Trap emerged from Atlanta’s drug economy as financial strategy, not art

Evidence

In Atlanta, a nascent hip-hop subgenre called trap rejected seventies’ grooves of the past for a minimalist sound. Defined by the tik-tik-tik of drum machine hi-hats, crunching snares, and chest-thumping 808 kick drums, trap music was the sound of the city: the streets, the drug-production factories, and the strip clubs. The genre’s leading voices—including Gucci Mane and T.I.—had come up in Atlanta’s drug trade. Some saw rap as the next step in their financial strategies rather than as an artistic calling. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 391

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Marx’s periods structure — trap as a live counter-example to the omnivore monoculture: geographically-rooted, scene-specific innovation.
• QUESTION: If trap was born partly as financial strategy from the drug trade, does that undercut or strengthen the claim that it represents genuine countercultural novelty vs the omnivore flattening?