Though streaming has long replaced the “out the trunk” era, the Bay Area’s influence on independent music distribution remains. These days, the savviest artists from the South know that they need to hit San Francisco to strike a lucrative business deal with EMPIRE, now the world’s leading hip-hop distributor. When I visited the company’s well-appointed Financial District penthouse office in 2019, I met the remarkable Memphis rapper Adolph “Young Dolph” Thornton.
“I can’t shake,” he said warmly when introduced, offering a big hug in place of a stiff hand. Dolph, who was later murdered in his hometown in 2021, was responsible for two gold-certified records on EMPIRE’s wall. His EMPIRE deal also enabled him to sign and develop his own artists, such as fellow Memphis rapper Key Glock, setting them up to win via collaborations.
It wasn’t the first time the Bay Area played an important role in a Memphis artist’s success. Young Dolph’s one-time rival, Yo Gotti, made his mid-2010s comeback with hits like “Act Right,” produced by Pinole’s P-Lo, and “Law,” featuring E-40. (E-40 also recorded with the late “Queen of Memphis,” Three Six Mafia’s Gangsta Boo, who once proclaimed: “SHOUT OUT TO THE BAY AREA!!! I ROCKS WITH YALL THE LONG WAAAAY.”)
Going back further, musical and cultural influence has also flowed from Memphis to the Bay. MC Hammer admitted on Twitter that he learned the pre-crunk, pre-hyphy “get buck” style of dancing (later known as gangsta walking) in Memphis in the late ’80s. And iconic Memphis duo 8Ball & MJG worked with marquee Bay Area names like E-40, Mac Mall, Rappin’ 4-Tay and Spice 1 on both group and solo projects in the late ’90s and early aughts.
Even though Atlanta had become the rap industry’s power center by the time EMPIRE launched in San Francisco in 2010, keeping EMPIRE’s headquarters in the Bay Area is a core part of the company’s mission. “San Francisco has always been a place where incredible creatives were bred, but few of them are here at this point,” EMPIRE Vice President Nima Etminan told me in 2019. “Even in the music scene, when you look at it, a Sway [Calloway from SiriusXM], or an Ebro [Darden of Hot 97 in New York], or a [early Apple Music exec] Larry Jackson … all came from here, but people don’t really realize it.”
“I think [being in the] Financial District on the 24th floor in downtown San Francisco is definitely not necessarily the cheapest route to take,” Etminan continued, “but it’s a statement. It’s like, you’ve got to come here to see us.”
The Bay’s influence on bounce and trap, and the South’s mark on hyphy
The Bay Area, Atlanta, Houston and New Orleans share a love for big, trunk-rattling beats, and collaborations between the cities’ artists have resulted in influential hits. Atlanta hitmaker Lil Jon bumped Too Short in his ride in high school, and later produced Short’s “Blow The Whistle” and E-40’s “Tell Me When to Go,” the twin beacons that introduced hyphy to the rest of the nation.
In turn, producers from the Bay Area have facilitated crucial Southern records. The late KMEL DJ Cameron Paul’s track “Brown Beats” helped form the spine of New Orleans bounce music. Houston’s DJ Screw, who passed away in 2000, recorded a session in his home studio with Texas-born Oaklander Spice 1, and was known to feature plenty of Bay Area rap songs on his influential “Grey Tape” cassette mixes. Mike Dean, who produced for Houston’s Rap-A-Lot Records, crafted beats for Stackin Chips, the 1997 debut album of Keak Da Sneak’s group 3X Krazy, and Bay Area artists like Yukmouth (whose Smoke-A-Lot Records is distributed by Rap-A-Lot), Seagram and producer Tone Capone recorded for the label in the ’90s and early aughts.
Just outside of Houston in Port Arthur, Chad “Pimp C” Butler of UGK shared a close friendship and musical camaraderie with Too Short. In 2007, the night before he died, Pimp C appeared onstage at Too Short’s show at the now-defunct House of Blues on the Sunset Strip, according to Julia Beverly’s biography Sweet Jones: Pimp C’s Trill Life Story. In what’s said to be his final interview, Pimp C credited the Oakland legend for his career longevity: “I just follow what Too Short told me. He told me ‘Don’t Stop Rappin’.’ I just kept on making the kind of records that the people down where I live at like.”
Outkast, whose Andre 3000 has acknowledged the Bay Area as a notable early influence, broadcast an alternative rap sound out of Atlanta in the ’90s. “I have to — I have to — give a shout to the Hieroglyphics crew and Souls Of Mischief, because as kids we were hugely influenced by them,” Andre 3000 told NPR’s Microphone Check in 2014. And Outkast’s Big Boi was just as direct about another Bay Area influence: “One of my favorite rappers happens to be Too Short,” he rapped on the 2010 track “Fo Yo Sorrows.”
Later, as trap music began to fill the Southern streets, a Bay Area-bred producer helped develop its sound and take it to the national airwaves.
Xavier “Zaytoven” Dotson was born to a military family in Germany and spent his formative years in San Francisco before joining his parents in Atlanta, where a giant, free basement studio at their new Georgia home beckoned. Within a year, when he wasn’t away from the studio playing organ for his parents’ church, Zaytoven produced Gucci Mane’s breakout 2005 hit “Icy.” Word quickly got around the proverbial trap that Zaytoven’s basement was the place to record, and his client list grew to include Future, Usher, Travis Scott, the late Young Dolph and many others.
“Even though it’s with artists from the South, you can hear, you can see where the sound came from: that’s Bay Area music all day long,” Zaytoven said of “Icy” in a 2018 interview with The Sana G Morning Show on KMEL. “[The Bay] still has a funky instrumentation sound to it, so even when I’m in the South making just gutter beats, I still got them melodic sounds going on. That’s what attached me to the Bay Area so much. … I definitely try to represent the Bay every time I get. This is where I got my game from!”
In 2021, the producer returned to his local roots and worked with EMPIRE to release the compilation Zaytoven Presents: Fo15 on April 15 (or 415 Day, in homage to San Francisco’s area code). Up-and-coming San Francisco artists on the collection included Lil Bean, Lil Pete, Lil Yee, KxNG Llama, Prezi and ZayBang — proving that the Bay Area-South pipeline is far from running dry.
“I was molded in San Francisco, California,” Zaytoven added in his KMEL interview. “That’s why I represent the Bay Area.”
A cultural and philanthropic exchange
Beyond business and beats, Northern California has made an imprint on the South’s cultural institutions thanks to philanthropy and outreach from artists like Tupac and E-40. Though Tupac is considered a West Coast icon, surprisingly, Too Short called him “the heartbeat of the South” when I interviewed him in 2004.
“I used to be at the club and the DJ would put on records off Makaveli because Makaveli came out right after Pac died,” said Too Short, who lived in Atlanta in the mid-’90s. “You would swear that nigga was on stage! The whole damn crowd be singing every word. It would be like a concert, and he ain’t even there.”