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Wednesday, I was sent Skinny Pimp + Gimi Sum Family

Thursday, I was sent Juicy J 

Friday, I was sent Project Pat

From three different friends, two who are mutually appreciative of Southern hiphop and one who doesn't even know how much I love the Gimi sum right now! 

Now if there was ever a bigger "DO IT" Sign, I have to obey... 

It ran through my head many times over the last couple years, How could I approach writing something -even just a brief instagram message - about the fortification of American cultural identity through  dirty south music? The way I imagined I'd write it usually began "this is the Lamest, most random and unnecessary thing I have to say, but I do feel this way..". Still now I don't want to say much at all. For Why would we describe psychedelia? 6 years ago, the way I could best show my appreciation is like making secret encyclopedia entries.

For me today, while I spend an entire afternoon gliding through the musical accomplishments over some one hundred year period, I have a sentence : Memphis, Houston and Atlanta carry the torch for art making which is most educable as American poetry. Of its many forms and initiatives, a bastardly truth of American art making at present is the urge of the artist to seek recognition through a tradition which does not belong to them. In the first place, what is hoped to be accomplished by emulating the past - or subverting it - is not exactly to follow tradition, but that can be spoken about some other time when I actually know what I mean. For a complicated and fresh country like the United States, our artistic traditions have yet to be defined by what is done, that is, against the living examples of regional American productions. Secondly, what is called an artistic education today for us, is one that is willfully ignorant of the total American cultural identity. I think southern hip hop, the chopped and screwed groups, and in particular the Memphis organ, best demonstrate the kernel of the American literary tradition.

Though vast and inspiring more than cult interest, I could not say the commercial success of these cliques and their self originating genres is the best representation of their relevance. And perhaps that is a classic problem with an American perspective in art (and other things) anyway, is this question of commercial breadth as the sign of real development. No, I mean, I just know - many like me recite albums worth of material from Dj Screw + all his partners , and the same with Three 6's militia of talent. There is a darkness and depth to the technique of dirty south, which makes itself known against all the pastoral, poppy rocky, glitzy, needy, and self important expressions of American life. The marriage of then groundbreaking electronic principles which were equally available in gothic and industrial music, with the regional concerns usually found in folk art, obtains a tradition whose applications are shockingly broad. This music can be used to understand much about how Americans feel, and how they see themselves. And if nothing is want to be understood, it is painterly and gorgeous all the same. I could list artists, show some album art, but this isn't a fraud ass "the more you know" exposé. So I'm gonna do what I have thought about doing at random moments, more times than is really normal lol, I'm gonna put up my favorite verse from DJ Screw's  My Mind Went Blank

And now while we're on the topic

Of regional American music as an indispensable tool to access the American mind , there is another artist who I have many times wanted to describe, though his commercial notoriety is not manifest in album sales and public fame, but rather preserved by those working behind the scenes in the music industry. Todd Tamanend Clark is an example of the true psychedelia, his image welcoming the joy of science fiction and pulp comics of the 1960s, constructed through the lens of native tribes in the North American rust belt. Similar to the dirty south subgenre, Todd's experimental and industrial production style announces the unsung American gloom and instability, the pain of process, which for me is a special part of the history of the American psyche.

But Todd has the singular talent of telling stories about our American culture in an intentional form, such that he would be and is looked upon as a poet already, for his affinity for the geography of Western Pennsylvania & Eastern Ohio, and his ecological advocacy. By his poetic efforts he has interested me greatly in the region's host of burial mounds, which contrast against its monuments to the industrial revolution: America's steel. The music is heat, nasty heat, indivisible from its native concerns, so that the heroes in the tableau of frontier North America become beautifully permanent to me, along with its townships and cities, all sit in rightful belonging as the titles to Todd's songs, like his album Monongahela River Run. 

Since Todd's music worryingly becomes disorganized on streaming platforms, I organized some youtube playlists to connect you to his albums, found on this page.  

[*I am sorry to admit to the reader that, These thoughts in the present form were last breached in June of 2025. In other words, I wrote about these things which really are so trivial but which I think belong in the world, to an audience of none. I mean what is the point in that??*]

I will admit I don't really know what people are talking about now