With Atlanta taking over the mainstream, it might be hard to recall the origins of Southern rap. But Big Gipp explains in an episode of Myths Exposed that the South has had to overcome some stereotypes in order to be accepted by the nation.
“They say people in the South slow,” the Goodie Mob rapper explains. “Nah, we not slow. We talk slow, but we think fast. A lot of times, people from the South, we gonna listen before we speak. And sometimes, some people think that they smarter than you just ’cause they talk faster than you. Nah, that don’t mean you smarter than me, that just means you got your words together. What I do is listen to what you got to say, put it together, then I give you my answer. But a lot of people think that the South is that we’re slow. But right now, if you look at the world, everybody’s following the South, so how slow can we really be?”
He then recounts a story from one of the group’s first tours. He says they were in Detroit and during sound check, they’d just hang out on the street with the people.
“I remember sitting on the corner, this little boy came and sat down,” he says. “He was like, ‘Gipp, do you all have TV in the South?’ I was like, ‘TV?’ He was like, ‘Yeah, like do y’all have houses, do y’all have cars and stuff like that in the South?’ That was the first time I was hit with the myth and just the misunderstanding of really how advanced the South was, but to everyone who had never been to the South, the South seemed like it was a place that was still dirt roads and back alleys.”
Expanding on the issue of speech, Big Gipp details how that first tour opened his eyes to the differences in culture across the country.
“It was also the first time that us going on the road, that I understood that we had a dialect that was different than everybody else’s at the time,” he says. “It was like when you say something, people were like, ‘Huh? What you say?’ I’d be like, ‘You didn’t hear me?’ They’re like, ‘No, I didn’t hear you. I couldn’t really understand.'”
This first trip made the group realize that they had to change their ways a bit if they wanted to be accepted by a larger audience. But that didn’t mean there was any truth to the myth.
“We gotta speak with enunciation because we have a lazy tongue where we come from,” he says. “We cut words off in the middle of the word and we just expect you to understand. ‘Cause when we’re talking to one of us, usually they understand. So I just want to let everybody know, it’s nothing slow about the South.”
If anything, the South has a lot to offer. Big Gipp suggests everyone should visit the ATL and challenges them to not enjoy their time.
“If they come to Atlanta and spend one good weekend, they gonna move to Atlanta,” he bets. “You gonna find your girl in Atlanta. Next thing you know, you’ll be going back, getting your stuff from your house and moving to Atlanta. So understand this, man, one thing in the South, the girls all cook I can’t speak for that for no other place. Sorry, man. Peace, man.”