MC T. Tucker brings the Triggerman loop to New Orleans block parties — bounce coalesces

Why it matters

Bounce is one of the most regionally specific rap sub-genres in the United States. It does not really sound like other rap. It is built on one bass-and-drum loop, the Showboys' "Drag Rap" (a 1986 Brooklyn record), at a specific 100-bpm tempo, with the MC functioning as a hype-man directing a call-and-response with the audience. T. Tucker is the MC who first brought that combination together in the New Orleans block-party scene in 1991. DJ Jimi cut his own version of the same chant pattern a year later. Both are now treated as co-foundational. The whole next three decades of New Orleans rap (Cash Money, Big Freedia's sissy-bounce wave in the 2000s, the entire Lil Wayne catalog's Louisiana DNA) descend from this one structural decision. You can put on any bounce record and hear the Showboys loop. That is the genre. T. Tucker made it visible.