 These days Atlanta might be the most important city in the hip-hop world It's the birthplace of trap and home to some of the biggest names in rap today including young thug future and 21 Savage But in the early 90s most of the rap world viewed the American South as an irrelevant backwater a Footnote compared to the pillars of hip-hop culture that were New York and Los Angeles All of that began to change when a pair of rappers who went by the name outcast hit the scene Their 1994 debut Southern Playalistic Cadillac music shocked the rap world with its virtuosic flow playful rhymes and unapologetically southern sensibilities It lit a fire in the south that still burns to this day and changed rap forever But outcasts recording career didn't start with Southern Playalistic Cadillac music It started six months earlier when their label approached them with a strange request They wanted outcast to write a Christmas song Let's take a closer look in 1993 the production crew organized noise had convinced LA read of LaFace Records To sign outcast it was a huge break for the duo who were in such dire straits that they had turned to drug dealing In order to afford studio time But even though Reed signed outcast he wasn't giving them much support before he'd let them do anything He insisted that outcast contribute a song to the label's upcoming Christmas album a LaFace family Christmas Big boy told vinyl me please that it felt like Reed was trying to kill their career before it even took off It wasn't that there hadn't been Christmas rap songs before run DMC's Christmas in Hollis was a mild success six years earlier But this was 1993 the same year that Wu Tang released enter the 36 chambers If outcast wanted the south to be taken seriously by the wider rap world a Christmas song wasn't the way to do it You can't exactly put jingle bells up against protection and hope to survive Still outcast knew that opportunities to break through were few and far between in the music industry So they took the lemons that LaFace gave them and started squeezing them for all the lemonade They were worth rather than record an empty novel Christmas track outcast decided to do what they did best Sing about their own experience living in poverty in Atlanta was a far cry from the idyllic pictures of Yuletide Usually given in seasonal songs Christmas is typically portrayed as a Temporary respite from life, but when you're struggling to put food on the table, you don't get that privilege Andre explains this in his opening verse setting the scene with a subversion of a classic Christmas song By the end of the verse it seems like Dre is explicitly calling out the label who expected a novelty song from him Other means of celebrating. I'm getting blizzard at Ho-ja. Why I said who she waiting? I made it through another you can't ask for nothing much No, it's outcast for the books. I thought you knew so now you know, let's go when big boy comes in on the second verse He also starts out with references to Christmas songs before getting into his real concerns about the day The liquor store is closed and the chitterlings he's got cooking are stinking up his house Yeah, yeah, you know, I do some things more different than I used to cuz I'm a player doing what the players do the package though It's closed. Okay. My day gets ruined. This is ridiculous. I'm getting serious I'm getting curious cuz the house to smell the same the chitlins over this vicious by singing about their own experiences Outcast are highlighting the discrepancies in American life The reality is that most Christmas media is targeted at the middle class showing a peaceful suburban utopia But that image doesn't ring true for so many who are economically and racially disenfranchised And to someone who has to work selling drugs on Christmas Day this discrepancy becomes all the more clear I'm wide open on a freeway my page a broke my vibe cuz the junkie is a junkie 365 It's just another day you work to meet the spirit just standing in me grab my grandma I don't see what the junkies gotta give me cuz it's like that But all of this isn't to say that outcast didn't know how to celebrate in the chorus of the song Outcast sing about the player's ball a legendary meeting of pimps that started in Chicago in 1974 for Dre and big boy the player's ball represents a haven of black culture unimagined celebration that truly does provide respite from the struggle and hustle of everyday life and poverty Originally the chorus of players ball mentioned Christmas Day, but outcast changed it to every day This gave it a year-round appeal and prevented it from being boxed in to the holiday music genre This decision helped outcasts career take off They handed their song over to LaFace and the label included it on the album But on the original release they got almost no respect their tiny image is barely visible on the album cover and much more attention is given to Tony Braxton TLC and Usher, but it wasn't those artists that had Atlanta DJs spinning a LaFace family Christmas every day The city's radio DJs recognized the truth spoken in players ball and couldn't help but display Andre and big boys Incredible flows the song started to become a surprise hit and LA Reed realized he had something on his hands So on November 19th 1993 He chose to release players ball as a standalone cassette tape and shortly thereafter. He brought in puff daddy to direct a video This helped propel the song to number three on billboards hot 100 and eventually would lead to it going gold But more importantly it opened Reed's eyes to the talent He really had on his hands he greenlit outcasts debut album and the rest is history Southern Playalistic Cadillac music blew up Establishing outcast as one of the most exciting new acts in all of music and putting Atlanta on the hip-hop map and Since then the city hasn't stopped today The south is a hip-hop epicenter and outcast are one of the best-selling hip-hop groups of all time It was an outcome that I don't think anyone could have predicted when LA Reed asked outcast for a Christmas song The sort of thing that you might be tempted to describe as a Christmas miracle