December 10, 2025 • 41 mins
How a dive bar near MLK’s Ebenezer Baptist Church became the center of a dynamic underground scene in the mid 2010s, and how it’s had an outsized influence on today’s hip-hop.
HOSTED BY: Big Rube
STARRING: Key!, Father, Olu and WowGr8 of Earthgang, Steven “Stevo” Dingle, DJ E. Sudd, Maurice Garland
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Raury and Mike Walbert
NARRATED BY: Christina Lee
SUBJECTS: Music, Atlanta history
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Atlanta is and was the shit before the VP's arrived.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
From the meal to motions to the warehouse.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
My generation had influences that most people ain't even talking
about today. These places was crucial. That's setting us on
the path we all had to walk. Every generation got
their own thing. Even superstars were young once they had
to try things out on their own and find out
for their self where they was headed. The seed of
(00:30):
the culture grows from the people who or the saw
that the seed is planted in, becoming something that affects
the entire world just by way of its existence. A
big rule, and Atlanta is a department sto party.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It's September twenty fifteen, a clear night in Atlanta, and
on one street corner in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood stands
a two story brick built with rickety floorboards, one unisex bathroom,
and a crowd packed in so tight on the second
floor you could barely move. Cigarette butts and blun cuts
litter the floor, and the ventilation inside is non existent.
(01:15):
Everyone's facing a makeshift stage what's really just a raised
platform not even a foot above everyone else. They're there
to watch the night's featured performer. Geez, the guy who
turned Atlanta into the trap music capital of the world,
is standing before flashing lights and under cobwebs dangling from
exposed rafters. He's being heckled, saying, I appreciate that I'm
(01:45):
coming out playing this party. By then, the rap star
was damned near A decade into his career, he turned
his hustler's ambition into platinum selling anthems, transforming stories from
the streets into trap music for the masses, but also
for the strip clubs, the place that helped him turn
into a superstar.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
If you've ever.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Seen someone throw money in the air or make it
rain at one of Atlanta's iconic strip clubs, like Magic City,
it's because of Gez. He made it look cool and
like so many Atlanta rappers at the time, he also
used the strip club to break records. But on this
night in twenty fifteen, Jeez isn't roped off in a
section flanked by strippers. He squeezed into a second floor
(02:27):
hot box and heckling aside. He was in awe of
what he saw before him.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
Up in Atlanta A long time, but I think it's
the best shit I've seen in my fucking life radio Bummy,
Let's get it.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's rare to capture a scene's peak moment, but this
recording of Jeez on stage might just be it. And
it was awe happening in a tiny bar known as
Department Store.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
One moment.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I felt like I was there damn near every week,
and sometimes I literally made up my job. I witnessed
how from twenty thirteen to twenty sixteen, it became the
heart of Atlanta's underground rap renaissance and was a launch
pad for the city's current generation of rap superstars and masterminds.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
It's where twenty.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
One Savage performed one of his very first shows. It
was a necessary pit stop for migos and for ambitious
storytellers like Earth Gang and Jid. It's where they claimed
their city before they ran the world. Even Playboycarti, the
biggest face of the current rage rat movement with those
massive arena tours and millions of streams, not to mention
(03:33):
songs with lil Uzi, Vert, Travis Scott and Ye was
that Department Store during the beginning of his career and
for a hot minute, Atlanta's scene veterans like two Chains,
Ludacris and Jeezy stopped by to boost their own reputations
without paying for bottle service. Department Store was the single
spot that reflected the overwhelming diversity of the city's hip
(03:55):
hop scene, and at not even four thousand square feet,
it may have been the small list, but the bar's
lifespan was short. For a moment, the energy felt unstoppable,
and then almost overnight it was gone. This is the
story of that modest bar, which for a split second
was the center of the rap universe. We'll talk to
(04:17):
the game changers who were born out of it.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
You might catch like somebody who would later be one
of the biggest things you've ever seen. I've seen Thug there,
I've seen the Migos there.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
You know what I'm saying. I've seen people that end
up being huge.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
And tell the stories of the stars who broke through
but didn't stay long enough to see all the shine
they'd get.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
That song became like the hit that summer and we're like,
holy shit, that was Bango Fresh in here and yeah,
and then he passed away.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Recipes told you backo he just passed in December.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I'm Christina Lee and this is episode seven of Atlanta
is Department Stores sits on the corner of Boulevard and
Edgewood Avenue. A century ago, this area was a bustling
shopping district and the two story brick building was exactly
what its name suggests, department store. Today you could still
(05:02):
see the white letters spelling Department Store on its exterior.
The business aside is long gone, but the name never left.
Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Junior used to
preach and Senator Raphael Wardock preaches today, is just a
few blocks away, and in twenty fourteen, a resident of
the area like I was, could have partied a department
(05:23):
store on Saturday and walked to church on Sunday.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Very Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
At the time, Edgewood was an up and coming night
life district. There were a growing number of places to
hang out. None served Italian comfort food, and Mother was
a no frills die bar with pickleback shots.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
You also had venues like.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
The Soundtable and Music Room that booked the Hippus DJs,
And then there was Department Store. It was owned by
Luis Carreras, a precautionist with Cuban roots who had an
affinity for live music and so He transformed the historic
building into an intimate, low key bar where you could
enjoy listening to jazz and sip on drum cocktails.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
But that was all about to blow up fast.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It's like front line, you know what I mean. This
is the best way to do it. And they come out,
they get the network with one another.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
In twenty thirteen, the hip hop festival A three C
came to Edgewood Avenue.
Speaker 8 (06:20):
Three seeds employed in the hip hop community.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
A three C was becoming the rap version of south
By Southwest. From sun up to way past sundown, festival
goers walk the sidewalks and poured into the entire street,
catching Schoolboy Q and Questlove on stages set up between
Edgewood Avenue's historic brick buildings. Mark Cuise Whittaker saw an opportunity.
Speaker 9 (06:43):
We did a show in the backyard of the piece
of shop. This is like somewhere we could take our
music that we just had made.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Marquise, whose artist's name is Key Fatman, Key is an
Atlanta native whose father sold airbrush t shirts.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
During freaknik Key co founded two nine so now was.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Ahead of his time. Bassett, selling Boss said it.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Was an Atlanta rap crew that was the Southern version
of the underground Rap Collectors forming on the East and
West Coast.
Speaker 9 (07:10):
You like Space Ghost, per Asap, Rocky, all of these.
You know, Tyler the creator. But when twenty fourteen came,
we kind of had like a little following, but.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
There was still work to do to raise Key's profile.
A three C was the perfect place, but he wasn't
on the official lineup, So Key and his friend set
up a stage on the grassy lot behind Edward Pizza
to prove that they were superstars in the making. Their
hope was to draw a crowd of their own, gorilla style.
Key rattles off a list of performers from that day,
(07:40):
Me and Man Man Man Man Savage, who worked with
Freddy Gibbs macone before Drake even knew who he was,
and I think twenty one mic for form. Picky Picky
was twenty one Savage's first song, digging Traction in Atlanta.
He was only around twenty one years old when it
came out.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I so love the fucking picked. A lot of fucking
people showed up.
Speaker 9 (08:02):
Everybody we could think of, like Teeth, like whoever was
hot at that time, like coming up, like producing Wise, EdWay, mafia,
all of them people like they was just random. The
Hajji he was there, we met. There's like six hundred kids.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
One of those kids in the crowd was Sentel Orlando.
Speaker 10 (08:16):
Mangham actually better known as Father.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Father is one of the founding members of Awful Records.
At the time, Awful was actually a loose music collective,
a group of fifteen to twenty friends really who get
together and do weird shit.
Speaker 11 (08:29):
Lighting fires in the backyard and dancing around them and
all kinds of weird shit. Back then, people would be like, oh,
it looks really occult and strange, which is like, nah,
we're just you know, just eccentric, and we like to
burn shit and fuck around a little bit and drink.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Father was about to turn Awful Records into an influential
music label, but for now there he was a Key
Show department store was just across the street. Business was
kind of slow. On nights when the bar was dead,
the owner, Louis would tit the bartender out of his
own pocket. He was determined to make the bar work,
so when Louise heard about the crowd that Key and
(09:05):
his friends drew, he thought he'd introduce himself.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
He was like, y'all could do a show here tonight too.
Speaker 9 (09:10):
I'm like what he like, Yeah, y'all can bring whatever
traffic y'all got and do a show here. So right
after we performed, we'd literally was drunk, all drunk as fuck,
went upstairs and performed another show.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Twenty one Savage performed for this second time that day.
Speaker 9 (09:23):
And he performed this time war songs because now he
got a little more more confidence.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
This was a preview of what was to come, not
just for twenty one Savage and his growing star power,
but for how Department Store would change forever.
Speaker 9 (09:35):
That's really how it happened. Now I'm at this place
all we can.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Alongside Key, there was another person who completely changed the
vibe Department Store.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
I worked at Folly's. I worked at Tea's. I worked
at Shooter's Alley. I worked at Kamal's.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Twenty one Sarah Kim used to bar tend at a
bunch of strip clubs in the city. She got a
part time gig at Department Store, but soon after she started,
the guy in charge of booking disappeared. The owner asked Sarah.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
To fill in.
Speaker 7 (10:02):
He's like, I'll pay you more, just do it.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
She agreed and turn to the people who she knew
would pick up the phone all those hip hop connections
she made at the Strip club.
Speaker 7 (10:10):
Like somebody, please help me. I don't know what I'm doing,
and they're like, yeah, I got you. Come on, let's
do it.
