"See, in the Bay Area, we dance a little different," Mac Dre explains matter-of-factly in "Get Stupid." The 2004 hit became a blueprint for the hyphy movement, the freewheeling, party-centric subgenre that reigned the Northern Californian rap scene in the 2000s. At local warehouse parties and clubs—even nowadays—teenagers and twenty-somethings rap along to every word of his iconic tracks while twisting their lips into thizz faces and throwing their T's up like Mac Dre did before his untimely passing in 2004.
Mac Dre unapologetically celebrated his eccentricity, and that attitude extends to the Bay Area's rap scene today. The Bay Area has always been an underdog to Los Angeles, and locals rep its underground countercultures with fierce pride. LA is home to the music industry establishment, but in the Bay Area, artists have always had to do it themselves, from selling CDs out of the trunks of their cars—like most of our rap icons did from the 80s through the early 2000s—to starting their own labels and, in recent years, inserting themselves into the national conversation through viral anthems such as Kamaiyah's "How Does It Feel."
The region's sprawling geography and lack of a single cultural capital makes it all the more unique. Vallejo, the Solano county city about 30 miles north of San Francisco, gave us Mac Dre and E-40, the enduring hitmaker who's had more longevity in the rap game than any other living artist—period. Oakland produced pimp rap extraordinaire Too $hort; hyphy icons Mistah F.A.B. and Keak Da Sneak; and conscious hip-hop pioneers Souls of Mischief and Hieroglyphics. Pittsburg gave us The Jacka, a street rap kingpin that was senselessly murdered in Oakland in 2015.
To understand what's going on in the Bay Area today, it's imperative to learn about the various rap movements that have existed here over the years. Mobb music was our answer to LA's g-funk during the early-90s gangster rap era, and platinum records such as E-40's In a Major Way and Too $hort's Life Is… Too Shortemerged from this homegrown style of hard-edged street rap.
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