On April 26, 1994, OutKast released their debut album, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. The Atlanta duo began a festival tour to celebrate this twenty-year anniversary at Coachella several weeks ago, and will be performing over forty dates this year. While fans continue to fantasize about new OutKast music, these festival dates also allow for an opportunity to reminisce on their success and the influence they have had on current stars such as Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole. At the same time, Future's sophomore album Honest and his close affiliation with the Dungeon Family has once more put the spotlight back on this ATLien crew.
While Andre 3000 and Big Boi were coming together to craft future hip-hop classics, they were doing so alongside other artists all working in the confined space of Rico Wade’s basement studio, also known as the “Dungeon.” Known as the Dungeon Family, the group’s body of work changed the context of what it meant to be a hip-hop artist from the South. As a unit, the Dungeon Family has only released one album, Even In Darkness (2001), but artists representing the Dungeon Family have gone on to sell millions of albums and continue to have their finger on the pulse of rap music.
With the element of rap crews once more taking center stage, it’s time to revisit the crew that made it known worldwide that the South has got something to say. With a complicated catalog that includes side projects galore, here is a complete breakdown of the Dungeon Family.