Speaker 9 (10:16):
A typical night of the Department Store, Sarah giving out
a lot of free drinks. Everybody's coming at night. The
college kids is coming, the older people are coming. You
get a little mix of everybody. You're gonna go home
with someone, so it's a.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Lot of that. It was a hazy time.
Speaker 12 (10:29):
You know.
Speaker 9 (10:29):
The drinks was too fucking cheap. Let's say that, let's
just do that five dollar shots and you get in
a double.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
There was no rules, you know, and it wasn't like a.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
That's old From the Grammy nominated rap group Earth Gangs,
He and his partner in Rhyme While Great are reminiscing
about how bringing their music to Department Store was unlike
anything they'd experienced. They even say that they performed the
first ever rap show.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
At the bar.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Hey you all this, it was like make have fun.
Get up there and you have to have fun.
Speaker 13 (10:57):
But anything these drunk, rowdy people or they go throw
something at you. I remember going to song we didn't
even know we were going to perform on that. They were like,
just come and sometimes we would not, And then sometimes
they would just bring us to the front and like,
y'all hear okay, y'all go in there.
Speaker 6 (11:08):
Y y'all just goal because it's been seven duds. It's
something that happens almost shakes up.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Well, y'all ready, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Around this time, it was becoming conventional wisdom that strip
clubs ruled the Atlanta music industry. It was where Lil
John could test drive yeah before the song brought crunk
to the suburban masses. The problem was not all songs
were meant to be strip club anthems. Plus in order
to get your song played, it was custom to tip
the DJ Handsomely. Father, the head of Awful Records, remembers
(11:43):
when he took a song to the strip club follies,
but it never.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Took off musically.
Speaker 11 (11:47):
The thing in the city was always kind of like
the Bigger Trap scenes, Migos, Future Freeman, like that type
of shit, Geezy Gucci, big names. So I never really
thought we would ever appeal to any crowd out here.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So Father focused more on building awful records online where
he could go beyond the city limits of Atlanta. Around
this time, SoundCloud was an appealing option for up and
coming artists with a much lower barrier to entry into
the music scene. They could break the rules, dropping songs
as quickly as they could make them. A huge split
from the way major labels had artists wait years to
(12:26):
release a full body of work, but those same artists
still needed a guaranteed way to connect with future fans
in their hometown. They needed an i ral testing ground
that wasn't the strip club. That is where Department Store
came in. With an open calendar, Key Father and their
friends could showcase their new music as soon as they
recorded and bring in a crowd to match the online hype.
(12:49):
Outside of anything made by Future, some of those songs
became the biggest Atlanta rap anthems of the year twenty fourteen.
There was Tuesday by I Love Mconan, a woozy ballot
that was reportedly inspired by a DJ night at Department Store.
Speaker 12 (13:03):
Club Going up on a Tuesday, got your Girl in
the Tuesday Club.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
At the time, Drake was a kingmaker in Atlanta rap
for artists like Two Chains and Migos, A Drake Verse
was the fast track to first time radio airplay and
mainstream attention. But for I Love Maconan, not only did
Drake remix Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
And went on putting working on a wakeday.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
He gave him a record deal.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I look back on this bang. How had.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
You also had song of the Summer contenders like OJ
Maco's you Guessed It, You Guess It and look at
Risk by father of Macon' Riss. Both of those songs
featured key. They demanded mosh pits with the barrass of essentials,
knocking rhythms and punchlines like he would shout.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
Okay, I heard my fucking China chest on your fish.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I hurt my fucking risk doing doing a cent of
six niggas will make songs literally to run there.
Speaker 9 (14:08):
Back in the day, we did that at like the
clubs like got obsessions are like Magic City, will make
a song and run to the club.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
But now we ain't got to pay, so fuck going
to that club. We on edge would.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Department Store was originally supposed to be a live jazz
and funk bar that served from Punch, but it quickly
turned into Atlantis ground zero for the next generation of
rap that sold PBRs and five dollars well whiskey shots.
Stephen Dingle, or as the homies call him, Steve O,
had been going to a department store with his friend
(14:42):
since damn near day one.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Like I still have the picture of us sitting there.
It's like six of us.
Speaker 14 (14:47):
We sit on the couch, two people at the bar
and you know, you know the bartender, heavy shots, five
doll It was cheap whenever, like we want to take
girls there.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
It was like, we know a spot.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
But as Atlanta's post outcast rap scene found its way
to Steve O's date night spot, department stores owner Luis
had no choice but to open the bars second floor.
Steve O remembers that day as if it was the
moon landing.
Speaker 14 (15:07):
He was like, Okay, it's getting too crazy in here.
Only maybe one hundred and fiftywo hundred people can fit
down here. I gotta create the upstairs. So when he
made the upstairs and opened it, we were just like,
what is this. Like we didn't even know you had
an upstairs because it was only like two steps in
the left corner behind the DJ and then you turn
right and it's a whole fighter stairs.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
We didn't even know that was back there.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
That second stage met a second platform to showcase Atlanta's
new talent.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
This putted well for STEVEO.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
He was a music manager and Atlanta's next buzzy rapper
wanted to work with him. Og Maco lived on Edgewood
Avenue and a Victorian style house painted skyblue. He went
to Georgia State University, barely a mile away. By the
time he met STEVEO. His music had taken off on
campus through word of mouth, but as an unsigned artist,
(15:52):
og Maco needed to extend his reach. His music didn't
neatly slot in with what was going on in Atlanta
radio at the time. Imagine someone who was as inspired
by Black Sabbath as he was Kid Cuddy, whose voice
always sounded like it was on the verge of giving out.
(16:13):
His default ablett was fucking fuck and fuck m yeah. Yeah,
though you just have to hear it from Ogi Maco himself.
None of this intimidated Steve O. He signed up to
manage Ogi Maco because he knew there was room in
Atlanta's rap scene for this sound, and he knew how
(16:34):
to make the world take notice. In twenty eleven, Steveo
started contributing to greedmont Park, an Atlanta music blog that
focused on the underground rap scene. Whenever the blog through
shows or parties, they'd post photos to Instagram and Twitter. Crucially,
they'd add the hashtag New Atlanta. That phrase became so
popular that when Migos linked up with young thug Rich
(16:56):
Homi Kwan and Jermaine Duprie to revamp the song Welcome
to Atlanta, they called it Knew Atlanta.
Speaker 14 (17:03):
Welcome because we want people to know, like the Harlem
Renaissance was a collective of creatives, so whenever it was
like more than three people together, it was like, we
got to make sure to tag New Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Steve O was just as savvy when it came to
being a manager. He knew that if he wanted to
break og Macco as an artist, heading to department store
was the next logical step. Og Maco had a song
where he teamed up a key called you Guessed.
Speaker 12 (17:31):
It Bits, You Guess It Steal Coming Tess.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Steve O handed off that record to a DJ at
Department Store to play during his sets. Whenever he spotted
someone in the crowd who vibed with it. He'd walk
up to them and say.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Y'all just tweet it, but you guess it, that's all
you need to tweet.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
He was trying to get you guessed it to go viral,
and Department Store was the perfect place to start.
Speaker 14 (17:56):
And that's how it kind of got bubbling in the
scene in Atlanta, like that was saying from Edgewood to
East Atlanta Village.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
And then after a while it just it spread like wildfire.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
And it went beyond Atlanta, turning into a meme on vine.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
A social media predecessor to TikTok.
Speaker 12 (18:12):
Maybe you remember my birthday thirty first you guessed it?
Speaker 14 (18:16):
I wish I could like you trying to understand my
timeline was like did you guess it? But you guessed it?
Somebody like what is b You guessed it? And I'll
just be like got them.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Department Store kept developing as an incubator for talent.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
My name is Sa I'm from Hot Point, North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Is said is two Chainses tour DJ.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I love music. I love to break music. I love
to break artists.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Specifically, he and Sarah launched a monthly producer showcase where
a little known producer named Buddha Blast linked up with
Two Chains to make the song Big Amount featuring Drake,
a collaboration that has since gone platinum, and so Esaid
witnessed how Department Store could put people on. In twenty fifteen,
(18:59):
the song Hopped Boy was booming from car speakers across
the city and on its way to eighteen million views
on YouTube. It was by the city's best new trap artists,
Bankworld Fresh from Atlanta's West Side.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Gone Dude looking like a dough dealer hangs down. Nine
of y'all brought out and trust back when.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
We post, he said, knew that a live performance at
Department Store would show that Bankworldfresh had more to offer
than a hot song.
Speaker 10 (19:22):
I'm having media from Tennessee Club. I'm having my friends
that I just met in Alabama a year ago. We're
making this shit seem larger than life. And when you
get there, it's a damn small ass bar. But it's like, Oh,
he's promote Initiatate like this sea damn Coyliseum.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Two Chance himself was in the building.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Security snuck him in through his side door, but the
fanfare was still too much for him to handle. Here's
Sarah department store is general manager.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
In one of my security guards like has his phone
and the flashes on as two chainses walking in the door.
He's like this, two chains fucking slaps that shit out
of his fucking hand, and I was like, what the
fuck and then said was like, he has bad eyes.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Here's the thing, this story about bankworl Fresh could have
easily taken place at one of Atlanta's posture nightclubs or
strip clubs, the sort of places whereas trop music elders
like Jeez built their careers. Instead, those taste makers from
the nightclubs and strip clubs had migrated to department Store.
Speaker 10 (20:20):
This is where the music is being broken. This is
where fat Man Key is coming and dropping new shit.
This is where fucking Atlanta is.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
You know, it is a staple.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Unfortunately, Department Store wouldn't be a stable for much longer.
