"Being in South Florida where the weather’s warm and the public transportation is not reliable, you had to have a car to get around,” author Dave Tompkins told WLRN Public Radio in 2016 — explaining the connection between Miami’s love of automobiles and its attendant music scene. “What better way to show off your car or your system than to have these booming sounds?”
From Florida’s state capital in the 1980s, through to ’90s Los Angeles, Newark in the 2000s, and Durban, South Africa in the 2010s, cars have driven the development of many genres of dance music and styles of hip-hop. Think of the rippling sub waves of Miami bass, or the distended 808 kick-drum hits of trap; the thudding breakbeat rhythms of Baltimore club, the ‘Ridin’ Dirty’ rap of Houston’s UGK, or DJ Screw’s chopped and screwed, slow-as-molasses grooves. All these forms are designed for play on souped-up car soundsystems, with bass at the forefront to put automotive sub-woofers through their paces.