After a four year hiatus, FX’s Atlanta is back tonight. The Emmy-award winning comedy follows the exploits of Earnest “Earn” Marks (Glover) as he strives to manage the burgeoning rap career of his cousin, Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles (Brian Tyree Henry), Alfred’s stoner best friend Darius Epps (LaKeith Stanfield), and Earn’s erstwhile lover Vanessa “Van” Keefer (Zazie Beetz). The show is, on its surface, a surrealist comedy about navigating the rap game, but that’s a reductive view—Glover and his writers merely use that as a device to deftly comment on the complicated nature of the Black experience in America.
Atlanta takes inspiration from everything from David Lynch to Tiny Toons, but some of scenes in the show are inspired by the real life absurdities of the rap game. With season three set to premiere tonight, GQ is taking a look back at all the times when Atlanta was inspired by things that have actually happened in rap.
Paper Boi’s Selfie With The Cops In the second episode, “Streets On Lock,” an agitated Paper Boi gets bailed out of jail by Darius after being involved in a shooting incident. As he’s walking out of the police station, an officer insists on getting a selfie with the rapper. Paper Boi begrudgingly obliges as the elated officer chants, “One more for the Instasluts.”
Something similar happened to Atlanta rapper 2 Chainz in 2013 when he was arrested for marijuana possession by Maryland State Police. Chainz posted the picture—where he looked slightly more amused than Paper Boi—on his Instagram but lamented in the caption, “Locked me up and then Wanted pictures smh.”
Rappers vs Bloggers Season one’s “The Streisand Effect” introduces us to social media personality Zan, an annoying blogger who first tries way too hard to befriend Paper Boi in person, before trolling him relentlessly online. Paper Boi eventually confronts Zan for talking trash and exploiting hip-hop culture before walking away exasperated by the lengths Zan would go for online fame.
Zan is definitely a composite character. A blogger having such a combative relationship with the artists he covers is reminiscent of DJ Akademiks, who has similarly covered/trolled/beefed with everyone from Shy Glizzy to Vic Mensa to Meek Mill to Freddie Gibbs. However, Akademiks rose to infamy after Atlanta premiered so it’s more likely that plotline was inspired by someone like DJ Vlad, who got roughed up by Rick Ross and his goons in 2008 after blogging about Ross’ past as a corrections officer. (Ross ended up paying Vlad $300,000 in 2010 over the incident.) At the same time, considering Zan’s character was racially ambiguous, had multiple jobs, and had a propensity for taking photos in front of butts, maybe it was also inspired by 40 Oz. Van?
The Biebs Atlanta was brilliant from the jump, but one of the show’s greatest strokes of genius was casting a black actor (Austin Crute) to play Justin Bieber in “Nobody Beats the Biebs.” In the episode, Paper Boi is excited to play in a celebrity basketball game only to have Bieber suck up all the attention and love despite acting like a complete jackass.
Many of the things Atlanta’s Bieber does are exaggerated, but at one point, The Biebs pisses all over the floor. That scene was clearly inspired by the time Justin Bieber pissed in a bucket (and, uh, cursed out a photo of Bill Clinton). At the end of the episode, after getting into a fight with Paper Boi at the game, Justin vows to clean up his act, suddenly gets religious, and says his next album is called Justice. That part totally came true!
Dancing On The Table Jumping ahead to season 2, “Sportin’ Waves” features Paper Boi and Earn visiting the office of a Spotify-like streaming service and finding it hard to connect with the people they talk to. Paper Boi even performs for a bored staff, while Earn spots a rapper dancing on the table during a meeting. The scene is certainly inspired by a clip of Bobby Shmurda, who once danced on top of a table while playing the song “Computers” for the staff at Epic Records (who barely seemed to react). Like many scenes in “Sportin’ Waves,” there’s an undeniable stench of racism in the air.
Clark County The Rapper Later in “Sportin’ Waves,” we meet a recurring character of Season 2, rapper Clark County (RJ Walker). At the episode’s end, we see Clark’s bizarre but catchy YooHoo jingle. As many fans on Twitter have noted, Clark certainly seems inspired by frequent Childish Gambino collaborator Chance The Rapper. (For one, they both sport overalls.) In an interview with Complex, RJ Walker was asked about the similarities to Chance and said, “I kind of see that, especially in the outfit choices.” Similar to Clark, Chance scored a KitKat ad where he sang the jingle (it wasn’t as good as the fake YooHoo one). Clark’s tight relationship with his (white) manager is also reminiscent of Chance’s once tight relationship with Pat Corcoran (aka Pat the Manager).
White Girl Acoustic Cover – “Sportin’ Waves” also involves Paper Boi trying to find a new weed supplier after getting robbed by his previous plug. He finally finds someone who seems decent, only for that guy to put him in a group chat with his girlfriend who did an acoustic cover of Paper Boi’s breakout hit. Although the internet tried to make acoustic rap songs a thing in the mid-2010s, the scene seems most inspired by Niykee Heaton, who broke out on YouTube by doing an acoustic cover of Chief Keef’s “Love Sosa.” White girls love street rap!
“Norf Norf” – “Money Bag Shawty” opens with a scene where a white woman goes on Instagram to complain about the lyrics of Paper Boi’s breakout hit, as well as his support of Colin Kaepernick.
The scene seems directly inspired by a Christian mom who made a very similar rant and started crying after hearing Vince Staples’ “Norf Norf” on the radio in 2016. Obviously, fans on Twitter had fun clowning her. In the show, Paper Boi toasted to his critic when his song went gold, whereas Vince defended the woman’s right to her opinion.
In The Studio With Clark County Later on in “Money Bag Shawty,” Paper Boi and Darius head to the studio with Clark County but are surprised to find out 1) He doesn’t drink or smoke despite often rapping about it and 2) He’s down to have his goons rough up a studio engineer after his program crashes.
Despite the fact that drugs and alcohol are a huge part of hip-hop music, there are many prominent contemporary rappers who don’t engage in either, including Tyler, The Creator, Lil Yachty, Logic, Kendrick Lamar, and Vince Staples. Perhaps the most famous example of a rapper glorifying drinking culture while refusing to engage in it is 50 Cent, whose biggest hit, “In Da Club,” mentions drinking Barcadi and popping bottles of bubbly.
As far as a seemingly nice guy rapper suddenly turning into a bully? In an interview with Complex, RJ Walker claimed Donald Glover told him the scene was “inspired by something that actually happened.” Your guess is as good as ours.
Rappers Bringing Guns To An Airport – Season 2 ends with Paper Boi, Earn, and Darius heading off to Europe for a tour with Clark County. When Earn gets to the airport, he realizes he forgot to get rid of the gold-plated gun his and Paper Boi’s uncle Willy (played by Kat Williams) gave him in the season opener. Earn quickly stashes the gun in Clark County’s bag, who makes his manager take the fall for it.
Bringing a gun to the airport—especially in post-9/11 America—sounds too dumb to be true, but nearly a dozen rappers have done it. In fact, four different rappers brought guns to just Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. Of all the rappers to get arrested for it, the wildest story has to be Petey Pablo who got caught with a stolen 9mm Smith & Wesson gun in at Raleigh-Durham International Airport on September 11, 2010.