The bar would see its biggest stars yet and then
it shut down. Let's recap so far, we've been talking
about artists who were on the rise from Key to Earth,
Gang and Bankwel Fresh, but it wasn't long until people
who were already certified superstars showed up to Department Store too.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I'm in one night we was there.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
I never forget Missy Elliott was there, and I was like,
why is Missy Elliott before the environment?
Speaker 7 (20:57):
As I believe, Andre three thousand came for like weeks
on end for this Sunday show to just come and watch.
Speaker 14 (21:03):
I saw Jez got the carwalkie in like so, but
like when artists like that started coming, it was a
stamp that Edgwood was a market that like, you could
come here and kill it.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Everyone agrees that industry veterans like Missy Elliott, Jez and
Andre three thousand boosted department stores profile, but at the
same time, there was also this feeling that the presence
of these big names in this old ass building messed
with the bars. Anything goes five. To get to the
bottom of this, I needed to talk to an important source.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
My name is Maurice Garland.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Maurice is a co producer and co host on this
very show.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I've been writing about Atlanta Stiff for a long time.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
He is being modest.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
You're talking about someone who was a college radio host
turned intern at Hot ninety seven to five, Atlanta's first
twenty four hour rap radio station. Fast forward to around
twenty fourteen, he knew Maurice not just for his bylines,
but for the events he'd host around and even outside
the city.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Big Boy Concerts.
Speaker 8 (22:02):
I hosted Kendrick Lamar's first to Atlanta shows. I hosted
Travis scott first ever show in New York. It was
at the CMJ Festival. And I remember the flyer because
his name was in big letters with his face, and
I always trip out on the flyer because one of
the opening acts, his name was small as hell at
(22:22):
the bottom.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Could hardly read it, and it was like Chance the Rapper,
you know.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
In summer twenty thirteen, Maurice went to department store for
the first time. He needed to pick up some footage
from a videographer named Jay Wise and was told to
meet there.
Speaker 8 (22:39):
I remember going inside and it was like, wow, this
is nice, Like what is this because it was kind
of shaped like a shotgun house. There was a bar
on the left, random couches and random seating. Was very
just much a you know, open space, exposed brick wall,
you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Then Louis, the owner, came out, and.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
Then you know, he just started talking, Man, I need
a Monday night, Man, I need some happen on Monday nights.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
You know, my Monday nights are kind of slow, and
for some reason, I was like, man, what if we
just had this party where people just play what they won't?
Speaker 8 (23:08):
You know, because it was like kind of in that
era of you know, people having little past the Ox
parties at their house and things like that.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You'd be on somebody's patio, you know, at the kickback, hey.
Speaker 8 (23:17):
Passed the Ox and I was like, man, what if
we just had this party where people just come in
and do that.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
That's how Maurice and Jaywise came up with Playlist Party.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Once a yeah, but we want to walk with y'all
to the Playet's Party. We do this each and every
Monday right here at the apartment store.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
The first notable people who came were toursts, people who
happened to be in Atlanta that Monday night and found
the flyer on Instagram.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
They were intrigued by the concept.
Speaker 8 (23:39):
Just bringing different people together with a different taste, you know,
because that was not something that you would get a
lot of in Atlanta, like if you went out.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
The nights were very programmed, like.
Speaker 8 (23:47):
Oh, this is the Latin night, this is the rap night,
this is the jazz night, you know, and it's like, no,
these people have varying taste. They probably want to hear
varying kinds of music on a night out.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
But it wasn't long until Reese's connections in the music
industry wanted to get in the mix. Rapper Bob, who
at this point already had several platinum singles, wanted to
host a mixtape release party and then organized Noise. The
production trio and founding members of the Dungeon family wanted
to dig into their vault of unreleased music.
Speaker 8 (24:18):
And this, this andred and three thousand song we just
had laying around. They would play it, you know that
people were trying to put out their phone and record
it out the air.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You know.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
When I was a chick though, because like, we had
hired a Roster Root to be like our DJ and
equipment guy at night, and he's always been up on
like the newest technology, and somehow that man was able
to record that song out of thin air. And I
was like, man, please, don't don't don't do anything with
this file.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Please.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
The calls to host playlist party kept coming, this time
from Ludacris.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
I saw what y'all did with Bob, you know, can
you do the same thing for me.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Ludacris was about to release his first album in five years.
He could have just played his new album from start
to finish and called it a night, but he too
was intrigued by the concept of playlist party.
Speaker 8 (25:06):
Ludacris was like, no, I want to hold the ox
chord and be downstairs with the people and play music
that I like, not just my stuff, you know. So
he was playing you know future, Like, yeah, man, I
like this song. I like this fuck up some common song.
Man like this Redman song is the song that made
me want to start rapping. Here's that song.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Sarah, Department Stores general manager was there for Ludacris's playlist party.
Speaker 7 (25:29):
Too, and of course the stage is packed out. You
can't even fit everybody upstairs. They're like wrapped around the
staircase going all the way down. It's packed and it's hot,
and he just like stopped the music and he was
just like, hey, hey, hey, like this is so special
right here. I want y'all to know y'all the reason
Atlanta is what it is. I think he knew that
there was a lot of young talent in the room
(25:49):
and they were just locked in and just saying, Oh,
it's Ludacris. You know he's He's a legend.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Originally, playlist Party ended at midnight.
Speaker 8 (25:56):
Sharp first song they would play will always be that
mcconne and going up on it Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's how you knew. Oh, playlist Party is over.
Speaker 12 (26:03):
Gotch girl in the cut of Shit Tuesay Club going up,
going up on Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
But Department Stores owner Luis requested that Playlist Party keep
going past midnight. It was right around this time when
the trap hit maker Jeezy called. He was about to
release a new album and wanted to host a playlist
party of his own. J Z's interest in Department Store
was a sign that the venue had quote unquote made it,
but there was a high cost of the hype. Tonight,
(26:39):
Jez pulled up with DJ Drama and Don Cannon aka
the legendary production team behind the Gangster Girls mixtapes.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
The producers Southside.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
And Tmada pulled up too, although Tmada almost didn't make
it upstairs.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
He actually got stuck downstairs.
Speaker 8 (26:55):
It was one of those nights it was like everybody
was there, like people couldn't get up and down the
stage to get to where they needed to be or
wanted to be. And postal testament Amy tmad ain't trying
to get up there, Come get him, Come get him.
He's trying to get up there. If I can't get
down there, like remind you, like this is a small place.
You have to wait for people to move and get
out the way, like you just can't run down the
(27:16):
steps or anything like that. But I remember by the
time I got down there, he was making the most
of it. He had grabbed the ox. Corter's damn self.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Upstairs, Jez premiered his new song God, blasting lyrics about
gold bottles and Rasachi robes to the beer drinking and
cigarette smoking crowd. But it did not matter whether you
(27:43):
saw tm ad a grab the ox downstairs or watched
Gezi get huckled upstairs. When you talk to people who
partied at Department Store, they say, this is the moment
where the scene reached its peak.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
You had industry, but you also had community, and I
see this era was one of the last times where
you saw both of those together simultaneously.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
It's easy for Mareice to feel nostalgic now, But because
he was behind the scenes when Department Store peaked, he
could immediately sense that this was the beginning of the
end for this era. For one thing, Jez wasn't even
the biggest rap star at his own event.
Speaker 8 (28:23):
That night was also the night that Andre three thousand
popped up. You know what I'm saying, because you know,
I started getting text messages from ends and hey, man,
Dre want to come now.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I'm like, all right, cool shit, tell them to come.
Speaker 8 (28:34):
You know, like cool, you know, which do we need
to walk in? It's like the front shit, you know,
so like rad like this is neither one of their
false at all. But like that was one of those
nights where it's like, oh man, this is kind of
turning into this thing to where.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
It's like we got to like make all these And Maurice.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Didn't have such accommodations in mind when he started playlist partying.
But now that music celebrities had the ox and we're
parting past two am as they would at the strip club,
Maurice was tired. He had just gotten married, and so
he was ready to move on. Sarah Kim, Department Stores
general manager, had burned out months before Maurice.
Speaker 7 (29:22):
I think when you're busy like that, even as a bartender,
and used getting hammered from all sides NonStop. It's loud,
it's over stimulating, and you don't have a place to
go and decompress, whether it's to smoke a quick cigarette
or to just get the fuck away from people for
a minute. I think it starts to wear on your psyche.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Louis department storees owner wasn't helping. In fact, he was
stressing her the fuck out.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (29:43):
Something changed.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
I think he bought like a Ferrari or something, a Lamborghini.
I don't know, Maserati, I don't know, he bought some car.
He just started kind of like losing it a little bit,
and I didn't really like that.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
It all came to a head one night.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Sarah usually counted the Knight's earnings and department stores basement
before closing up, but she says that one evening, Louise
turned that makeshift office into his personal VIP section.
Speaker 7 (30:05):
He had a little party going on, and I'm like, dude,
I'm trying to get the fuck out of here. But
it turned into like, hey, can you go upstairs.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
It's like, no, I'm not going upstairs.
Speaker 7 (30:11):
And it turned into this class thing and I'm like,
you needed to have my bag if I'm trying to
clear the downstairs so we can close out, And it
turned into like just come on, and I was like,
you know what, I don't even argue with you about it.
You close them out and you have your party down here.
What's the whole point of having two other floors.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Sarah quit department store in April twenty fifteen, but many
for staff members stayed on. That's how in twenty sixteen
she learned that their paychecks were overdue. Then, one day
that summer, staff had walked up the department store to
find that the locks had changed and a chain was
wrapped around the building. Doctor Dax, graffiti artist and member
(30:46):
of the Dungeon family, called Sarah from Edgewood to relay
what he saw.
