Flare ups outside of Los Angeles and New York like the Miami bass boom that spawned 2 Live Crew or the Houston rap breakthrough of The Geto Boys weren’t granted the necessary oxygen to bring the heat of those cities into the national conversation. While today we celebrate its myriad forms everywhere from Atlanta to Seoul, for much of the time after its unruly birth in The Bronx this music seemed the sacred property of two very specific urban locales. Throughout its first two decades, people mistook hip-hop for a coastal phenomenon.

400 Degreez by Juvenile is the hip-hop Record Of The Month for Vinyl Me, Please.