Between the incest, teen pregnancies, necrophilia, stolen prosthetics etc. it’s easy to see why William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Truman Capote, and all the other modern, and unabashedly Southern writers are considered, from a suburban vantage point, to be batshit. (Faulkner’s word-a-day vocabulary doesn’t help either, nor does the fact that most of these literary heavyweights were explicitly strange and bewildering who prided themselves on baffling outsiders—especially Northerners). Bizarre plot and style elements aside, there are bagfuls of ticking neuroses in their texts: barely-there parents, the burdens of tradition, being poor and white, being poor and black, all punctuated with a very real sense of cultural inferiority—having to play the perpetual slack-jawed pervert to the Northern man-of-sophistication.

Indicted on all sides—strawmanned by East coast and West coast alike, accusations ranging from lazy couplets, obsequious 808 production, and, well, “Laffy Taffy”—the Third Coast has inherited the South’s artistic complexes. Between moments of clear-eyed insanity and graphic depictions of violence, Southern emcees rarely mince words, opting for distinct imagery that floats off the tongue and onto a lush beat. Tossing out the New York standard of stilted rhymes and clean production, the cream of the Southern crop has relentlessly carved out their own distinctive niche, twisting the California G-Funk sound into a soulfully grimy, bleak aesthetic, all of which results in some of the most charged, pathos-ridden music in the genre.

Now popularly known as That-Thing-Cee-Lo-Was-in-Before-Gnarls-Barkley, The Goodie Mob debuted in 1995 with the front-to-back classic Soul Food. Between the gritty beats and street smart rhymes, members Cee-Lo, Khujo, T-Mo, and Big Gipp gave a decidedly conscious spin to the traditionally hard Dirty South sound. “Cell Therapy,” produced by Atlanta’s premiere Organized Noize, is an eerily sparse track with a creeping bassline, staccato piano loop, sprinkled with Louis Armstrong’s sing-song growls. Trading in conspiracy theory and hustling rhymes, the Mob tag teams the track between Khujo’s syncopated lines and Cee-Lo’s buttery delivery, capping each with the ghetto cabin fever chorus, “Who’s that peeking in my window / POW! / Nobody now.”

“You know how Jay-Z is to New York? UGK was Jay-Z to us” — David Banner

UGK’s Pimp C and Bun B are probably your favorite Southern rapper’s favorite southern rappers, evidenced in the last few years by Bun B’s relentless work on the guest spot circuit and the ubiquitous “Free Pimp C” campaign (Pimp C was recently released from a four-year stint in prison for a parole violation). Following two mediocre releases on Jive in the early ‘90s, UGK dropped 1996’s Ridin’ Dirty, a touchstone for southern hip-hop and a perennial favorite among critics and stans alike. Highlight “One Day” completely forgoes the usual opening fanfare in favor of a slow burner that cops its crooning lament from The Isley Brothers’ “Ain’t I Been Good to You.” Multi-instrumentalist and producer Pimp C infuses the track with equal parts trunk thump and Memphis soul, finding time to split lines with Bun B’s slippery cadence and guest 3-2’s polished drawl. While the rhymes put slangin’ front and center, UGK colors around the edges, showing the trapper in a more dynamic light: as brother, friend, and target. Despite the pair’s magnum egos, the stories of hard-won gains, abandonment, and murdered friends are plentiful, delivered with thousand-yard stares.

The insanely prolific Trae recently received some serious attention for his summer release Restless. The martial tone of the album is set early with “Real Talk,” the auditory equivalent of amphetamines, charged with stinging wall-of-sound guitars, 8-bit snap, and horrorshow synths—the end result being some of the most vicious Nintendo boss music never made. Trae’s merciless flow stays buoyant throughout, proving he’s tremendously versatile (he spares the machine-gun speed for the rest of the album) and reflecting a scared shitless sink-or-swim mentality, making sure to never stop in one place for too long. Nonetheless “Real Talk” is a certified banger, seamlessly blending a kid’s cocksure mentality and the trailing fear of failure.

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