The South Rises

The South takes the wheel

The prediction André 3000 made in 1995 came true in the 2000s. OutKast opened the decade with Stankonia and won the Grammy for Album of the Year for Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Lil Jon made crunk the sound of every club, and T.I.'s Trap Muzik (2003), with production from DJ Toomp, gave a name to the trap sound that would eventually take over the world. New Orleans had Cash Money and Mannie Fresh, and Lil Wayne turned a flood of free mixtapes into Tha Carter III, which sold about a million copies in its first week in 2008.

Houston and Memphis

DJ Screw died in 2000, but his sound kept spreading. By 2005, Houston rappers like Mike Jones, Paul Wall and Slim Thug were on national radio, and screwed and chopped remixes were everywhere. UGK's Pimp C and Bun B finally got their due before Pimp C's death in 2007. Memphis's Three 6 Mafia went from underground tapes to an Academy Award for "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" in 2006.

Soul samples and the backpack underground

In New York, Jay-Z's The Blueprint, released on September 11, 2001, made Kanye West and Just Blaze stars with sped-up soul samples. Kanye's The College Dropout (2004) proved a producer could become rap's biggest voice. Underground, Madlib and MF DOOM's Madvillainy and J Dilla's Donuts, both made largely on small samplers, reshaped beat-making for a generation. North Carolina's Little Brother, Virginia's Clipse and the Neptunes showed great rap could come from anywhere.

The mixtape wars

Mixtapes became rap's real marketplace, sold on street corners and passed around online. The 2007 raid on DJ Drama's Atlanta studio showed how gray that market was, and it pushed mixtapes toward free downloads, setting up the blog era that followed.