, Soulja Boy, and the Southern Rappers Who Reinvented Hip Hop I immediately went into defense mode. As in rapper Pastor Troy “We Ready” defense mode. All too familiar with the dismissal of the South and southern hip-hop I waited, albeit a bit too readily, for Westhoff to say something, anything, that would set me off.
I put away my armor.
Westhoff weaves a humorously awkward yet honest narrative about some of the voices that frame what Americans know as the ‘Dirty South’. Whether commenting on the slight discomforts of partying with “Uncle” Luke Campbell – “as married, STD-free man, neither option bears much appeal, but all I can do is laugh noncommittally” – or interviewing an apparently edgy Soulja Boy – “Robbing Soulja Boy hadn’t been on my list of the day’s priorities” – Westhoff presents his audience with a smorgasboard of experiences that are often overlooked in conversations about hip-hop culture.
Very apparent in Westhoff’s understanding of southern rap music is the hustle, an entrepreneurial pursuit to get paid. Varying degrees of the hustle trope intersect throughout Westhoff’s musings which speak to the murky intersections of contemporary hip-hop with mainstream American culture. From the personal hustle to set up and execute interviews with initially unwilling rappers to the corporate hustle of interviewees like Mr. Collipark (AKA DJ Smurf), industrialism seeps throughout the book. In some passages, however, the hustle metaphor plays into standing (dis)beliefs about the inability for southern rap to assimilate into a hyper-capitalist culture. The nod towards southerners’ hustling of their mixtapes as “grassroots”, for example, re-enforces the separatist notions that Westhoff sets out to disavow.
I most appreciate Westhoff’s attempts to combine both nationally known southern rappers with more regionally appealing acts like Houston’s Trae the Truth. Westhoff flexes his investigative journalism skills, here, he’s done his homework. As I continued to read, however, I searched for something deeper than the work of a journalist and his collected stories, I sought a more critical approach to how hip-hop shapes and challenges our understanding of the South after the Civil Rights Movement. The attempt to situate one’s self in a newly integrated social network, the search for a discourse in which to speak to these changes, and, finally, “integrate” into a broader American community are some of the peculiar challenges post-Civil Rights era southerners continue to face. Borrowing from rapper Andre 3000, “the South [still] got something to say!”
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