The 7 best Memphis Rap tracks of all time
Memphis Rap
Memphis in the early nineties, on cassettes sold hand to hand: murky four-track tapes, horror-film samples, triplet hi-hats and a chanted hook — the blueprint for trap, made a decade before anyone in Atlanta used the word.
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Tear Da Club Up Thugs / Slob on My Knob
Originally a 1992 Juicy J tape track, and one of the most quoted verses in Southern rap. The triplet flow here is what Migos was doing twenty years later.
Three 6 Mafia / Mystic Stylez
The album that made the sound a scene, and it sounds like it was recorded in a basement because it was. Occult imagery played completely straight.
DJ Squeeky / Sweet Robbery
Squeeky's tapes are where the slowed, chopped, hi-hat-driven Memphis beat is first fully formed. The most influential producer almost nobody outside the city can name.
Tommy Wright III / Playa Hataz
Self-released, self-produced, self-distributed. The tape underground's purest practitioner, and rediscovered wholesale by the phonk producers of the 2010s.
Gangsta Boo / Where Dem Dollas At
The First Lady of Three 6, and the hardest voice on the roster. She held her own in a crew that gave her no room to.
Three 6 Mafia / Late Nite Tip
The melodic side, and evidence the crew could write a hook when it suited them. They won an Academy Award nine years later, which nobody predicted.
DJ Paul / North Memphis Area
Before the group consolidated, when the tapes were still local geography set to a beat. Paul's production is already unmistakable.