Interview

Shortly after the release of their new album, “Me and My Brother,” The Next American City interviewed the Ying Yang Twins. An Atlanta-based hip-hop duo, the group is known for dance floor hits like “Shake it Like a Salt Shaker,” “Naggin’,” and “Whistle While You Twurk.” Kaine and D-Roc, both 25 years old, chatted with TNAC about their hometown of Atlanta and how “Calling All Zones,” a track from “Me and My Brother,” grapples with changing demographics and the evolving experience of growing up in East Atlanta. “Zones” refers to geographic areas in Atlanta. According to the Ying Yang Twins, anything lying outside of Zones 1-6 simply is not part of Atlanta. And Zone 6, including East Atlanta, is at risk of becoming a completely different place than the neighborhood they grew up in during the 1980s and ‘90s. —Brandon Lofton and Anika Singh

TNAC: Tell us a little bit about “Calling All Zones.”

Kaine: “Calling All Zones” was a song that not only spoke for plenty years the horror of Atlanta. So to live in Atlanta you have to only understand one county, Fulton County. If you don’t live in Fulton County, you are not from Atlanta. Or you don’t live in Atlanta. Or if you weren’t born at Graydon Memorial Hospital, you know what I’m sayin’, you ain’t no A-town, baby. So what we did, we made the song to s*** down folk talking about—‘I was down in Atlanta, but I was down in Marietta.’ See now, you were in Marietta, you weren’t in Atlanta. ‘I was down in Smyrna.’ Uh-uh. ‘I was down in Conyers.’ Uh-uh. ‘I was down in Riverdale.’ Uh-uh. ‘I was down in Stone Mountain.’ Uh-uh. All those is other cities in Georgia. Atlanta is just Atlanta. It’s the capital city. It’s the grittiest city of the state.

When D-Roc and myself was, what, eight, nine, and ten… the projects only existed in Atlanta. That was Atlanta. When you go to Stone Mountain, Stone Mountain has never not been good living. College Point has never not been good living. Where we come from was not good living. The projects didn’t even look as good as they did just before they started tearing them down.

TNAC: How would you describe what is going on right now in those neighborhoods that you mentioned?

D-Roc: A lot [of the projects], they not even standing. They knocked them down. They making them townhouses.

Kaine: Yeah, so our kids ain’t gonna know nothing about this. That’s what it was. So that’s what really be hurting our feelings.

D-Roc: A lot of things we be talking about in “Calling all Zones” are gone. A lot of kids who are growin’ up now who are like ten, eleven, don’t even know about half the stuff we are talkin’, in Atlanta.

Kaine: See, the reason why we really made [the song is] because there are a lot of people not really from Atlanta, man; they be comin’ up here doin’ everything, screamin’, yellin’, from the A-town. Cause I from A-town: eastside, westside, southside, I can get out the car and stop anywhere. In the worst part or all the better parts. I prefer to stay in the worst parts though because they keep my heart real with me.

We ain’t gonna have to do nothing [to combat gentrification] because everything is a full circle. They turned East Lake Meadow, little Vietnam, into the Villas of East Lake. They put a damn Publix grocery store [a Southern chain known for catering to high-end customers] across the street.

D-Roc: And a golf course, in the middle of projects, in the middle of the parking lot.

Kaine: Atlanta is gonna have to happen because people, they have done away with welfare, but they have to have. Certain people just can’t; some people still make it out of it while still being within the city limits of Atlanta. So they have to go and start a “Hood” program, and they still a ghetto motherf***er in the Villas of East Lake. So, it’s gonna come back full circle. They go on tear it down and tear it up again; we just gonna keep on seeing it more than once.

TNAC: Some people are being forced out of their neighborhoods—where is everybody going?

Kaine: Some people can’t make it man, so they turn—

D-Roc: They going to the outskirts. Cobb County.

TNAC: So what is the role of music in all this?

Kaine: As far as our city, which is our life, I just want people to know the real end of it.

SELECTED LYRICS:

You got a one-way ticket to hell,

Smack dab in the middle of the ATL,

And aww, I dont wanna hustle no more but the streets wont let me gao,

All my n****s say,

Zone 1 (right here), Zone 2 (right here), Zone 3 Zone 4 (right here), Zone 5 and 6, but that’s it.

For a n**** with a dream,

Atlanta is the city,

And they make it so seem,

But ride through the city,

And The Streets ain’t clean,

All I see is drug deals, big wheels and fiends,

But any way they took East Atlanta back,

Throw Atlanta Down,

Turned little Vietnam to a white folks town,

...

When you speaking ‘bout Atlanta mention Ying Yang Twins,

There born and raised,

God done made it hard for us,

Cause y’all outta towners came here and f***ed s*** up,

But y’all can’t f*** with us, cause as soon as s*** start goin on you leave Atlanta and go right back home.