No emcee has ever represented their state harder than Petey Pablo…EVER.
I will stand on that until proven otherwise. Most hip-hop artists incorporate their home city in their songs and lyrics: “Brooklyn Zoo” (Ol’ Dirty Bastard), “Chi City” (Common), “San Francisco Knights” (People Under The Stairs), I could go on. Very few songs carry the weight of the whole state. At the time of writing this the only two I can think of off the top of my head are “Virginia” by The Clipse and “California Love” by 2Pac and Dr. Dre. I’m sure there are more, but this isn’t about them, this is about “Raise Up”, to this day still a a banger in my book.
What makes “Raise Up” so special is because before Petey Pablo came around no one was checking for North Carolina hip-hop. This was 2001, before the likes of Little Brother, J Cole, Da Baby, and Rhapsody were names known throughout the culture. It was just Petey Pablo and an anthem that could make the most reserved of us all take our shirts off and twist them over our heads like a helicopter. I was in high school when it dropped, and I remember hearing this song everywhere. My friends and I were screaming “WHO AM IIIIIIIII, PETEY PAB MUTHA F######AAAAAA!” like maniacs every time it came on, and we were in Michigan. I bet it was like that across the country, and that’s what makes the song special. We didn’t know anything about North Carolina outside of the University of North Carolina and Duke University, which we knew because some of our favorite basketball players (Michael Jordan and Grant Hill, respectively) came from there. Completely oblivious to the state, Petey Pablo made us want to represent where he was from as hard as we represented our own homes.
The song is not just an ode to his home state, Petey Pablo is also giving a special shout out to those locked up in North Carolina’s correctional facilities. According to Genius.com, all of the places mentioned in the song are references to state’s prisons and jails. He mentions his past behind bars and shouts out those serving life sentences in prison in the lyrics. A total of 21 places are given shout-outs: although some correspond to a county or city, all are associated with correctional institutions.
- “Polk”: Polk Correctional Institution, Butner, NC
- “Bladen”: Bladen Correctional Center, Elizabethtown, NC
- “Marshall”: Madison County Jail, Marshall, NC
- “Hoke”: Hoke Correctional Institute, Raeford, NC
- “Greene”: Greene Correctional Institution, Snow Hill, NC
- “Tillery”: Tillery Correctional Institute, Halifax, NC
- “Sandy Ridge”: Sandy Ridge Correctional Center, High Point, NC [CLOSED: Guilford County Sheriffs Department is shown in lieu of
- “Pasquotank”: Pasquotank Correctional Institution, Elizabeth City, NC
- “Odom East”: Odom Correctional Institution, Jackson, NC
- “Johnston”: Johnston Correctional Institution, Smithfield, NC
- “Franklin”: Franklin Correctional Center, Bunn, NC
- “Burgaw”: Pender Correctional Institution, Burgaw, NC
- “Newport”: Carteret Correctional Center, Newport, NC
- “Warren”: Warren Correctional Institution, Manson, NC
- “Shelby”: Cleveland Correctional Center, Shelby, NC
- “Kenansville”: Duplin Correctional Center, Kenansville, NC
- “Currituck”: Currituck County Jail, Maple, NC
- “Triangle”: Durham Correctional Center, Durham, NC [assumed to be the one because it is in the ‘Research Triangle’ of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill]
- “Goldsboro”: Neuse Correctional Institution, Goldsboro, NC
- “Halifax”: Halifax County Jail, Halifax, NC
- “Statesville”: Iredell County Detention Center, Statesville, NC
To create this map I used data from NC One Map, North Carolina’s open data portal. They host a shapefile of the state’s correctional facilities I downloaded and selected those referenced in “Raise Up”. I used the state and county boundary layers to create the base map. Similar to my Detroit map, this map is symbolized using color ways of the state’s sports teams: the blues from the University of North Carolina and Duke University.
SOURCES:
- Petey Pablo, “Raise Up” from Album Title
- Genius.com article on “Raise Up”
- NCOneMap.gov
- Greensboro.com article on the closure of Sandy Ridge Prison
Rap GEO 