We’ve already talked about the roots of Hip-Hop a couple of times. Throughout the 80ies and 90ies there were mainly two American Hip-Hop scenes: First the East Coast with bands mainly centred in and around New York City, particularly the Bronx, and later on West Coast hip-hop, with groups stemming mainly from Los Angeles. But in the late 90ies a third region began to establish it’s dominance: Southern hip-hop had it’s roots in the five cities of Atlanta, New Orleans, Houston, Memphis and Miami. An important moment of their rise were the 1995 Source awards. The East Coast – West Coast – feud was felt strongly when André Benjamin of Atlanta-based Outkast took the stage after winning the award for New Artist of The Year and made a statement: “The South got something to say, that’s all I got to say”.

It was the first award for Outkast, but it would not be the last. The group kept delivering sophisticated lyrics and catchy tunes. As in the second single from their acclaimed fourth studio album Stankonia: “Ms. Jackson” is an honest ode to the mother of Benjamin’s partner at the time, Erykah Badu, about the difficulties that may arise having children born out of wedlock. He felt he was being portrayed as a bad father and found it important that his side of the story was heared as well.

Badu’s mother (whose name is not Jackson, but who immediately new the song was about her when she heard it the first time) absolutely loved the song – so much so that she bought herself a “Ms. Jackson” license plate – and so did the general public.