Geography

• Crunk began as a club culture, with Miami as the initial focus. Beginning in the 1970s, DJs like Luther Campbell--future mastermind of the controversial rap group, Two Live Crew--played loud, bass-heavy music to hold partygoers' interest. Reggae basslines and Caribbean polyrhythms became components of the new style. Gradually, rhythms sped up to 125 beats per minute, leaving no room for extended narrative raps. Instead, short, repetitive phrases became the norm.
  
  

Time Frame

• Led by Campbell's multiple labels and performers, the so-called "Miami Bass" style that he pioneered enjoyed prominence until the mid-1990s, when Atlanta--one of several Southern rap centers, along with Memphis, Houston and New Orleans--began to eclipse it in popularity. Producers like Jermaine Dupri played key roles in this phenomenon, as did groups like Outkast, whose complex, non-repetitive raps made them standard bearers for this distinctive new musical style.
  
  

Effects

• Ignored by major labels, crunk remained a regional urban phenomenon, one that lacked a ready-made tag to describe it. OutKast are credited as the first artists to use the word, which appears in their 1993 and 1994 songs, "Player's Ball" and "Hootie Hoo", respectively. Lil' Jon's 1996 hit, "Who U Wit", furthered the widespread use of the term, used to describe a way of relieving pent-up aggression, as "USA Today" noted, in a July 2003 overview of the genre.
  
  

Features

• Breaking beyond regional fanbases became more feasible following Memphis Six Three Mafia's 1997 smash, "Tear Da Club Up 97", which is frequently credited as crunk's first smash hit. Remixes and collaborations with established stars--such as "Never Scared," which paired Bone Crusher with Busta Rhymes--enabled crunk artists to make inroads into mainstream markets that seemed unimaginable only a decade before.
  
  

Considerations

• Fueled purely by audience demand, major labels took notice. By the mid-2000s, many of the major crunk artists--such as Bone Crusher, Banner and Lil' Jon--had signed major distribution and recording contracts in hopes of expanding their fan base and airplay. Crunk's popularity represented a seismic shift in marketing to African-American audiences, since it developed outside the influence of the traditional music business power centers of New York and Los Angeles.