Regional vs. National Tastes in Hip-hop

I have spent the summer reading a few books on Southern Hip-Hop, including Roni Sarig's Third Coast and Ali Neff's Let the World Listen Right. Last spring, I got a chance to read some books about West Coast style too. One thing that comes out in those books is the intense regionality of hip-hop and how local sounds shaped artists in particular places. None of this will be surprising to hip-hop fans. It is interesting to see how scholars and writers mimic this regional debate as Sarig and Neff spend considerable time defending Southern hip-hop to show that hip-hop has always been deeply connected to the South via rapping and other vernacular practices and how crunk has come to dominate hip-hop in the last decade.

My own journey in hip-hop started out pretty traditionally with an East Coast bias in the 1980s and 1990s (while living in Chicago) and then slowly shifting toward a more academic approach as my research into hip-hop required me to listen more broadly than ever before. While hip-hop itself has "always" been a way for folks to articulate regional/local identities, I realize that this has not been my situation or my interaction with hip-hop. Listening to hip-hop has never been a local or regional affair for me. As a result, I guess I am less interested in reading or arguing about the origins of hip-hop or deciding which region is more authentic or better. Rather, I am curious about how scholars can usefully approach these dividing lines. The first waves of hip-hop scholarship has been intensely local, defending regions, artists, and labels.

I am wondering if Jazz studies and the competing claims of New Orleans, KC, Oklahoma City, Harlem, Chicago, and later LA. in regards to jazz will prove a useful analogy for hip-hop studies. From my vantage point, it seems like Jazz has transcended some of its original regionality as the music became less popular and the audience aged. What happens to hip-hop and hip-hop studies when the historical, cultural, and socio-economic forces that shaped it no longer hold? What will happen to the regional lens we currently use to view hip-hop? By the end of Sarig's book, for example, the artists of some locations - particularly Virginia Beach - move around so much that I am not sure how regional the music remains. The same could be said for the journey began in Atlanta by Outkast, Goodie Mob, and other folks from the ATL. Is regionality an essential feature of hip-hop or something that will go the way of Adidas shoes and Kangol hats?