- MAJOR LEAGUE ROOKIE: Baby D, just signed to the Epic label, handles the merchandise at Big Oomp headquarters.
Big Oomp's small, modest office is located upstairs in a two-story duplex near the Atlanta University Center. It's outfitted with the basics: computers, a fax machine and overnight shipping supplies. If it weren't for the gold plaques lining the walls of the small quarters, it could easily be the office for an insurance company or a small-time lawyer.
On this day, the office is buzzing with energy. Big Oomp and his team are clearly in a state of transition, professionally and philosophically, as they prepare to put their recipe for regional success to the test on a national scale. Finally, it seems, Big Oomp and his camp are being taken seriously. They're no longer the overlooked stepchildren of Atlanta's music industry.
Baby D saunters through the door and takes a seat. His slender frame slouches at the conference table as he calmly takes in the activity swirling about the room. Except for an occasional smile, his youthful face is expressionless. He doesn't seem to have a care in the world, not even about how he, an artist known for his Southern-style rap, will be received nationally.
"The South is blowing up," he says, "from Lil Jon to Pastor Troy to T.I. to Archie. The South is being looked at right now as the new thing for 2003 and for the next four or five years. Right now I feel like I'm beginning to become a part of the new revolution."
A new revolution may be a bit of an overstatement. Atlanta clearly doesn't have the star power it boasted a few years ago, but the city remains on the music industry's radar. Baby D and his colleagues embrace a style called "crunk" -- super-charged beats, bold lyrics and aggressive, somewhat exaggerated vocal delivery. Their sound is a little rough around the edges, not as slick and sophisticated as the stuff that comes from some of the city's more well-known artists. But now it seems underground acts like Baby D, Pastor Troy and Lil Jon are the ones getting noticed -- a sign that fans may be ready for a little less polish in their hip-hop.
When the music industry considers the icons of the dirty South, the names most often mentioned are rappers like OutKast and Ludacris, and producers like Jermaine Dupri and Jazze Pha. They're the ones who have placed Atlanta on the proverbial hip-hop map. They've sold millions of records individually and collectively, and they've skillfully managed to extend their celebrity beyond the city limits of Atlanta and above the Mason-Dixon line. But venture deep into the heart of southwest Atlanta and ask the locals whose music they're bumping and they just might say Baby D. Ask them who's the king of hip-hop in Atlanta, and they'll probably say Big Oomp.
Big Oomp, Baby D and their following are practically legendary in certain circles south of the city. Since 1997, the camp has been recording, releasing and selling music conceived, birthed and raised in the 'hoods of Atlanta, and it is there that this music has found its success. But those who are not privy to Atlanta's underground hip-hop scene may not be all that familiar with Big Oomp and his platinum-wearing posse of down-home Georgia boys. This is not the kind of music manufactured in fancy, state-of-the-art Midtown studios with the aid of celebrated producers. These are not the kind of artists whose faces are plastered on the covers of magazines. In short, Big Oomp has earned success the grassroots way -- by grinding in the streets and the clubs, depending on word-of-mouth instead of a public relations machine to get the word out.
The tiny seedlings that would someday be the foundation of Big Oomp Records were sown in 1990 when Big Oomp started selling mix tapes by DJ Jelly and MC Assault at flea market booths around the city. In fact, it was a flea market booth in Old National Discount Mall that became the first Big Oomp Records store in 1991. Another booth followed at Greenbriar Discount Mall some eight months later. But Big Oomp wasn't without competition.
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