* The beginning of "the dirty south" - as a distinct sonic region and literally, since they popularized the term.
* A huge part of injecting Black culture (i.e., religion/the church) into hip-hop (think about all of the golden age LPs - if they were talking about god, a rapper meant himself, word to the NGE; afterwards...?).
* From there, we can go into how the lyrics emphasized content over cleverness (this is a big difference between
Soul Food and Outkast's first LP - that and the Outkast album's more lighthearted tone and the obvious Hieroglyphics influence on the emcees and Bomb Squad influence on the production).
We can argue over who should get credit for the development of a unique southern sound - Dre for making it okay to not sound like New York, 8Ball and MJG's first LP, Outkast or Goodie Mob's LP (I'd exclude Kast for the reason I mentioned above), but that's another thread.