With the Super Bowl being in Atlanta today the hype leading up to it has been incredible. For months people have been talking about the Big Game coming back to the ATL since Super Bowl XXXIV in the year 2000 when the Rams and the Titans played the epic battle. That game ended with the Rams’ Mike Jones tackling the Titans’ Kevin Dyson at the one yard line to end the game with the Rams winning it 23-16. I was in the “A” that entire week and it was a blast.
The talk surrounding the game being in what used to be called “HotLanta” when I first moved there after graduating from Indiana University in 1990. Now it’s simply called the “ATL.” I’ve since moved away but Atlanta has always been near and dear to my heart because of the relationships I made during that one and only year I lived there. So I’m constantly consumed with what’s going on in the “A.” Sure, the game is big news but the controversy surrounding the halftime show has had my antennas up.
I wrote a crazy Hot Joint last week entitled “Asinine” that basically broke down why I thought that it was hypocritical for folks to tell Travis Scott and Big Boi not to perform at the Super Bowl because most other artists decided not to perform in support of Colin Kaepernick. However, duns are in Atlanta supporting the Super Bowl right now and making their own bread off of the presence of the big game. It’s crazy to me. Go read the joint in it’s entirety but what’s got me trippin’ is all of the media coverage of the hip hop culture of Atlanta and every news report or documentary done this past week on hip hop in Atlanta is missing some truth. They keep bringing up why rappers should have been performing etc. but when they tell the story of Atlanta they never mention the cats that actually put Atlanta on the hip hop map globally.
They all start with OutKast and no disrespect to them because they were one of my favorite groups. However they didn’t put Atlanta on the map!!! I’m not telling you what I heard I’m telling you what I know. I was there and I saw it with my own two eyes!!
Kris Kross put Atlanta on the hip Hop map not OutKast. They dropped “Totally Krossed Out” in February of 1992 and it blew up!!! They had duns all over the world Jumpin’. Outlast didn’t drop “Players Ball” until Christmas of 1993. So it’s disrespectful to talk about Atlanta hip hop and start with OutKast if Kris Kross were four-times platinum before OutKast sold a single record. Those are the #FACTS.
Again, I’m not telling you what I heard I’m telling you what I know. I worked with Chris Kelly’s aunt Del at Macy’s on PeachTree and she became my mentor. She looked out for me and taught me the game in Corporate America. I had no idea that people could be so ruthless on the job. I didn’t know anybody in the “A” at the time so I would literally eat dinner at her house with her sister Donna and their kids. Donna’s son was Chris Kelly. I was at the house the night they came back in from meeting Jermaine Dupre at Greenbriar Mall in 1991.
I was also at the house when Jermaine brought a guy over named “Joe the Butcher: who was the owner of Ruff House Records. The Chris’ had just signed with the label and Donna was drilling ole boy on how this all was going to work. She was asking questions about how people would know that the record was in the stores etc.
I watched it all take place over a plate of spaghetti because they loved to cooked spaghetti. When I go to Donna’s house to this day I’m looking for the spaghetti. So if I know that Kris Kross popped a year before OutKast then why don’t the duns in Atlanta living in those same hip hop streets know that. Jermaine is still there so why are boyz constantly acting like So So Def wasn’t the launching pad of Atlanta Hip Hop? It wasn’t LaFace. They were on totally R&B at first. Outlast was their first rap group but they weren’t the first to blow up from Atlanta.
My whole point in writing this joint was to tell folks to stop acting like Kris Kross didn’t put Atlanta on the map nationally and globally. They popped the cork on the “A” not OutKast. Now we can continue talking about how great Atlanta hip hop culture is but if you’re going to tell it playoby, tell it right. Stop me when I start lyin’!
Playas Thesaurus:
1) Dun: noun – the person in question, dude, guy, etc. It’s whoever I’m talkin’ about and its non-gender specific.