Speaker 7 (30:50):
He was just like, dude, He's like I saw everybody.
Everybody's out here, but they're just wandering around in the streets.
It's like almost like you don't even know where to go.
They're just kind of like, so is it going to open?
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Staff try calling Louise, though he didn't pick up. What
they didn't know was that Louis's lease on the department
store building had expired months prior. The bar kept running
as if nothing was wrong, but behind the scenes, he
had filed for bankruptcy, and he used his company bank
account to sign a two year lease on a red Maserati.
(31:19):
Years later, Sarah opened her own bar with much of
the same staff and department store, and while she looked
all over Atlanta, she landed back on Edgewood Avenue, though
the area had changed significantly. In twenty eighteen, two years
after the bar closed, one realtor price the building at
one point three million dollars. That listing touted its excellent location,
(31:43):
but this was before COVID nineteen. The pandemic forced many
of Edgewood's bars and venues to shut down and then
permanently close. Meanwhile, the department store building sat vacant for
seven years. Finally, in twenty twenty three, the area was
making a comeback, especially once the department store building got
a new tenant. On Instagram, Someone Joe Department Store is back.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Not quite.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
It's a record store that still stands today, but its
legacy still lives on. So much of my reporting as
a music journalist keeps leading me back to department store,
starting with how many of the bars breakout artists caught
the attention of influential record labels with mixed results. The
song You Guessed It and its viral success got og
(32:30):
Maco signed to Quality Control Records, the Atlanta based label
that boasted Migos as flagship artists. Father, on the other hand,
felt like big labels were too zeroed in on his
one previous hit.
Speaker 11 (32:46):
Every time I went into like a meeting, they would
just keep focusing on that song, and that would turn
me off immediately. I'd be like, all right, yeah, Like,
we have this cool hit song. How are you gonna
help me push this next album that I'm working on
that's going to be fucking fire.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
They'd be like, but this risk record so big, how
do we make this bigger?
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Meanwhile, Key, the rapper who often gets credited for department
Stores Rise, was seeing the relationships he built run headlong
into record business realities. After og Maco's signed to QC,
the label promoted a version of You Guessed It that leaves.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Out Keys verse ad.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I See It on mine.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Behind the scenes, Key was setting boundaries labels can't profit
off his verses unless he's compensated for them. Key explains,
my shit not free.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I'm looking for my feature check. Niggas is mean that?
Speaker 9 (33:39):
I mean that was That's fine, I'm not jealous with
give him my fifteen thousand.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Fortunately, Key was also becoming a trusted opinion in the
music industry thanks to the robust network he built out
of Department Store. Key now works as a ghostwriter, writing
attention grabbing songs for artists like Juicy Jay and others
he hasn't been able to name, for all, a key
in father's initial struggles with the music industry a decade ago.
(34:04):
If you listen closely to popular music today, you'll hear
Department Store's impact. Jid, who's in the same music collective
as Earth Gang, would remember Department Store in the twenty
twenty five song for.
Speaker 13 (34:16):
Keeps God Damn is bringing Memories Bag When my heart
was sure the all.
Speaker 12 (34:21):
Was pure on talket bag when we was packing that
Department Store would, of course.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
The way Jed tells it, department stores heyday was when
his music was finally able to reach people who were
willing to listen. It was the turning point in his career,
as it would be for so many others like og Maco,
whose song You Guessed It spawned a copycat song from
South Korea called itj Ma Itji. The similarities were so
(34:50):
striking that Ichima's main artist, Keith Ape, agreed to give
oj Maco a cut of his publishing and to further
show how indebted he was to the Atlanta scene, Keith
featured two more Atlanta artists in the remix.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
One of them was Father.
Speaker 11 (35:04):
Lungs Ful Latar and my tongue got my mouth head
out the window.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Yo be seeing me out and she opened her off.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
The strength of this cross cultural exchange, Keith's manager went
on to found eighty eight Rising, the label that produced
the soundtrack to Marvel Shang Chi and The Legend of
the Ten Rings.
Speaker 4 (35:21):
Here's Father.
Speaker 11 (35:22):
That was very necessary, that crossover, because I feel like
that's what got a lot of us over here. It's like, oh,
this works everywhere else as well, and you started seeing
it pop up Black France, German trap and all this
other type of stuff as well.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Around the same time that the world hears Itchy Ma,
the rapper playboy Carti was finding his way into the
music industry, and he too used apartment store as a
testing ground. He remembers bringing Carti there in the first place.
Speaker 9 (35:49):
Carti had a whole week or two where he was
running around with us every day in that bitch Too,
and he wouldn't even performs.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
He'll play new shit and then did.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Carti ended up being the youngest member of Father's Awful Records,
and once Father got a taste for performing a department store,
he decided to go bigger and tour in other cities.
Speaker 11 (36:07):
That's how you get me going on tour and bringing
Carty with me and taking Carty all across the US.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Fast forward a few years later to twenty twenty and
Carti releases his first ever number one album. He looks
back at his career and shouts out keys to follow
Key and made May sixty. Then in twenty twenty five,
Carti comes out with his second number one album. It
spent three weeks total at the top spot, bypassing artists
(36:33):
like Elton John Kenchall Gamar, and Morgan Wallen. Carty may
have never been in that position if it weren't for
artists who made department store their stage make up.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Than's got a pod conversation passing.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
He's the first time I wrote for Pitchfork In twenty fifteen,
I profiled og Maco. After he went viral with you
Guessed It, He and I sat on the floor in
a studio hallway and talked about his career ambitions for hours.
Ten years later, Cardi B shouts him out in her
anticipated sophomore album, am I the Drama.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Pe Old You Me Go, who the badest bitch?
Speaker 8 (37:10):
You guess It?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Though, as you might have guessed from hearing the lyric,
Macca wouldn't live to hear this. In twenty twenty four,
he died from injuries resulting from a self inflicted gunshot wound.
In recent years, critics have wondered whether Atlanta's dominance in
hip hop is diminishing. They've seen how many of the
young stars who emerged from Department Store have died over
(37:35):
the past decade. Bankworldfresh the hot Boy himself linked up
with Jeezy to record the song All There Now, though
he wouldn't live to see its double platinum success. He
was killed in a shootout in twenty sixteen. Macco was
(37:58):
the fourth artist of my career after Takeoff from Migos
for Chimi Kwan and Memphis Transplant. Young dolf who have
seen rise and then die before any of us had
turned forty ten plus years after being called to cover
them as rising artists, I was fielding requests from editors
to write their obituaries. I didn't always say yes, because
(38:20):
that shit hurt. By twenty twenty five, the people we
spoke to from Lando's rap scene had more questions than
answers for how it could possibly recover from all those losses.
The Key is more tuned in with Atlanta's next generation
of artists than most people I meet. That's why he
has zero tolerance for anyone who says there aren't any
(38:40):
worthy artists in the new New Atlanta as it were.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
And I'm like, bro, what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 9 (38:46):
Like you know, it is like like like anisia or
like you know what I'm saying, Even older artists that
I was getting a flowers now.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
For now, though, when the future feels this uncertain, Key
jokes that it's easier to look back in time than forward.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Gonna be seven years old, We're still gonna be having
this conversation.
Speaker 9 (39:02):
Tell me about department store, Tell me about the TEP
how it was back then.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
For real, in Atlanta, a small thing can have a
huge effect because ten years later, department store lives on,
maybe not physically, but most definitely in spirit. And though
it's not around anymore, and we all like to reminisce
about how we used to do it, the next chap
(39:32):
there in the city's legacy is already being rope someplace
somewhere that no one's heard about yet.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
In the final episode of Atlanta is did you catch
how Key was shouting out? Anisia has proved that Atlanta's
music scene is alive and well, she's the first woman
in Atlanta to have her own Gangster Girls mixtape. You'll
meet her and hear from DJ Drama, the originator of
that series out mixtape culture in Atlanta and how after
(40:03):
so much loss, mixtapes are bringing the city back to
its party roots and Atlanta is futuristic nostalgia.
Speaker 5 (40:11):
She's a part of the Atlanta legacy where I'm talking
about how every couple of years like this new breed
of mc of artists bursts onto the scene and creates
this whole new cultural dominance for the city.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Atlanta is the Will Packer Media production in partnership with
iHeart Podcast, Idea, Generation and Complex. This episode was written, reported,
and produced by Christina Lee, with additional production from Maurice
Garland and Jewel Wicker. Our supervisor, producer and editor is
Shiva Baia. Our managing producers are Rose Frulini Bacon, Omari
(40:50):
graham At, Shamara Rochester. Editorial support from Sean Setero and
Jack Irwin. Original theme music by Aman Shota, designed by
Shiva Bayat and Our minds Alta, mixed and mastered by
Our Mind Sahota. Fact checking done by Sean Setero. Clearance
counsel Donison, caliph Perez, Lisa kelf and Jacqueline Schwett. Executive
(41:14):
producers for will Packer Media are Will Packer and Alex Bowden.
Co producer for will Packer Media is Nemi Mohun. Executive
producers for Idea Generation and Complex are Jack Irwin and
Noah Callahan.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Bever Head of talent.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Relations for Complex is Anthony Already. Talent Associate for Complex
is Ryan Houston. Senior attorney for Complex is Jordan Washington.
