photo by steed media service

President-Urban Music, Island Records

"There's no city like Atlanta. When I first started doing music down here, it was only one radio station and they wouldn't play a lot of Southern artists. This was during the late '80s. The radio stations would mostly play music from New York or Los Angeles. It was hard for us to get our own records on the radio. The city really didn't exist when it came to music.

"During that time, we had a lot of local acts that were starting to get their names out around the city. I began working with my first group, Silk Tymes Leather. There was also Success-N-Effect, Raheem the Dream, MC Shy-D, and Kilo. This was the early Atlanta music scene that a lot of people don't know about. We had a lot of people out here going hard, but nobody wanted to give us a break.

"But we kept pushing the music. Some time went by and we all went back in the lab and came out with new sounds. I brought out Kris Kross and Dallas [Austin] had ABC. And then LaFace moved out here and the ball has been bouncing ever since.

"We still didn't get too comfortable because a lot of cities make noise and they just fade away after two or three years. Some people thought that our music was just a fad, but the Atlanta scene has remained strong. Atlanta keeps growing musically. Right now, T.I. is the biggest rap artist out. Ludacris continues to sell millions every time he drops an album. OutKast is the biggest rap group since Run-DMC. Everybody is paying attention to the city now and we're going to stay at it. The music business has never seen anything like what Atlanta has to offer." -amir shaw

For exclusive video, log onto rollingout.com/jdupri.

Share this article with a friend