Southern hip hop, also called southern rap, is a form of American hip hop music that emerged from a late-1990s club-oriented vibe in southern U.S. cities, including Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Nashville, Atlanta, Memphis, Birmingham, Virginia Beach, New Orleans, Miami and Baton Rouge. The music was a reaction to the 1980s flow of hip hop culture from New York City and California, and can be considered a third major American hip hop genre, after East Coast hip hop and West Coast hip hop. Many early southern rap artists released their music independently or on mixtapes after encountering difficulty securing record-label contracts.