region and a native production team "signaled a break from the conventional split between East and West hip hop aesthetics and openly demonstrated that the South could produce street-certified, quality music." Nicole Hodges Persley cites its release as a critical moment in hip hop and writes that it "marked a break in bicoastal hip hop sound". The album presaged hip hop's "Dirty South" aesthetic, which later achieved mainstream recognition. Its smooth musical style, drawing on soul and funk musical traditions, and the duo's clever lyrics helped define Southern hip hop's sound, which influenced acts like Goodie Mob, Joi, and Bubba Sparxxx. In The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, Rolling Stone journalist Roni Sarig writes that the album "marked a coming out for a region that would dominate hip-hop by the decade's end", commenting that, with it, Outkast "helped define a new stream of hip-hop that would rejuvenate the music in the late '90s and early 2000s." AllMusic's Stanton Swihart comments that "no one sounded like OutKast in 1994" and that the album showcased Organized Noize as it "began forging one of the most distinctive production sounds in popular music in the '90s". Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik was also a significant release in the burgeoning "Hotlanta" music scene. The scene started as a black music revival in Atlanta during the late 1980s, and developed with the success of LaFace Records and the national attention received by Atlanta-based recording artists and producers such as Toni Braxton, Kris Kross, Jermaine Dupri, and Babyface. With the album, Outkast offered realistic depictions of the city while avoiding Arrested Development's Afrocentric themes and the more mainstream stylings of Dupri. "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik was as accessible as Atlanta rap had been up until that point, paving the way for your favorite rappers of the 2000s, from Ludacris to T.I. to Jeezy", according to Cleveland.com, which later ranked it as the 45th best hip hop album from the 1990s. "Outkast would make better albums (a few, actually). But, perhaps, none were more important." It was also named the third best album of 1994 in ego trips list of "Hip Hop's 25 Greatest Albums by Year 1980–98", while Vibe included it as one of the "150 Essential Albums of the Vibe Era (1992–2007)". Vibe later included the album on a 2004 list of "51 Essential Albums" that represent "a generation, a sound, and in many cases, a movement", writing that "[OutKast] determined the South