CrowleyHead
Well-known member
The productions aren't irrelevant at all, but he's not recognized. Recognition is a dying art.
I bitch about this routinely but history of rap is basically shot full of holes from 98 onto 08. Part of this is because this is a time where a lot of rap coverage outside of the rap world fell apart as indie rap enthusiasts created a historical blackout of the supposed 'mainstream' and insisted this was more relevant despite the fact that there were various threads of commercial commercial, commercial underground, underground commercial and underground underground. At the same time, the last 4 years have seen rap experts appointed who have no desire to educate themselves on the history and simply talk and react to the now while shirking the responsibility of learning and rediscovery. You get past a list of 10 people you need to know from that whole era (Jay-Z, Cam'ron, Missy Elliot, Gucci Mane...) and then it becomes obscurant and the domain of nerds.
Rap Nerds have adjusted the backpack canon to include west coast and southern rap, but they certainly tail off once the digital age begins where samples are de-emphasized for the synthesized construction with the exception of pre-approved auteurs like Mannie Fresh or the like. Lil' Jon isn't worth canonization because of how gaudily he supposedly sold out with his turn to modern day EDM as a career path; an ahistorical notion when you remember that his initial career was working as a producer underneath Jermaine Dupri (himself a not fully recognized pioneer of rap and more) to be an integral part of the Atlanta Bass scene long before his hijacking of Crunk to Atlanta from Memphis. Crunk as a whole is mostly forgotten or unspoken of, despite actually being more integral to getting Atlanta as a major force of domination in the music industry than Trap.
Ironically, there's another thing in that the Lugerian sound that Flockavelli made so important is itself another Memphis hijack... Trap prior was the high-energy synths and nerviness of Shawty Redd and Zaytoven. The move into Wagnerian bombast begins with Memphis producer Drumma Boi who's initial work was producing for Gangsta Boo until he gained prominence by assisting the likes of Jeezy, Gucci, Rocko, etc. In reality, Atlanta as a creative force is exaggerated when two of its major movements are actually borrowed from templates established by Atlanta. It also explains why in reality the majority of Atlanta rap is descended from futuristic swag rap, when arguably the biggest Orthodox trap rapper (disregarding Gucci who's now more of a legacy figure than a major contemporary rapper) in the south is Memphis' Young Dolph.
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