Migos

Offset didn't hedge when a camera caught him and Cardi B watching UGK's "International Players Anthem," which pulls Big Boi and André 3000 onto the hook: "This is my favorite group, I feel like, in the history of rap. Outkast, from the A." Quavo has said much the same, plainly — "We listened to a lot of Cash Money stuff, Outkast and other Atlanta groups" — and all three grew up during OutKast's imperial run, when a rap group from Atlanta topping the national charts was still a new idea the city was proving to itself.

listen: upstream & heresource: Parlé Magazine — Atlanta Trio MIGOS Have The Rap Game In The Palm of Their Hands (group names OutKast, Gucci Mane, Young Jeezy as influences) ↗share

2000

B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)OutKast

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2018

Walk It Talk ItMigos

listen forCue OutKast's "B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)" and count how fast André 3000 and Big Boi stack syllables over a tempo most rappers wouldn't touch — a sprint that still leaves room to breathe between phrases. "Walk It Talk It" pushes the same idea through Migos' own triplet stutter: three voices trading short, clipped bursts that land just ahead of the beat instead of on it, the same appetite for speed OutKast proved a Southern rap record could carry.

Asked to name his top five MCs for a 2018 Rolling Stone profile, Quavo answered with six — Tupac, Biggie, Jay-Z, Kanye, Gucci Mane, and himself. The debt runs through more than admiration: Migos' breakout single "Bando" was produced by Zaytoven, the "longtime Gucci Mane collaborator" whose chiming synth-bell melodies had already defined Gucci's Atlanta trap records for half a decade before Zaytoven became one of Migos' most frequent producers too, carrying the same sound from one generation of the city's trap houses into the next.

listen: upstream & heresource: Parlé Magazine — Atlanta Trio MIGOS Have The Rap Game In The Palm of Their Hands (group names OutKast, Gucci Mane, Young Jeezy as influences) ↗share

2009

LemonadeGucci Mane

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2013

BandoMigos

listen forGucci Mane's "Lemonade" rides Zaytoven's signature high, bell-like synth runs over a hollow, half-empty 808 pattern — space built for ad-libs rather than dense verses. "Bando," recorded four years later with the same producer, uses the identical toolkit: the same chiming melody register, the same sparse low end, just a faster, more clipped delivery laid on top. The continuity is Zaytoven's fingerprint, inherited whole and made into something else entirely.

Jeezy doesn't get the personal-favorite treatment Migos gave OutKast and Gucci Mane, but he's named in the same breath — the group's 2015 Parlé Magazine interview lists him, as Young Jeezy, alongside Gucci and T.I. as core "South music" influences — and the professional lineage runs deeper than the mention suggests: Migos' manager, Coach K, built his reputation managing Jeezy's mid-2000s rise before doing the same for three Gwinnett County teenagers a decade later. It's the thinnest-documented of the three ties, but it's real.

listen: upstream & heresource: Parlé Magazine — Atlanta Trio MIGOS Have The Rap Game In The Palm of Their Hands (group names OutKast, Gucci Mane, Young Jeezy as influences) ↗share

2005

My HoodJeezy

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2013

Hannah MontanaMigos

listen forJeezy's "My Hood" is minimal on purpose — a hook repeated until it becomes a chant, drums with nothing extra riding along. Migos' "Hannah Montana" works the same trick eight years later: a title used as its own hook, said until it stops sounding like a punchline and starts sounding like a beat. Neither song argues its case with wordplay; both let repetition and the trap house itself do the work — a shared instinct more than a shared line.