mos dan
fact music
well, strange you should single out this element, but perhaps it's more prominant to you than me. the backdrop is this: think about living under two decades of chest-beating US hip hop and three decades or more of reggae/dancehall/ragga, both of which use a lot of location-based references ("Is Brooklyn in the house?!") to derive identity.
This is it - is it not perfectly natural to respond to lyrical signifiers that resonate for you? That's why even within the narrow geographic frame of reference grime works with I (*personally*) get particularly hyped about the tune 'Southside Run Tings', because without being 'endz-ish' it's amazing for me to hear the places I grew up not only namechecked in a song, but namechecked in a GOOD SONG! Yknow, as much as I like 'Morden' by Good Shoes or 'Balham: Gateway to the South' by Peter Sellars, it's not quite the same