“Rep Yo City” is a perfect song for the Hip=Hop Map Project: five emcees from five different places, all talking about where they’re from. When I first started making these maps I wanted to highlight our culture’s rich bond with geography, and this song sums it up.
If you’re not familiar with the song, “Rep Yo City” was a 2002 crunk banger released on both E-40’s Grit & Grind and Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz”s Kings of Crunk albums. Led by E-40 and produced by Lil Jon, the song also features guest verses from Petey Pablo, Bun B, and Eightball. Petey Pablo was fresh off of the success of his debut album, and Ball & Bun B were two veterans with careers as storied as E-40’s and Jon’s. If I were to put someone from the New School on to crunk music “Rep Yo City” would be one of the first five songs played.
For this one I mapped where each artist was from and matched the location with a lyric in their bars. Each place is symbolized with a mic in hand and start background. I selected NBA colorways for the stars; if you follow E-40 you know he’s an avid sports fan and is often found courtside at Golden State Warriors home games. Each star is symbolized based on the closest NBA team to the emcee’s hometown: – E-40, Vallejo, CA (Golden State Warriors) – Petey Pablo, Greenville, NC (Charlotte Hornets) – Bun B, Port Arthur, TX (Houston Rockets) – Eightball, Memphis, TN (Memphis Grizzlies) – Lil Jon, Atlanta, GA (Atlanta Hawks)
I relocated to Houston from Detroit a few years ago, but I’ve been a fan of the hip-hop scene almost all my life. Thanks to a friend who had family in Texas and a little help from OG Napster, I spent countless hours in middle and high school listening to UGK, Scarface, The Screwed Up Click, Swisha House, and more. DJ Screw, the godfather of the slowed down sound, will always have a seat on my Mt. Rushmore of DJs (RIP). It’s only right my second hip-hop city map is dedicated to H-Town, Space City, Clutch City, The City of Swang/Drank/Screw/etc.
When figuring out where I wanted to go with this map, I decided early on NOT to make a map similar to my Detroit one. Although I’m a Houston rap fan, I don’t think I’m knowledgeable enough to create a comprehensive list of OG and new school Houston emcees to match what I did for Detroit. Plus it was extremely labor intensive, and I’m working on streamlining my process to publish more maps without sacrificing quality. Instead I decided on mapping a dope song-well, two songs-I think embodies the city well: Slim Thug’s “Welcome to Houston”.
Slim Thug is a dope emcee with a 20+ year career and a legend in Houston and beyond. I chose “Welcome 2 Houston” because both variants showcase a wide range of Houston emcees and share a ton of local geography. The first version, released in 2009 on his second studio album Boss of All Bosses features Chamillionaire, Paul Wall, Mike Jones, UGK, Lil’ Keke, Z-Ro, Trae the Truth, Rob G, Lil’ O, Big Pokey, Mike D, and Yung Redd. The second iteration, released in 2017 on his ninth album Welcome 2 Houston, features Delorean, Doughbeezy, GT Garza, Killa Kyleon, and Propain. The 2009 version shouts out 11 neighborhoods and 13 roads in Houston, mapped in a manner similar to my previous maps. However, for the 2017 version I highlighted something different.
The 2017 “Welcome 2 Houston” music video shows all six emcees rapping in various parts of Houston, so I mapped those locations: – Slim Thug is at the #TEAMHOUSTON mural at 2102 Commerce Street (note: this building has since been redeveloped and the mural is no longer there). – GT Garza is at the corner of Avenue B and N Cesar Chavez Boulevard. – Propain is at Screwed Up Records & Tapes on Houston’s Southside, where you can still buy OG Screwtapes. – Killa Kyleon is at the basketball courts at Patrick Milton Park. – Delorean is Downtown, on the roof of the Avenida North Garage parking structure next to the George R. Brown Convention Center. – Doughbeezy is walking Downtown, starting from the corner of Austin and McKinney Streets.
Most of the data to build this map is from the City of Houston’s Open Data Portal. I used their Super Neighborhoods layer to find most of the neighborhoods (one, Scenic Woods, I had to draw manually), the Major Thoroughfare and Freeway Plan for major roads, and of course the city limits. One neighborhood, Channelview, is technically a Census Designated Place outside of Houston, so I used the open data portal of the Houston-Galveston Area Council, the regional planning entity, to find it. And of course the symbology is inspired by local sports colorways: neighborhoods in Rockets red & white, roads in OG Oilers blue, and music video locations in Astros orange and navy. The city limits are a shade of blue from the city government’s official style guide, which kind of looks purple-ish when you adjust the opacity. If you know you know.
This map was super fun to make. Houston continues to show me mad love. The people are great, the food is amazing, and although I’m publishing it during a record-breaking heat wave the weather ain’t that bad either.
I’d argue that Nelly is one of the archetypes of the hip-hop crossover smash artist. He’s done records with pop divas, boy bands, country superstars and the like. All while staying true to his roots and maintaining a high level of lyricism.
Imagine it’s 1999, 2000, and you’re an emcee from a city relatively unknown in the national hip-hop conversation (St. Louis, Missouri). God-Tier emcees are killing the game. Jay-Z and Snoop Dogg are 4-5 albums deep each. Nas is 4 albums deep. DMX is 3 deep. Cash Money, No Limit, OutKast and Three 6 Mafia are synonymous with the Southern Takeover. Eminem is a young phenom skyrocketing to the top of the charts. Not to mention Rawkus Records is uplifting the underground across the airways. You had to be at the top of your game to be thought of, let alone recognized in a sea of competition.
Nelly did just that with “Country Grammar”, the first single off his debut album of the same name. When I heard it for the first time there was nothing like it on the radio. He had an insane melody to his flow that when paired with interpolating a kids playground rhyme on the hook, made the song unstoppable. And the music video painted him as the hometown hero that he is. I remember as a teen wanting to go to a block party in St. Louis just to see if they got down like that, it looked like a great time.
In the song Nelly shouts out a few cities and states that are no strangers to speaking that country grammar, albeit some not even in the American South. In total Nelly lists 16 places: 4 states, 11 cities, and one street. The street, Kingsland Ave, is obviously not shown due to the scale of the map. The symbology is derived from the uniform colors of the St. Louis Blues, with blue states and yellow stars for cities.
States: Texas, Indiana, Alabama, Louisiana.
Cities: St. Louis, MO; Memphis, TN; Chicago, IL; Kansas City, MO; Detroit, MI (Motown); Los Angeles, CA; New York City, NY; Atlanta, GA; Savannah, GA; Jennings, MO; University City, MO.
Rap GEO 