Atlanta’s Magic City has become more than just a mere strip club. Magic City has become a destination and institution, along with breaking the careers of some of Hip-Hop’s largest acts as well.
GQ sent one of its reporters to check out the legendary adult entertainment venue, opening with how the club actually serves as more than a place to watch nude women gyrate to booming beats. In fact, up and coming rappers frequent the establishment in hopes of being discovered in what GQ named as the most important space for Hip-Hop artists in the city. This fact was clearly made after GQ‘s reporter met with a rap manager named City Dollars.
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City Dollars is 38, wears a woolly chin beard, and has eyes that twinkle from deep in his skull. “I’m a hustler,” City Dollars told me. A hustler and a player and a manager of rap artists. He’s also, he said, the proprietor of an auto-detailing business out by Atlanta Hartsfield. Tonight he’d brought one of his artists with him, Yung Stunt. Seated next to us at the table, Yung Stunt looked like he could have been 16 years old. He wore sunglasses, and for all I knew he was asleep. “I want to expose him to this!” City Dollars told me. “I want him to breathe this air. To be around these people. This is what I do for my artists, I give them that rock-star life.” He drank from his beer. “They’re called the Narly Dudes, by the way. YouTube that sh*t.”
A song called “Make Sum Shake” was on. The music you hear in Magic City isn’t the music you might expect at a strip club. Magic City Mondays are the most important nights in the most important club in the most important city in the hip-hop industry. Magic City is the place where you hear music before anyone else does, and where it is decided if that music gets played anywhere else. “Make Sum Shake,” the lyrics of which are mostly Make sum shake, is by a group called Cool Amerika, a few kids about 20 years old from the suburban hood of Stone Mountain, Georgia—and it was one of a handful of songs that seemed ready to break out of the strip club.
That just covers one portion of GQ‘s highly-detailed exploration of Atlanta‘s Magic City. This Friday (July 10), documentarian Lauren Greenfield’s film on the club will air exclusively at GQ.
The piece also delves into the lives of strippers, the club’s connection with the Black Mafia Family, and other historical tidbits.
Watch Future in the clip below talk about how DJs in the club scene help break the big Hip-Hop hits.
Check out a trailer for the movie via the clip on the next page. A warning: the video is uncensored and may not be safe for work.
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Photo: GQ/Lauren Greenfield
