Through ‘Magic City: An American Fantasy,’ Jermaine Dupri hopes Atlanta’s culture gets its flowers

With “Magic City: An American Fantasy”on Starz, Jermaine Dupri tells the story of the legendary strip club through the lens of family, history, and hip-hop.

It didn’t start with pole tricks and dollar bills. It didn’t even start with “Magic City.”

Jermaine Dupri says the seed for the new “Magic City: An American Fantasy” documentary was planted during a simple conversation with his father and author Cole Brown. At first, it was just about Atlanta, the city that raised him and the city he helped put on the map musically. His dad was working on a book, Brown needed to speak with Dupri for context, and before long, the conversation started spiraling into stories. And, somehow, most of those stories kept looping back to one place.

“Cole was like, ‘What is this ‘Magic City’ place you keep talking about?’” Dupri recalled. “And he started asking more and more questions about ‘Magic City.’ And as I told him, I think the light went off in everybody’s head, like we should make a ‘Magic Cit’y documentary, because there’s so many connections to my life and just Atlanta entertainment period.” 

For outsiders, it might be easy to write “Magic City” off as just a strip club. But for Atlanta, and for Dupri, it’s a cultural landmark. The club’s roots are embedded in family, not just fantasy. 

“[Michael “Mr. Magic” Barney’s] family runs the club. That’s the beauty of it. That’s what’s made it last so long,” Dupri said. “Everybody that’s part of the crew and his family, they operate that club as if it’s theirs, and they move as if it’s their club. I envy that… I don’t think my kids would know what to do with my business.”

And if you’ve never been inside, you might not know that “Magic City” isn’t just dancers and dim lights. It’s a meeting place. A networking hub. A sonic testing ground for hip-hop hits before they hit the radio. It’s where the music and sports industries and street culture can shake hands without the Hollywood middleman. A reality that comes to life with stars like Shaquille O’Neal, Drake and more sharing their “Magic City” experience. 

That’s part of why Dupri wanted the “Magic City: An American Fantasy” docu-series to exist in the first place. He’s tired of Atlanta being treated like it doesn’t have a legitimate culture of its own.

“We don’t do this with New York. We don’t do this with LA. When LA put out ‘Boyz N the Hood’ or they put out ‘Menace II Society’ and they give us Crips and Blood documentaries, none of this stuff is like the brightness of the sky. This is like violent things that happen. But nobody complains or says anything. We just absorb it as culture,” he said. “And, you know, as a responsible individual in the entertainment world, I think that it was one of our responsibilities, mine or somebody, to do this for our city and start standing on our culture.”

While, the movie ”ATL” gave us a glimpse of one side of the city through the skaters, the Cascade Family Skating rink, the tale of a coming-of-age summer—that’s one truth. And “Magic City” tells another. However, this one is the grown-folks’ side of the culture: the nightlife, the music hustle, the place where deals are inked over wings and basslines.

Dupri isn’t sugarcoating it. “Unfortunately, yeah, it’s the strip club. It is what it is. But it’s still our culture. Ain’t nobody getting killed. Ain’t nobody dying. It’s not a shoot-’em-up, bang-bang situation,” he said. “It’s a meet-and-greet place in Atlanta…it just happens to be a strip club,” he shared.

Now, with the “Magic City documentary streaming on Starz, Dupri is hoping audiences will drop the judgment and start recognizing the institution for what it is: a decades-old pillar of Atlanta’s entertainment scene. It’s still standing. And, if Dupri has anything to say about it, so will the respect for his city’s culture.

With “Magic City: An American Fantasy” now streaming on Starz, Dupri hopes folks finally stop treating Atlanta like the stepchild of hip-hop storytelling. Because if you’re going to talk about the city’s legacy, you can’t leave out the place where its soundtrack was tested, perfected, and turned into history. From entertainment to the dancer’s behind the scenes stories, to entrepreneurship, the five part docu-series gives a full pictures into the magic behind magic city. 

Watch the first episode on Starz now.