ATLANTA -- When Trentavious White, a rising rap star known to the world as Bankroll Fresh, was fatally shot outside Street Execs Studios, the brightest stars in the hip-hop firmament offered their condolences: Big Boi, Lil Wayne, T.I., 2 Chainz.
A less conspicuous note came from the neighborhood association in Underwood Hills, the understated middle-class section of Atlanta where Street Execs is located. In addition to saying they were "deeply saddened" by White's death on March 4, the association members, in a statement, described their long-running litany of problems with the recording studio: loud parties, booming music and at least one other instance of gunfire.
"As a peaceful neighborhood of families," the group said, "we are very worried about the safety and quality of life problems the studio has brought to our neighborhood."
Now the shooting, and episodes like it, have prompted a city councilman to propose new restrictions that would require recording studios to have soundproofing, be subject to a more rigorous permit process and be at least 500 feet from residential areas. The measure has set off a different kind of worry in a city where hip-hop recordings have become the signature pop-cultural product -- one with a potency and global reach to rival Coca-Cola's.
"I think that this is reactionary," Michael Render, the Atlanta rapper and activist who goes by Killer Mike, said in an interview. "I think it's punitive to hip-hop, and hip-hop being the greatest cultural export from Atlanta in the last 125 years."
Atlanta's emergence as an undisputed hip-hop powerhouse has been fueled by the South's cheap cost of living, the inevitable spread of the genre beyond its New York birthplace, and by Atlanta's broader reputation as a tolerant and economically muscular black mecca that attracts black strivers of all kinds.
The culture remains defiantly youthful -- rap's flavor du jour, Lil Yachty, is all of 19 years old -- but is capable of remarkable depth, most recently evidenced by the surrealist half-hour television comedy Atlanta, which explores the life and milieu of a rapper, and his struggling manager, with melancholic grace.
Some of the music, like White's, is transgressive and threat-laced, reflecting the hard reality of the streets. But some of it is not. And while many in the city are proud of Atlanta's status as hip-hop's capital, there are complications baked into the broader city's relationship with what remains, in many ways, rebel music.
When former Mayor Shirley Franklin commissioned acclaimed producer Dallas Austin to create a new theme song for the city in 2005, the resulting hip-hop-tinged R&B track was panned by suburbanites and Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor and civil-rights figure. Two years ago, an email emerged from Bruce Levenson, then an owner of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team, in which he lamented that too much hip-hop was being played during Hawks home games. (The team has since been sold.)
Musicians and producers say the vast majority of studio work goes on there without a hint of violence. Inevitably, however, the killings at studios tend to generate outsize interest.
In 2011, Mario Hamilton, who rapped under the name Slim Dunkin, was gunned down at a studio in east Atlanta. Less than two months after the shooting of Bankroll Fresh, two men were found fatally shot at a studio called Headquarters Recording on the city's west side.
On Monday night, a man was shot and killed in the same general area. An Atlanta police spokesman, Donald Hannah, said Tuesday that the man had recently visited a recording studio near the site of the shooting. But investigators had not made a connection, he said, "between any occurrences inside the studio and the homicide."
The councilman who introduced the measure, Felicia Moore, said it was in response to complaints about a number of music studios in her district.
Moore said she is a music fan, but added that residents "are entitled to the quiet enjoyment of their home." Some critics say the proposal, as written, would apply to all studios, but Moore insists that it would apply only to new ones.
A clash was, perhaps, inevitable: The rise of hip-hop, much of it produced in nondescript studios tucked away on quiet side streets, has taken place alongside a repopulation of the city, and a new embrace of urban living. Once-neglected industrial areas are suddenly sprouting dense new residential developments.
"So you have somebody who moves in from outside the perimeter because they think it's cool to live in an urban environment, and suddenly they're complaining that there's urban noise, that there's buses, there's trains, there's music," said Mala Sharma, the co-president of Georgia Music Partners, a nonprofit advocacy group. Sharma said she knows of about 50 commercial recording studios operating in the city limits.
In Underwood Hills, however, a number of residents noted that their neighborhood, founded in 1902, long predates the opening of Street Execs. A number of them also took pains to note that they had nothing against rap music. ("I LOVE Outkast," the neighborhood association's president, Kristin Olson, wrote in an email, referring to the Atlanta duo whose single "Hey Ya" topped the Billboard charts in 2003. "Totally my era.")
But Olson said her neighbors had reason to be alarmed after White's death. She said the studio's lot borders the backyards of single-family homes. The police report indicates that during the shooting, one bullet struck a residence, and another settled in the wall of a nearby business.
"I don't know if the ordinance is going to 100 percent solve anything, but I know the stress my neighbors went through," she said. "I guess I get it."
A spokesman for the Fulton County district attorney said the killing of White remained under investigation.
Dozens of record producers, sound engineers and artists showed up at City Hall for a recent meeting of the board that makes nonbinding recommendations on zoning proposals like Moore's to the Atlanta City Council.
The artists said they could not understand why their industry was being singled out, when people are shot outside other places like grocery stores. They wondered whether the ordinance would hamper the sound engineers working in Georgia's growing film and television production industry.
Ben Allen, a producer, argued that the scattered cottage industry was central to the city's identity.
"Can you imagine an Atlanta without 'Hey Ya' by Outkast? That song was recorded on a quiet neighborhood street in Underwood Hills," he said. "How about 'Crazy' by Gnarls Barkley? That song was recorded 100 feet away from a 200-unit apartment building. Or 'Climax' by Usher? That song was recorded at a studio in the middle of Loring Heights on a quiet city street."
The board did not deliberate long. "I have a hard time swallowing this proposal," said one member, Steven D. Lee Sr. "Just for clarity, my son is a music producer. And my son has a studio in my home."
The crowd cheered. The board voted to recommend that the council reject the ordinance.
A City Council committee is expected to take up the matter Jan. 11. In the meantime, Moore said, she plans to make a number of changes in her proposal on the basis of her conversations with the music community.
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