Back in the late 80s/early 90s, when Southern boys and girls began dabbling in hip-hop music, born and bred on the blocks of my native New York City, I wasn’t pleased. I dug the intricate wordplay and soulful sounds of Outkast and Goodie Mob—both cool, kooky and sometimes politically conscious. But by the end of the decade Southern rap got bigger, and the South’s “country” element took over. Following the lead of 2 Live Crew’s raunch, the new country hip-hoppers were loud, brash and far more ignorant than I could bear. They called themselves crunk, short for “crazy” and “drunk.”

Crunk artists seemed to scream only about drinking cough syrup and Kool-Aid over heavy bass

beats. Nothing about it did anything for me, and it seemed as though the “‘Bamas” were winning the battle for Southern hip-hop. To me, most of the crunk rappers recited their crude lyrics as though there were marbles in their mouths, ranting about cold-blooded killings (C-Murder), big booty strippers (Ca$h Money Millionaires), sexual positions (Khia), drugs (Trick Daddy), gettin’ “dem dollas” (Gangsta Boo), the plight of having too many kids (B-Rock and The Bizz) or simply being crunk (Lil Jon).

“They’re setting back Black folks five hundred years,” I imagined my dead grandfather, himself a self-made Southern gentleman, saying. “Was this kind of intoxicated coonery that our forefathers marched for and M.L.K. died over?