>After '98/'99? Why isn't Organized Noize the influential
>mastodon in the South that they should've been, the exception
>rather than the rule (as you pretty much said)?
>

RIGHT
but, as you implied, its not as much about any one person as it is the potential of a whole region that was squandered to cash in


>Because I suppose I can feel that. Moreso since 2005 and the
>rise of Jeezy and T.I. Southern rap is still the fresh shit,
>but if I were going to draw a parallel to NYC for example,
>even from their golden age to five years later in 2000 they
>still had a very different, forward-thinking (some/many would
>say whack) direction. But the south is still on their same 808
>snare breakdown shit.
>

that's one of the things I'm getting at
Hip Hop itself started out with the same sound, for the most part, that we hear today on the radio
but the thing is that out of that there was an expansion into other shit and that's where the culture thrived
part of the reason Hip Hop is a bit disheartening to me is because the place that created it had this great blossoming and now its following instead of leading