Special thanks to Tyler Klin, Terry Harrison, Chris Senator, Noams Griffin,
and Candace Howard.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
A big rude piece
Atlanta is and was the shit before the VP's arrived.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
From the meal to motions to the warehouse.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
My generation had influences that most people ain't even talking
about today. These places was crucial. That's setting us on
the path we all had to walk. Every generation got
their own thing. Even superstars were young once they had
to try things out on their own and find out
for their self where they was headed. The seed of
(00:30):
the culture grows from the people who or the saw
that the seed is planted in, becoming something that affects
the entire world just by way of its existence. A
big rule, and Atlanta is a department sto party.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It's September twenty fifteen, a clear night in Atlanta, and
on one street corner in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood stands
a two story brick built with rickety floorboards, one unisex bathroom,
and a crowd packed in so tight on the second
floor you could barely move. Cigarette butts and blun cuts
litter the floor, and the ventilation inside is non existent.
(01:15):
Everyone's facing a makeshift stage what's really just a raised
platform not even a foot above everyone else. They're there
to watch the night's featured performer. Geez, the guy who
turned Atlanta into the trap music capital of the world,
is standing before flashing lights and under cobwebs dangling from
exposed rafters. He's being heckled, saying, I appreciate that I'm
(01:45):
coming out playing this party. By then, the rap star
was damned near A decade into his career, he turned
his hustler's ambition into platinum selling anthems, transforming stories from
the streets into trap music for the masses, but also
for the strip clubs, the place that helped him turn
into a superstar.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
If you've ever.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Seen someone throw money in the air or make it
rain at one of Atlanta's iconic strip clubs, like Magic City,
it's because of Gez. He made it look cool and
like so many Atlanta rappers at the time, he also
used the strip club to break records. But on this
night in twenty fifteen, Jeez isn't roped off in a
section flanked by strippers. He squeezed into a second floor
(02:27):
hot box and heckling aside. He was in awe of
what he saw before him.
Speaker 5 (02:33):
Up in Atlanta A long time, but I think it's
the best shit I've seen in my fucking life radio Bummy,
Let's get it.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's rare to capture a scene's peak moment, but this
recording of Jeez on stage might just be it. And
it was awe happening in a tiny bar known as
Department Store.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
One moment.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I felt like I was there damn near every week,
and sometimes I literally made up my job. I witnessed
how from twenty thirteen to twenty sixteen, it became the
heart of Atlanta's underground rap renaissance and was a launch
pad for the city's current generation of rap superstars and masterminds.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
It's where twenty.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
One Savage performed one of his very first shows. It
was a necessary pit stop for migos and for ambitious
storytellers like Earth Gang and Jid. It's where they claimed
their city before they ran the world. Even Playboycarti, the
biggest face of the current rage rat movement with those
massive arena tours and millions of streams, not to mention
(03:33):
songs with lil Uzi, Vert, Travis Scott and Ye was
that Department Store during the beginning of his career and
for a hot minute, Atlanta's scene veterans like two Chains,
Ludacris and Jeezy stopped by to boost their own reputations
without paying for bottle service. Department Store was the single
spot that reflected the overwhelming diversity of the city's hip
(03:55):
hop scene, and at not even four thousand square feet,
it may have been the small list, but the bar's
lifespan was short. For a moment, the energy felt unstoppable,
and then almost overnight it was gone. This is the
story of that modest bar, which for a split second
was the center of the rap universe. We'll talk to
(04:17):
the game changers who were born out of it.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
You might catch like somebody who would later be one
of the biggest things you've ever seen. I've seen Thug there,
I've seen the Migos there.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
You know what I'm saying. I've seen people that end
up being huge.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
And tell the stories of the stars who broke through
but didn't stay long enough to see all the shine
they'd get.
Speaker 7 (04:31):
That song became like the hit that summer and we're like,
holy shit, that was Bango Fresh in here and yeah,
and then he passed away.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Recipes told you backo he just passed in December.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I'm Christina Lee and this is episode seven of Atlanta
is Department Stores sits on the corner of Boulevard and
Edgewood Avenue. A century ago, this area was a bustling
shopping district and the two story brick building was exactly
what its name suggests, department store. Today you could still
(05:02):
see the white letters spelling Department Store on its exterior.
The business aside is long gone, but the name never left.
Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Junior used to
preach and Senator Raphael Wardock preaches today, is just a
few blocks away, and in twenty fourteen, a resident of
the area like I was, could have partied a department
(05:23):
store on Saturday and walked to church on Sunday.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Very Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
At the time, Edgewood was an up and coming night
life district. There were a growing number of places to
hang out. None served Italian comfort food, and Mother was
a no frills die bar with pickleback shots.
Speaker 4 (05:41):
You also had venues like.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
The Soundtable and Music Room that booked the Hippus DJs,
And then there was Department Store. It was owned by
Luis Carreras, a precautionist with Cuban roots who had an
affinity for live music and so He transformed the historic
building into an intimate, low key bar where you could
enjoy listening to jazz and sip on drum cocktails.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
But that was all about to blow up fast.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
It's like front line, you know what I mean. This
is the best way to do it. And they come out,
they get the network with one another.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
In twenty thirteen, the hip hop festival A three C
came to Edgewood Avenue.
Speaker 8 (06:20):
Three seeds employed in the hip hop community.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
A three C was becoming the rap version of south
By Southwest. From sun up to way past sundown, festival
goers walk the sidewalks and poured into the entire street,
catching Schoolboy Q and Questlove on stages set up between
Edgewood Avenue's historic brick buildings. Mark Cuise Whittaker saw an opportunity.
Speaker 9 (06:43):
We did a show in the backyard of the piece
of shop. This is like somewhere we could take our
music that we just had made.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Marquise, whose artist's name is Key Fatman, Key is an
Atlanta native whose father sold airbrush t shirts.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
During freaknik Key co founded two nine so now was.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Ahead of his time. Bassett, selling Boss said it.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Was an Atlanta rap crew that was the Southern version
of the underground Rap Collectors forming on the East and
West Coast.
Speaker 9 (07:10):
You like Space Ghost, per Asap, Rocky, all of these.
You know, Tyler the creator. But when twenty fourteen came,
we kind of had like a little following, but.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
There was still work to do to raise Key's profile.
A three C was the perfect place, but he wasn't
on the official lineup, So Key and his friend set
up a stage on the grassy lot behind Edward Pizza
to prove that they were superstars in the making. Their
hope was to draw a crowd of their own, gorilla style.
Key rattles off a list of performers from that day,
(07:40):
Me and Man Man Man Man Savage, who worked with
Freddy Gibbs macone before Drake even knew who he was,
and I think twenty one mic for form. Picky Picky
was twenty one Savage's first song, digging Traction in Atlanta.
He was only around twenty one years old when it
came out.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
I so love the fucking picked. A lot of fucking
people showed up.
Speaker 9 (08:02):
Everybody we could think of, like Teeth, like whoever was
hot at that time, like coming up, like producing Wise, EdWay, mafia,
all of them people like they was just random. The
Hajji he was there, we met. There's like six hundred kids.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
One of those kids in the crowd was Sentel Orlando.
Speaker 10 (08:16):
Mangham actually better known as Father.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Father is one of the founding members of Awful Records.
At the time, Awful was actually a loose music collective,
a group of fifteen to twenty friends really who get
together and do weird shit.
Speaker 11 (08:29):
Lighting fires in the backyard and dancing around them and
all kinds of weird shit. Back then, people would be like, oh,
it looks really occult and strange, which is like, nah,
we're just you know, just eccentric, and we like to
burn shit and fuck around a little bit and drink.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Father was about to turn Awful Records into an influential
music label, but for now there he was a Key
Show department store was just across the street. Business was
kind of slow. On nights when the bar was dead,
the owner, Louis would tit the bartender out of his
own pocket. He was determined to make the bar work,
so when Louise heard about the crowd that Key and
(09:05):
his friends drew, he thought he'd introduce himself.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
He was like, y'all could do a show here tonight too.
Speaker 9 (09:10):
I'm like what he like, Yeah, y'all can bring whatever
traffic y'all got and do a show here. So right
after we performed, we'd literally was drunk, all drunk as fuck,
went upstairs and performed another show.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Twenty one Savage performed for this second time that day.
Speaker 9 (09:23):
And he performed this time war songs because now he
got a little more more confidence.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
This was a preview of what was to come, not
just for twenty one Savage and his growing star power,
but for how Department Store would change forever.
Speaker 9 (09:35):
That's really how it happened. Now I'm at this place
all we can.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Alongside Key, there was another person who completely changed the
vibe Department Store.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
I worked at Folly's. I worked at Tea's. I worked
at Shooter's Alley. I worked at Kamal's.
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Twenty one Sarah Kim used to bar tend at a
bunch of strip clubs in the city. She got a
part time gig at Department Store, but soon after she started,
the guy in charge of booking disappeared. The owner asked Sarah.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
To fill in.
Speaker 7 (10:02):
He's like, I'll pay you more, just do it.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
She agreed and turn to the people who she knew
would pick up the phone all those hip hop connections
she made at the Strip club.
Speaker 7 (10:10):
Like somebody, please help me. I don't know what I'm doing,
and they're like, yeah, I got you. Come on, let's
do it.
Speaker 9 (10:16):
A typical night of the Department Store, Sarah giving out
a lot of free drinks. Everybody's coming at night. The
college kids is coming, the older people are coming. You
get a little mix of everybody. You're gonna go home
with someone, so it's a.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Lot of that. It was a hazy time.
Speaker 12 (10:29):
You know.
