OutKast’s seminal sophomore album arrived as one of the most pivotal summers in hip-hop history was unfolding. Rap music was suddenly enjoying unprecedented commercial success, to the tune of Top 40 hits and platinum album sales. But the boom times were darkened by an atmosphere of animosity, as the high-profile feud between Bad Boy Entertainment and Death Row Records was dominating headlines.

But the summer of 1996 had also been a season of change in the city of Atlanta. The Summer Olympics immediately reshaped the landscape and, to a great extent, the culture of the city. Communities like Techwood and Clark Howell Homes were razed to build monuments to the centennial Olympics, displacing poor Black families and cutting a swath through communities still struggling under the scourge of the crack epidemic. So as the rap game wrestled with newfound mainstream visibility and a media-hyped bicoastal beef, the 2 Dope Boyz were watching as their hometown was changing before their very eyes.

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