Entry · catalog no. 1248
Miami bass
/ /maɪˈæmi ˈbeɪs/ /my-AM-ee BAYSS
noun · Liberty City and Miami, Florida · 1980s
✓ Verified
1.
A style of Southern hip-hop built on Roland TR-808 kick and sustained low end, fast tempos, and call-and-response chants written to be tested on a wall of speakers.
“You cannot judge a Miami bass record on laptop speakers. It was not made for them.”
2.
The scene and infrastructure around that sound: the crews, the teen clubs, the pirate radio, and the independent labels that pressed the records.
“Half of Miami bass came out of one building on 54th Street.”
Origin & Attribution
Miami bass grew out of Liberty City and Miamis other Black neighborhoods in the early 1980s, in the outdoor sound-system parties and skating-rink dances run by crews like Luther Campbells Ghetto Style DJs. MC ADEs Bass Rock Express, released on 4 Sight Records in 1985, is widely held to be the first Miami bass record; 2 Live Crews Throw the D, the first release on Campbells Luke Skyywalker Records in 1986, set the commercial blueprint. The dances and the chants came from the floor first — teenagers at the Pac Jam Teen Disco named them, and the records were written afterward. Mainstream memory reduces the whole genre to 2 Live Crews obscenity trial, which erases both the DJ crews who built the sound and the fact that the groups founding members formed in Riverside, California and relocated into a Miami scene already underway.
1985
MC ADEs Bass Rock Express is issued on 4 Sight Records, generally called the first Miami bass record
1986
Luther Campbell founds Luke Skyywalker Records to release 2 Live Crews Throw the D and opens the Pac Jam Teen Disco in Liberty City
1990
The As Nasty As They Wanna Be obscenity fight makes the genre national news on terms not its own
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
The South
Liberty City and Miami, Florida · 1980s
Spoken by
South Florida Black audiences and DJs; hip-hop press
$MIAMIBThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Historical41 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
58/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1985
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
■
Jesse Serwer, Nightclubbing: The Pac Jam, Home of Miami Bass, Red Bull Music Academy Daily, 23 October 2015
oral history
■
MC ADE, Bass Rock Express, 12-inch single, 4 Sight Records, 1985, catalogue no. 3-85-FS-9
record
■
+ Cite a source50 Years of Hip-Hop Saw Miami Bass Lay the Blueprint for Modern Day Rap and Pop Culture, Miami New Times, 2023
newspaper
See also