Speaker 9 (10:29):
The drinks was too fucking cheap. Let's say that, let's
just do that five dollar shots and you get in
a double.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
There was no rules, you know, and it wasn't like a.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
That's old From the Grammy nominated rap group Earth Gangs,
He and his partner in Rhyme While Great are reminiscing
about how bringing their music to Department Store was unlike
anything they'd experienced. They even say that they performed the
first ever rap show.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
At the bar.
Speaker 2 (10:53):
Hey you all this, it was like make have fun.
Get up there and you have to have fun.
Speaker 13 (10:57):
But anything these drunk, rowdy people or they go throw
something at you. I remember going to song we didn't
even know we were going to perform on that. They were like,
just come and sometimes we would not, And then sometimes
they would just bring us to the front and like,
y'all hear okay, y'all go in there.
Speaker 6 (11:08):
Y y'all just goal because it's been seven duds. It's
something that happens almost shakes up.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Well, y'all ready, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Around this time, it was becoming conventional wisdom that strip
clubs ruled the Atlanta music industry. It was where Lil
John could test drive yeah before the song brought crunk
to the suburban masses. The problem was not all songs
were meant to be strip club anthems. Plus in order
to get your song played, it was custom to tip
the DJ Handsomely. Father, the head of Awful Records, remembers
(11:43):
when he took a song to the strip club follies,
but it never.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Took off musically.
Speaker 11 (11:47):
The thing in the city was always kind of like
the Bigger Trap scenes, Migos, Future Freeman, like that type
of shit, Geezy Gucci, big names. So I never really
thought we would ever appeal to any crowd out here.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So Father focused more on building awful records online where
he could go beyond the city limits of Atlanta. Around
this time, SoundCloud was an appealing option for up and
coming artists with a much lower barrier to entry into
the music scene. They could break the rules, dropping songs
as quickly as they could make them. A huge split
from the way major labels had artists wait years to
(12:26):
release a full body of work, but those same artists
still needed a guaranteed way to connect with future fans
in their hometown. They needed an i ral testing ground
that wasn't the strip club. That is where Department Store
came in. With an open calendar, Key Father and their
friends could showcase their new music as soon as they
recorded and bring in a crowd to match the online hype.
(12:49):
Outside of anything made by Future, some of those songs
became the biggest Atlanta rap anthems of the year twenty fourteen.
There was Tuesday by I Love Mconan, a woozy ballot
that was reportedly inspired by a DJ night at Department Store.
Speaker 12 (13:03):
Club Going up on a Tuesday, got your Girl in
the Tuesday Club.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
At the time, Drake was a kingmaker in Atlanta rap
for artists like Two Chains and Migos, A Drake Verse
was the fast track to first time radio airplay and
mainstream attention. But for I Love Maconan, not only did
Drake remix Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
And went on putting working on a wakeday.
Speaker 4 (13:29):
He gave him a record deal.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
I look back on this bang. How had.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
You also had song of the Summer contenders like OJ
Maco's you Guessed It, You Guess It and look at
Risk by father of Macon' Riss. Both of those songs
featured key. They demanded mosh pits with the barrass of essentials,
knocking rhythms and punchlines like he would shout.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
Okay, I heard my fucking China chest on your fish.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
I hurt my fucking risk doing doing a cent of
six niggas will make songs literally to run there.
Speaker 9 (14:08):
Back in the day, we did that at like the
clubs like got obsessions are like Magic City, will make
a song and run to the club.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
But now we ain't got to pay, so fuck going
to that club. We on edge would.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Department Store was originally supposed to be a live jazz
and funk bar that served from Punch, but it quickly
turned into Atlantis ground zero for the next generation of
rap that sold PBRs and five dollars well whiskey shots.
Stephen Dingle, or as the homies call him, Steve O,
had been going to a department store with his friend
(14:42):
since damn near day one.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Like I still have the picture of us sitting there.
It's like six of us.
Speaker 14 (14:47):
We sit on the couch, two people at the bar
and you know, you know the bartender, heavy shots, five
doll It was cheap whenever, like we want to take
girls there.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
It was like, we know a spot.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
But as Atlanta's post outcast rap scene found its way
to Steve O's date night spot, department stores owner Luis
had no choice but to open the bars second floor.
Steve O remembers that day as if it was the
moon landing.
Speaker 14 (15:07):
He was like, Okay, it's getting too crazy in here.
Only maybe one hundred and fiftywo hundred people can fit
down here. I gotta create the upstairs. So when he
made the upstairs and opened it, we were just like,
what is this. Like we didn't even know you had
an upstairs because it was only like two steps in
the left corner behind the DJ and then you turn
right and it's a whole fighter stairs.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
We didn't even know that was back there.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
That second stage met a second platform to showcase Atlanta's
new talent.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
This putted well for STEVEO.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
He was a music manager and Atlanta's next buzzy rapper
wanted to work with him. Og Maco lived on Edgewood
Avenue and a Victorian style house painted skyblue. He went
to Georgia State University, barely a mile away. By the
time he met STEVEO. His music had taken off on
campus through word of mouth, but as an unsigned artist,
(15:52):
og Maco needed to extend his reach. His music didn't
neatly slot in with what was going on in Atlanta
radio at the time. Imagine someone who was as inspired
by Black Sabbath as he was Kid Cuddy, whose voice
always sounded like it was on the verge of giving out.
(16:13):
His default ablett was fucking fuck and fuck m yeah. Yeah,
though you just have to hear it from Ogi Maco himself.
None of this intimidated Steve O. He signed up to
manage Ogi Maco because he knew there was room in
Atlanta's rap scene for this sound, and he knew how
(16:34):
to make the world take notice. In twenty eleven, Steveo
started contributing to greedmont Park, an Atlanta music blog that
focused on the underground rap scene. Whenever the blog through
shows or parties, they'd post photos to Instagram and Twitter. Crucially,
they'd add the hashtag New Atlanta. That phrase became so
popular that when Migos linked up with young thug Rich
(16:56):
Homi Kwan and Jermaine Duprie to revamp the song Welcome
to Atlanta, they called it Knew Atlanta.
Speaker 14 (17:03):
Welcome because we want people to know, like the Harlem
Renaissance was a collective of creatives, so whenever it was
like more than three people together, it was like, we
got to make sure to tag New Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Steve O was just as savvy when it came to
being a manager. He knew that if he wanted to
break og Macco as an artist, heading to department store
was the next logical step. Og Maco had a song
where he teamed up a key called you Guessed.
Speaker 12 (17:31):
It Bits, You Guess It Steal Coming Tess.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Steve O handed off that record to a DJ at
Department Store to play during his sets. Whenever he spotted
someone in the crowd who vibed with it. He'd walk
up to them and say.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Y'all just tweet it, but you guess it, that's all
you need to tweet.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
He was trying to get you guessed it to go viral,
and Department Store was the perfect place to start.
Speaker 14 (17:56):
And that's how it kind of got bubbling in the
scene in Atlanta, like that was saying from Edgewood to
East Atlanta Village.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
And then after a while it just it spread like wildfire.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
And it went beyond Atlanta, turning into a meme on vine.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
A social media predecessor to TikTok.
Speaker 12 (18:12):
Maybe you remember my birthday thirty first you guessed it?
Speaker 14 (18:16):
I wish I could like you trying to understand my
timeline was like did you guess it? But you guessed it?
Somebody like what is b You guessed it? And I'll
just be like got them.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Department Store kept developing as an incubator for talent.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
My name is Sa I'm from Hot Point, North Carolina.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
Is said is two Chainses tour DJ.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I love music. I love to break music. I love
to break artists.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Specifically, he and Sarah launched a monthly producer showcase where
a little known producer named Buddha Blast linked up with
Two Chains to make the song Big Amount featuring Drake,
a collaboration that has since gone platinum, and so Esaid
witnessed how Department Store could put people on. In twenty fifteen,
(18:59):
the song Hopped Boy was booming from car speakers across
the city and on its way to eighteen million views
on YouTube. It was by the city's best new trap artists,
Bankworld Fresh from Atlanta's West Side.
Speaker 2 (19:10):
Gone Dude looking like a dough dealer hangs down. Nine
of y'all brought out and trust back when.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
We post, he said, knew that a live performance at
Department Store would show that Bankworldfresh had more to offer
than a hot song.
Speaker 10 (19:22):
I'm having media from Tennessee Club. I'm having my friends
that I just met in Alabama a year ago. We're
making this shit seem larger than life. And when you
get there, it's a damn small ass bar. But it's like, Oh,
he's promote Initiatate like this sea damn Coyliseum.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
You know.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
Two Chance himself was in the building.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Security snuck him in through his side door, but the
fanfare was still too much for him to handle. Here's
Sarah department store is general manager.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
In one of my security guards like has his phone
and the flashes on as two chainses walking in the door.
He's like this, two chains fucking slaps that shit out
of his fucking hand, and I was like, what the
fuck and then said was like, he has bad eyes.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Here's the thing, this story about bankworl Fresh could have
easily taken place at one of Atlanta's posture nightclubs or
strip clubs, the sort of places whereas trop music elders
like Jeez built their careers. Instead, those taste makers from
the nightclubs and strip clubs had migrated to department Store.
Speaker 10 (20:20):
This is where the music is being broken. This is
where fat Man Key is coming and dropping new shit.
This is where fucking Atlanta is.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
You know, it is a staple.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Unfortunately, Department Store wouldn't be a stable for much longer.
The bar would see its biggest stars yet and then
it shut down. Let's recap so far, we've been talking
about artists who were on the rise from Key to Earth,
Gang and Bankwel Fresh, but it wasn't long until people
who were already certified superstars showed up to Department Store too.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I'm in one night we was there.
