The South Got Something to Say
Seen at the 2024 Atlanta Film Festival
Documentaries allow us to get a window into lives, environments and ideas we may not be as familiar with as we want to be. Watching The Horne Brothers’s “The South Got Something to Say,” a documentary made for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to look at the history of hip hop in Atlanta. I’ve known for a long time how important hip hop is to the city, but what this film does is show just how significant Atlanta-based artists are to the genre as a whole. The title is taken from when Outkast won at the 1995 Source Music awards, and Andre 3000 said, “the South got something to say,” at a time when most people were focused on East Coast vs. West Coast. From that night forward, hip hop has gone as Atlanta has gone, and I love that this is available for the world to see.
One of the most interesting aspects of this film as we hear the likes of Jermaine Dupri and Dallas Austin and Goodie Mob and Speech from Arrested Development and many others talk is how Atlanta artists do not see themselves in competition with one another, but as collaborators in the same way as members of a community are. There’s no doubt elements of that in other collectives of artists- be it East Coast or West Coast hip hop, or Seattle grunge, to use another example- but many of the people here look at whom might otherwise be rivals for fans as fellow ambassadors for a city, and there is something- I have found- distinctly Atlantan in that, whether you’re looking at the music or film industries. It’s not about competing but being a voice for the city, and that’s something I’ve definitely felt over the past few years.
As befitting a documentary produced by a newspaper, “The South Got Something to Say” is more a journalistic enterprise than doing something different on a stylistic level the way some documentaries would. It does break up the film into four parts, and four different chapters of looking at Atlanta hip hop history, with creative title cards, but this is about informing the public, and giving these artists their due. I enjoyed the way some of the participants shared their stories, and how some of their stories interlap in a way that feels like the conversation is continuous, even if they don’t share the same room. It’s a choice that feeds into the sense of community between everyone in this film, from former mayors to producers and artists to writers and historians. This is a film that embraces the whole without letting one voice speak for all. That is family, and that was one of the many things I’ll take away from this film, as well as some more music to discover.
