Geographic origin plays a more significant role in hip-hop than in any other form of music, largely because the music is such an exclusive reflection of the culture that fostered it. Dating back to the verbal turf wars between the boroughs in NYC during the music's early days in the late '70s, one of hip hop's founding principles has always been neighborhood nationalism. When hip-hop expanded beyond NYC in the mid-80s, the boasting expanded, with groups bestowing praise on their city, state, coast or territory.

The Goodie Mob, namely Thomas Burton (Cee-Lo), Willie Knighton (Khujo), Robert Barnett (T-Mo) and Cameron Gipp (Big Gipp), still one of the few Atlanta-based hip-hop groups to achieve national success, absolutely personify modern-day Atlanta, in both their achievements and their muddled, Jim Crow-shackled history. Given its past and how slowly the wheels of change turn, the black experience in the South is unlike any other in this country, and there is no doubt that both Goodie's music and its message exemplify that abnormality.

You don't need to look any further than the profound consciousness of their lyrics to see the group's singularity on display. Issue-oriented lyrics in hip-hop are nothing new, but their origin was certainly a change upon Goodie's arrival on the scene in 1995. Until that time, most of the knowledge being dropped by hip-hop crews was entirely NYC-centric, coming from people like Public Enemy, KRS-One and the Native Tongue collective of De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest. Sure, there was the landmark arrival of N.W.A. on the West Coast, but somehow it's hard to concentrate on their socio-political edge amidst lines like, "A young nigga on a warpath/And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath/Of cops, dyin' in LA."

And there definitely was no revolutionary message coming from Southern hip-hop until Goodie and their Atlanta brethren Outkast burst on the scene - until then, the South could only claim the likes of lowest-common-denominator groups such as 2 Live Crew, Kriss Kross and Da Brat.

The group's debut, Soul Food, ushered the soul into hip-hop music. Whereas the Afro-centricity of groups like Public Enemy and De La was grounded in an almost academic intellect, Goodie spoke from the pulpit, preaching the gospel over incredibly funky soul tracks that eschewed the P-funk flavor-of-the-month samples so popular in the early- and mid-'90s.

Soul Food, and its incredibly dense successor, Still Standing, employed live instrumentation, which was an absolute rarity back then, and remains so today. The only hip-hop groups to use live instruments either on wax or in live performances are Outkast, Goodie Mob, the Roots and the Fugees, both as a group and in solo ventures, and not too many people would resist the idea that those groups also put on incredibly exciting concerts.

In terms of message, Soul Food said everything that makes the establishment cringe. They were religiously pro-South, pro-black without being anti-white, and represented black optimism against all odds: "It would be nice to have mo'/but I kinda like being po'/At least I know what my friends are here fo'." --(Cee-Lo, "Thought Process"). That optimism was balanced out by the fact that Soul Food pointedly addressed certain issues unabashedly, a la Public Enemy and N.W.A. -"Let me tell you somethin real/Plenty niggas sittin in jail just to eat a decent meal" --(Khujo, "O.M.N.I.") - but the backing tracks were just too damn soulful and funky to get caught up in the aggression of the lyrics.

1998's Still Standing retained the group's firm stance on poverty, drug abuse and its up-from-the-bootstraps black power: "So many black men out here trying to be niggers/keeping it real to the point that they dying to be niggers/when in actuality, the fact is/you ain't a nigger because you black/you a nigger 'cause of how you act." --(Cee-Lo, "The Experience"). The sophomore LP did, however, up the ante in terms of musical creativity. Not too many hip-hop acts would be daring enough to try a straight-ahead funk rock song ("Just About Over") or a spacey, melancholic song about resisting the easy financial road in the drug industry: "Sufferin from a severe case of inner-city blues/I ain't got no clues to which directions I need to choose" (chorus, "I Refuse Limitation").

Though Soul Food and Still Standing were both unlike anything that preceded them, ignoring traditional rhyme structure and sample-driven production, revolution is not usually palatable to the masses. Although they both sold 500,000 records, they fell far short of what has absurdly become the benchmark for a successful hip-hop record: platinum status.

On the eve of the release of Goodie's third record, World Party, change is in the air, though not to the point of weighing on the minds of diehard fans. The approach to World Party is to use the added success the project is sure to attain to allow each member of the group to pursue individual projects, either musical or business-related.

To do that, explains Khujo, they want to reach the clubs and radio stations with some tracks, while retaining the group's core values. Nearly all of Goodie's music, even the singles they've released, have been mid-tempo songs like the organic "Soul Food" and the R&B radio-friendly "Beautiful Skin." The constant complaint from deejays, especially those in the clubs, was that 80 bpm just wasn't cutting it. "So, the beats are faster now, so we don't want to hear no damn excuses from the deejays," says Khujo. "But overall as an album, it's not that much different-we're still evolving."

In doing so, Goodie has reached out to some of the more prominent, radio-friendly producers, like the renowned Deric "D-dot" Angeletti and Dallas Austin. There's even a collaboration with pop trio TLC. Gipp emphasizes that the new record is not simply an attempt to go mainstream, but an opportunity to show critics that they can't be pegged as just soulful hip-hop with a message. "We're trying to let everybody know that we can get down with some of them best of them in hip hop," he says. "We've always done the extreme, like the rock-n-roll track on Still Standing, but we can make a complete hip-hop album with complete thoughts. At the same time, we want to give people some kind of knowledge like we did on the previous two records."

"Many are blind and cannot find/The truth cause no one seems to really know/But I won't accept/that this is how it's gon' be/Devil you gotta let me and my people go/Cause I wanna be free, completely free/Lord won't you please come and save me/I wanna be free, totally free/I'm not gon' let this world worry me." --Cee-Lo, "Free"

Every musical group has its center, the individual that propels most of the creative activity of the collective. For Goodie Mob, 24-year-old Thomas Burton, a.k.a. Cee-Lo, acts as its spiritual center. The son of a pair of now-deceased ministers, Cee-Lo is blessed with a raspy, movingly-soulful voice and an incredibly distinct, 5-foot tall and not-so-svelte figure. His voice and his message have made him a popular choice for guest appearances on the records of equally-conscious artists like Common, Santana and family members Outkast.

Although each member of the four acts as the group's spokesperson on different occasions, Cee-Lo seems to do so with an unparalleled eloquence.

"On this album, we are a lot more synchronized, more sequenced and more choreographed as a foursome than we've been in the past," he says. "We want to bring the sheer skill and emceeing to the forefront while maintaining a balance of our personal points of view."