Speaker 6 (20:54):
I never forget Missy Elliott was there, and I was like,
why is Missy Elliott before the environment?
Speaker 7 (20:57):
As I believe, Andre three thousand came for like weeks
on end for this Sunday show to just come and watch.
Speaker 14 (21:03):
I saw Jez got the carwalkie in like so, but
like when artists like that started coming, it was a
stamp that Edgwood was a market that like, you could
come here and kill it.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Everyone agrees that industry veterans like Missy Elliott, Jez and
Andre three thousand boosted department stores profile, but at the
same time, there was also this feeling that the presence
of these big names in this old ass building messed
with the bars. Anything goes five. To get to the
bottom of this, I needed to talk to an important source.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
My name is Maurice Garland.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Maurice is a co producer and co host on this
very show.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
I've been writing about Atlanta Stiff for a long time.
Speaker 4 (21:41):
He is being modest.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
You're talking about someone who was a college radio host
turned intern at Hot ninety seven to five, Atlanta's first
twenty four hour rap radio station. Fast forward to around
twenty fourteen, he knew Maurice not just for his bylines,
but for the events he'd host around and even outside
the city.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Big Boy Concerts.
Speaker 8 (22:02):
I hosted Kendrick Lamar's first to Atlanta shows. I hosted
Travis scott first ever show in New York. It was
at the CMJ Festival. And I remember the flyer because
his name was in big letters with his face, and
I always trip out on the flyer because one of
the opening acts, his name was small as hell at
(22:22):
the bottom.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Could hardly read it, and it was like Chance the Rapper,
you know.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
In summer twenty thirteen, Maurice went to department store for
the first time. He needed to pick up some footage
from a videographer named Jay Wise and was told to
meet there.
Speaker 8 (22:39):
I remember going inside and it was like, wow, this
is nice, Like what is this because it was kind
of shaped like a shotgun house. There was a bar
on the left, random couches and random seating. Was very
just much a you know, open space, exposed brick wall,
you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (22:54):
Then Louis, the owner, came out, and.
Speaker 8 (22:56):
Then you know, he just started talking, Man, I need
a Monday night, Man, I need some happen on Monday nights.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
You know, my Monday nights are kind of slow, and
for some reason, I was like, man, what if we
just had this party where people just play what they won't?
Speaker 8 (23:08):
You know, because it was like kind of in that
era of you know, people having little past the Ox
parties at their house and things like that.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
You'd be on somebody's patio, you know, at the kickback, hey.
Speaker 8 (23:17):
Passed the Ox and I was like, man, what if
we just had this party where people just come in
and do that.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
That's how Maurice and Jaywise came up with Playlist Party.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
Once a yeah, but we want to walk with y'all
to the Playet's Party. We do this each and every
Monday right here at the apartment store.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
The first notable people who came were toursts, people who
happened to be in Atlanta that Monday night and found
the flyer on Instagram.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
They were intrigued by the concept.
Speaker 8 (23:39):
Just bringing different people together with a different taste, you know,
because that was not something that you would get a
lot of in Atlanta, like if you went out.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
The nights were very programmed, like.
Speaker 8 (23:47):
Oh, this is the Latin night, this is the rap night,
this is the jazz night, you know, and it's like, no,
these people have varying taste. They probably want to hear
varying kinds of music on a night out.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
But it wasn't long until Reese's connections in the music
industry wanted to get in the mix. Rapper Bob, who
at this point already had several platinum singles, wanted to
host a mixtape release party and then organized Noise. The
production trio and founding members of the Dungeon family wanted
to dig into their vault of unreleased music.
Speaker 8 (24:18):
And this, this andred and three thousand song we just
had laying around. They would play it, you know that
people were trying to put out their phone and record
it out the air.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
You know.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
When I was a chick though, because like, we had
hired a Roster Root to be like our DJ and
equipment guy at night, and he's always been up on
like the newest technology, and somehow that man was able
to record that song out of thin air. And I
was like, man, please, don't don't don't do anything with
this file.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Please.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
The calls to host playlist party kept coming, this time
from Ludacris.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
I saw what y'all did with Bob, you know, can
you do the same thing for me.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Ludacris was about to release his first album in five years.
He could have just played his new album from start
to finish and called it a night, but he too
was intrigued by the concept of playlist party.
Speaker 8 (25:06):
Ludacris was like, no, I want to hold the ox
chord and be downstairs with the people and play music
that I like, not just my stuff, you know. So
he was playing you know future, Like, yeah, man, I
like this song. I like this fuck up some common song.
Man like this Redman song is the song that made
me want to start rapping. Here's that song.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Sarah, Department Stores general manager was there for Ludacris's playlist party.
Speaker 7 (25:29):
Too, and of course the stage is packed out. You
can't even fit everybody upstairs. They're like wrapped around the
staircase going all the way down. It's packed and it's hot,
and he just like stopped the music and he was
just like, hey, hey, hey, like this is so special
right here. I want y'all to know y'all the reason
Atlanta is what it is. I think he knew that
there was a lot of young talent in the room
(25:49):
and they were just locked in and just saying, Oh,
it's Ludacris. You know he's He's a legend.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Originally, playlist Party ended at midnight.
Speaker 8 (25:56):
Sharp first song they would play will always be that
mcconne and going up on it Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
That's how you knew. Oh, playlist Party is over.
Speaker 12 (26:03):
Gotch girl in the cut of Shit Tuesay Club going up,
going up on Tuesday.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
But Department Stores owner Luis requested that Playlist Party keep
going past midnight. It was right around this time when
the trap hit maker Jeezy called. He was about to
release a new album and wanted to host a playlist
party of his own. J Z's interest in Department Store
was a sign that the venue had quote unquote made it,
but there was a high cost of the hype. Tonight,
(26:39):
Jez pulled up with DJ Drama and Don Cannon aka
the legendary production team behind the Gangster Girls mixtapes.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
The producers Southside.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
And Tmada pulled up too, although Tmada almost didn't make
it upstairs.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
He actually got stuck downstairs.
Speaker 8 (26:55):
It was one of those nights it was like everybody
was there, like people couldn't get up and down the
stage to get to where they needed to be or
wanted to be. And postal testament Amy tmad ain't trying
to get up there, Come get him, Come get him.
He's trying to get up there. If I can't get
down there, like remind you, like this is a small place.
You have to wait for people to move and get
out the way, like you just can't run down the
(27:16):
steps or anything like that. But I remember by the
time I got down there, he was making the most
of it. He had grabbed the ox. Corter's damn self.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Upstairs, Jez premiered his new song God, blasting lyrics about
gold bottles and Rasachi robes to the beer drinking and
cigarette smoking crowd. But it did not matter whether you
(27:43):
saw tm ad a grab the ox downstairs or watched
Gezi get huckled upstairs. When you talk to people who
partied at Department Store, they say, this is the moment
where the scene reached its peak.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
You had industry, but you also had community, and I
see this era was one of the last times where
you saw both of those together simultaneously.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
It's easy for Mareice to feel nostalgic now, But because
he was behind the scenes when Department Store peaked, he
could immediately sense that this was the beginning of the
end for this era. For one thing, Jez wasn't even
the biggest rap star at his own event.
Speaker 8 (28:23):
That night was also the night that Andre three thousand
popped up. You know what I'm saying, because you know,
I started getting text messages from ends and hey, man,
Dre want to come now.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I'm like, all right, cool shit, tell them to come.
Speaker 8 (28:34):
You know, like cool, you know, which do we need
to walk in? It's like the front shit, you know,
so like rad like this is neither one of their
false at all. But like that was one of those
nights where it's like, oh man, this is kind of
turning into this thing to where.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
It's like we got to like make all these And Maurice.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Didn't have such accommodations in mind when he started playlist partying.
But now that music celebrities had the ox and we're
parting past two am as they would at the strip club,
Maurice was tired. He had just gotten married, and so
he was ready to move on. Sarah Kim, Department Stores
general manager, had burned out months before Maurice.
Speaker 7 (29:22):
I think when you're busy like that, even as a bartender,
and used getting hammered from all sides NonStop. It's loud,
it's over stimulating, and you don't have a place to
go and decompress, whether it's to smoke a quick cigarette
or to just get the fuck away from people for
a minute. I think it starts to wear on your psyche.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Louis department storees owner wasn't helping. In fact, he was
stressing her the fuck out.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (29:43):
Something changed.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (29:45):
I think he bought like a Ferrari or something, a Lamborghini.
I don't know, Maserati, I don't know, he bought some car.
He just started kind of like losing it a little bit,
and I didn't really like that.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
It all came to a head one night.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
Sarah usually counted the Knight's earnings and department stores basement
before closing up, but she says that one evening, Louise
turned that makeshift office into his personal VIP section.
Speaker 7 (30:05):
He had a little party going on, and I'm like, dude,
I'm trying to get the fuck out of here. But
it turned into like, hey, can you go upstairs.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
It's like, no, I'm not going upstairs.
Speaker 7 (30:11):
And it turned into this class thing and I'm like,
you needed to have my bag if I'm trying to
clear the downstairs so we can close out, And it
turned into like just come on, and I was like,
you know what, I don't even argue with you about it.
You close them out and you have your party down here.
What's the whole point of having two other floors.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Sarah quit department store in April twenty fifteen, but many
for staff members stayed on. That's how in twenty sixteen
she learned that their paychecks were overdue. Then, one day
that summer, staff had walked up the department store to
find that the locks had changed and a chain was
wrapped around the building. Doctor Dax, graffiti artist and member
(30:46):
of the Dungeon family, called Sarah from Edgewood to relay
what he saw.
