Entry · catalog no. 7414
Dirty South
/ /ˌdɜrti ˈsaʊθ/ /DUR-tee-SOWTH
noun · East Point, Atlanta, Georgia · 1990s
✓ Verified
1.
The South in hip-hop — its artists, its sound, its self-claimed identity. As the men who made the record put it: it's about the red clay and the dirt roads; it means we country. Said with pride, not apology.
“Outkast and Goodie Mob put the Dirty South on every map that mattered.”
Origin & Attribution
Coined by East Point, Atlanta rapper Cool Breeze of the Dungeon Family, and put on record as "Dirty South" on Goodie Mob's Soul Food (1995), with Cool Breeze and Big Boi on the track. Cool Breeze trademarked the phrase in 1997. The name traveled so far — genre tag, radio format, marketing copy — that its author is routinely dropped from the story.
1995
Goodie Mob's "Dirty South" on Soul Food
1997
Cool Breeze trademarks the phrase
2000s
Becomes the industry name for Southern rap
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
East Point, Atlanta, Georgia · 1990s
Spoken by
Southern rap circles; then the industry
$DIRTYSThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady31 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
85/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1995
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@nolakid
New Orleans, LA
@htxdri
Houston, TX
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Goodie Mob ft. Cool Breeze & Big Boi, "Dirty South" (Soul Food)
1995
■
+ Cite a sourceCool Breeze's Dirty South trademark filing
1997
See also