THE BUZZ - BY WILLIE HUNTER - Black Music
Month Focus - Atlanta - The Urban Music
Capital Of The World!! Since the beginning
of the 1990s - the city of Atlanta is widely
known as the third music city of the USA (New
York is first, Los Angeles is second).
During the month of June each year - the
nation observes what is called 'Black Music
Month' as established during the Carter
Administration during the late '70s. The
month celebrates the contributions to
American music by Black people.
These contributions include jazz, gospel, hip
hop / rap, rock R&B, etc. But the remarkable
thing about all of this is that the city of
Atlanta has been and still is 'the new music
capital of the world'. Lots of artists are
coming out of the city as we have anywhere
from 8 to 14 recording artists gracing the
national music charts during the year. Since
all of this began years ago - we have seen
such names as TLC, Xscape, Kris Kross, Silk,
Arrested Development, Jagged Edge, 112, D4L,
Dem Franchise Boyz, Young Ralph, Shop Boyz,
Alliance, Outkast, Goodie Mob, Crime Mob,
Scrappy, Rocko, Soulja Boy, Lil' Jon & The
Eastside Boyz, Lil' Zane, Cierra, Akon,
T.I., Freak Nasty, Ludacris, Yung Joc, Boyz
'N Da Hood, JC, Gorilla Zoe, Usher, Jeezy and
many others.
We are fortunate in Atlanta to have a rather
large community of experienced and new
recording artists. Legendary recording
artists living in Atlanta in past years and
many new artists are such names as Clarence
Carter, Theodis Ealey, Curtis Mayfield, Chuck
Willis, Duke Pearson, Billy Wright, Willie
Hill, Kecia Cole, Kelly Price, William Bell,
Kenneth ' Babyface' Edmonds, Antonio 'LA'
Reid, Monica, Shawty Lo, Seek, Anthony David,
Collective Soul, and many others. In our
research of urban music - we discovered that
much of Atlanta based rap / hip hop music is
played in numerous night clubs in Europe.
Congratulations to Atlanta's urban music
scene for continuing its role of impacting
the world!
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