Speaker 7 (30:50):
He was just like, dude, He's like I saw everybody.
Everybody's out here, but they're just wandering around in the streets.
It's like almost like you don't even know where to go.
They're just kind of like, so is it going to open?
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Staff try calling Louise, though he didn't pick up. What
they didn't know was that Louis's lease on the department
store building had expired months prior. The bar kept running
as if nothing was wrong, but behind the scenes, he
had filed for bankruptcy, and he used his company bank
account to sign a two year lease on a red Maserati.
(31:19):
Years later, Sarah opened her own bar with much of
the same staff and department store, and while she looked
all over Atlanta, she landed back on Edgewood Avenue, though
the area had changed significantly. In twenty eighteen, two years
after the bar closed, one realtor price the building at
one point three million dollars. That listing touted its excellent location,
(31:43):
but this was before COVID nineteen. The pandemic forced many
of Edgewood's bars and venues to shut down and then
permanently close. Meanwhile, the department store building sat vacant for
seven years. Finally, in twenty twenty three, the area was
making a comeback, especially once the department store building got
a new tenant. On Instagram, Someone Joe Department Store is back.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
Not quite.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
It's a record store that still stands today, but its
legacy still lives on. So much of my reporting as
a music journalist keeps leading me back to department store,
starting with how many of the bars breakout artists caught
the attention of influential record labels with mixed results. The
song You Guessed It and its viral success got og
(32:30):
Maco signed to Quality Control Records, the Atlanta based label
that boasted Migos as flagship artists. Father, on the other hand,
felt like big labels were too zeroed in on his
one previous hit.
Speaker 11 (32:46):
Every time I went into like a meeting, they would
just keep focusing on that song, and that would turn
me off immediately. I'd be like, all right, yeah, Like,
we have this cool hit song. How are you gonna
help me push this next album that I'm working on
that's going to be fucking fire.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
They'd be like, but this risk record so big, how
do we make this bigger?
Speaker 3 (33:06):
Meanwhile, Key, the rapper who often gets credited for department
Stores Rise, was seeing the relationships he built run headlong
into record business realities. After og Maco's signed to QC,
the label promoted a version of You Guessed It that leaves.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
Out Keys verse ad.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
I See It on mine.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
Behind the scenes, Key was setting boundaries labels can't profit
off his verses unless he's compensated for them. Key explains,
my shit not free.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
I'm looking for my feature check. Niggas is mean that?
Speaker 9 (33:39):
I mean that was That's fine, I'm not jealous with
give him my fifteen thousand.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Fortunately, Key was also becoming a trusted opinion in the
music industry thanks to the robust network he built out
of Department Store. Key now works as a ghostwriter, writing
attention grabbing songs for artists like Juicy Jay and others
he hasn't been able to name, for all, a key
in father's initial struggles with the music industry a decade ago.
(34:04):
If you listen closely to popular music today, you'll hear
Department Store's impact. Jid, who's in the same music collective
as Earth Gang, would remember Department Store in the twenty
twenty five song for.
Speaker 13 (34:16):
Keeps God Damn is bringing Memories Bag When my heart
was sure the all.
Speaker 12 (34:21):
Was pure on talket bag when we was packing that
Department Store would, of course.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
The way Jed tells it, department stores heyday was when
his music was finally able to reach people who were
willing to listen. It was the turning point in his career,
as it would be for so many others like og Maco,
whose song You Guessed It spawned a copycat song from
South Korea called itj Ma Itji. The similarities were so
(34:50):
striking that Ichima's main artist, Keith Ape, agreed to give
oj Maco a cut of his publishing and to further
show how indebted he was to the Atlanta scene, Keith
featured two more Atlanta artists in the remix.
Speaker 4 (35:03):
One of them was Father.
Speaker 11 (35:04):
Lungs Ful Latar and my tongue got my mouth head
out the window.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Yo be seeing me out and she opened her off.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
The strength of this cross cultural exchange, Keith's manager went
on to found eighty eight Rising, the label that produced
the soundtrack to Marvel Shang Chi and The Legend of
the Ten Rings.
Speaker 4 (35:21):
Here's Father.
Speaker 11 (35:22):
That was very necessary, that crossover, because I feel like
that's what got a lot of us over here. It's like, oh,
this works everywhere else as well, and you started seeing
it pop up Black France, German trap and all this
other type of stuff as well.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Around the same time that the world hears Itchy Ma,
the rapper playboy Carti was finding his way into the
music industry, and he too used apartment store as a
testing ground. He remembers bringing Carti there in the first place.
Speaker 9 (35:49):
Carti had a whole week or two where he was
running around with us every day in that bitch Too,
and he wouldn't even performs.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
He'll play new shit and then did.
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Carti ended up being the youngest member of Father's Awful Records,
and once Father got a taste for performing a department store,
he decided to go bigger and tour in other cities.
Speaker 11 (36:07):
That's how you get me going on tour and bringing
Carty with me and taking Carty all across the US.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
Fast forward a few years later to twenty twenty and
Carti releases his first ever number one album. He looks
back at his career and shouts out keys to follow
Key and made May sixty. Then in twenty twenty five,
Carti comes out with his second number one album. It
spent three weeks total at the top spot, bypassing artists
(36:33):
like Elton John Kenchall Gamar, and Morgan Wallen. Carty may
have never been in that position if it weren't for
artists who made department store their stage make up.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Than's got a pod conversation passing.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
He's the first time I wrote for Pitchfork In twenty fifteen,
I profiled og Maco. After he went viral with you
Guessed It, He and I sat on the floor in
a studio hallway and talked about his career ambitions for hours.
Ten years later, Cardi B shouts him out in her
anticipated sophomore album, am I the Drama.
Speaker 4 (37:07):
Pe Old You Me Go, who the badest bitch?
Speaker 8 (37:10):
You guess It?
Speaker 3 (37:12):
Though, as you might have guessed from hearing the lyric,
Macca wouldn't live to hear this. In twenty twenty four,
he died from injuries resulting from a self inflicted gunshot wound.
In recent years, critics have wondered whether Atlanta's dominance in
hip hop is diminishing. They've seen how many of the
young stars who emerged from Department Store have died over
(37:35):
the past decade. Bankworldfresh the hot Boy himself linked up
with Jeezy to record the song All There Now, though
he wouldn't live to see its double platinum success. He
was killed in a shootout in twenty sixteen. Macco was
(37:58):
the fourth artist of my career after Takeoff from Migos
for Chimi Kwan and Memphis Transplant. Young dolf who have
seen rise and then die before any of us had
turned forty ten plus years after being called to cover
them as rising artists, I was fielding requests from editors
to write their obituaries. I didn't always say yes, because
(38:20):
that shit hurt. By twenty twenty five, the people we
spoke to from Lando's rap scene had more questions than
answers for how it could possibly recover from all those losses.
The Key is more tuned in with Atlanta's next generation
of artists than most people I meet. That's why he
has zero tolerance for anyone who says there aren't any
(38:40):
worthy artists in the new New Atlanta as it were.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
And I'm like, bro, what the fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 9 (38:46):
Like you know, it is like like like anisia or
like you know what I'm saying, Even older artists that
I was getting a flowers now.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
For now, though, when the future feels this uncertain, Key
jokes that it's easier to look back in time than forward.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Gonna be seven years old, We're still gonna be having
this conversation.
Speaker 9 (39:02):
Tell me about department store, Tell me about the TEP
how it was back then.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
For real, in Atlanta, a small thing can have a
huge effect because ten years later, department store lives on,
maybe not physically, but most definitely in spirit. And though
it's not around anymore, and we all like to reminisce
about how we used to do it, the next chap
(39:32):
there in the city's legacy is already being rope someplace
somewhere that no one's heard about yet.
Speaker 3 (39:42):
In the final episode of Atlanta is did you catch
how Key was shouting out? Anisia has proved that Atlanta's
music scene is alive and well, she's the first woman
in Atlanta to have her own Gangster Girls mixtape. You'll
meet her and hear from DJ Drama, the originator of
that series out mixtape culture in Atlanta and how after
(40:03):
so much loss, mixtapes are bringing the city back to
its party roots and Atlanta is futuristic nostalgia.
Speaker 5 (40:11):
She's a part of the Atlanta legacy where I'm talking
about how every couple of years like this new breed
of mc of artists bursts onto the scene and creates
this whole new cultural dominance for the city.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
Atlanta is the Will Packer Media production in partnership with
iHeart Podcast, Idea, Generation and Complex. This episode was written, reported,
and produced by Christina Lee, with additional production from Maurice
Garland and Jewel Wicker. Our supervisor, producer and editor is
Shiva Baia. Our managing producers are Rose Frulini Bacon, Omari
(40:50):
graham At, Shamara Rochester. Editorial support from Sean Setero and
Jack Irwin. Original theme music by Aman Shota, designed by
Shiva Bayat and Our minds Alta, mixed and mastered by
Our Mind Sahota. Fact checking done by Sean Setero. Clearance
counsel Donison, caliph Perez, Lisa kelf and Jacqueline Schwett. Executive
(41:14):
producers for will Packer Media are Will Packer and Alex Bowden.
Co producer for will Packer Media is Nemi Mohun. Executive
producers for Idea Generation and Complex are Jack Irwin and
Noah Callahan.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
Bever Head of talent.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
Relations for Complex is Anthony Already. Talent Associate for Complex
is Ryan Houston. Senior attorney for Complex is Jordan Washington.
Special thanks to Tyler Klin, Terry Harrison, Chris Senator, Noams Griffin,
and Candace Howard.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
A big rude piece
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