Hip Hop Geography

Hip-hop is a genre of music that is celebrated all over the world. However, although hip-hop is a popular style of music almost everywhere else in the world, it still remains at its best inside the land of its origin, the United States of America. Inside of the USA there is an infrastructure of hip-hop styles that are based almost entirely on the geographical location of its origin. The four geographical locations that have influenced how the music coming out of its area sounds are the East Coast, the West Coast, the Midwest, and the "Dirty" South.

The East Coast influence can be heard in such artists as Swizz Beatz, Ghostface Killah, Busta Rhymes, and Jay-Z. This influence is caused largely in part by the original east coast artist posse, Native Tongues, which was made up of many major artists of the area. They focused mainly on a positive view that helped sculpt the region's sound. The West Coast sound was influenced heavily by funk. Artists like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg helped to further that sound, creating a solid style of their own that artists in the area have mimicked to great success.

The Midwest sound is heavily influenced by both the east and west coast sounds and also often incorporated fast lyrics to shape these variables into its own sound. Popular artists from this area and style include, Common, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Tech-N9ne, and Eminem. The infamous Dirty South sound was perfected by artists like Geto Boys, T.I., Lil' Wayne, Young Jeezy, and Ludacris but it was around as early as the 1980s. It had a hard time getting recognized by record labels, which helped create the mix tape market that exists today, since artists had to produce their own mix tapes to get their music heard.