I’m down south this month, mostly chilling at home in NC. However this week I’m traveling the highways and “It’s the South Y’all- ways” of GA, SC, and North Florida (which might as well be Georgia, culturally speaking) noting a few delicious and peculiar details:
Every Southern hip hop radio station is obsessed with “Chopped and Screwed” by T Pain and Ludacris. Rightfully so because it is truly an exemplary track of the art of, well, chopping and screwing (take that Texas/UGK/Paul Wall.)
The Bible Belt in the new south means people read the bible in hip coffee shops. And are not embarrassed to do a bible photo op.
There is a Heckscher Drive (like kosher symbol) in Jacksonville Florida.
Shemspeed is an independent recording label and promotional agency highlighting cross-over music artists with positive and unifying messages. Founded by Erez Safar, an American-Israeli DJ/Producer, Shemspeed promotes over 15 dynamic artists representing a wide range of genres including hip-hop, reggae, and rock. These artists include Y-Love (revolutionary Jewish hip-hop), Diwon (Yemenite / Sephardic hip-hop, Israeli music and more), DeScribe (soul-awakening dancehall, hip-hop, & soul), and Electro Morocco (Israeli rock, dance music.) Shemspeed artists, collectively showcasing the diversity in world Jewish music, have performed with musicians as varied as Snoop Dogg, Lou Reed, Idan Raichel and Eminem; they’ve been profiled in Rolling Stone, SPIN, The New York Times and XXL; and they’ve been seen and heard around the world on various TV appearances (Conan O’Brien, CBS and BBC World) and global radio. Shemspeed’s mission is unifying people through culture and education, celebrating diversity and common ground. By way of this work, we add a public Jewish voice to multi-cultural, inter-faith, creative and collaborative bridge-building.
Dude with his bible in Athens, GA
