Magic City is more than just an Atlanta strip club. A new docuseries examines that

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — Magic City can thank one of its biggest boosters for a new docuseries about the establishment.

“Magic City: An American Fantasy,” which debuts Friday on Starz, is billed as explores “the untold stories behind Atlanta’s most influential Black cultural hub, Magic City.”

The five-part docuseries features Shaquille O’Neal, rappers T.I., Killer Mike and Drake, as well as and producer/songwriter Jermaine Dupri, among other prominent names.

Drake and Dupri are producers of the project.

Series creator Cole Brown came up with the idea while working with Dupri on the producer’s book and hearing the many stories he had about Magic City.

“I wasn’t ever really thinking about it being a documentary,” Dupri told CNN. “It’s something that I talk about so regularly because it’s my real life.”

He shares a story in the series about going to Magic City every Monday and his former girlfriend, singer Janet Jackson, demanding to go with him.

Those types of stories intrigued Brown, a writer who knows a fascinating narrative when he sees it.

“I live in New York and Studio 54 is still legendary. Studio 54 was open for like, somewhere between three and five years. And I was thinking about what is our Studio 54?,” Brown told CNN. “I was like wait a second. This little club in Atlanta been open for 40 years. And it’s been at the top of its game for 40 years.”

Magic City was founded in 1985 by Michael “Mr. Magic” Barney, who still owns it. Those tuning in will learn that he didn’t immediately find success.

Barney struggled for a few years and was helped when Atlanta Hawks basketball player Dominique Wilkins started bringing some of his fellow players.

Wilkins jokes in the docuseries that the club became the “sixth man” on the Hawks team. He would bring visiting players from opposing teams to party at Magic City, aiming to wear them out before they played his team.

The partying and the ability for dancers to be legally, fully nude in Atlanta helped draw in the crowds. Music at Magic City also played a role.

It was such an integral part that many credit the club with helping to give rise to Southern hip hop. It attracted many of the artists who would go on to become superstars and acted as a testing ground for their tunes.

In other words, if the strippers at Magic City liked your music, it was probably destined to be a hit.

Brown said he hopes his series challenges some of the perceptions people may have about the Atlanta hotspot.

“If you come to this documentary and then you leave it and you say, you know what, that’s not what I thought it was, that business owner is not who I thought he was,” Brown said. “And those girls who are some of the most accomplished, independent, strongest women I’ve ever seen, they are not who I thought they were. That city is not what I thought it was. If you have your expectations challenged, then I succeeded.”

Dupri said it’s his desire for the world to “understand this is our culture.”

“When we talk about Atlanta, most people talk about the political background, Mayor Maynard Jackson, President Jimmy Carter, Martin Luther King Jr. and all of these other things,” he said. “But we also have a street culture, a real culture in the city and this is part of that culture. I want people to accept that and stop acting like it’s something degrading to women. This is a lifestyle in the land.”

The-CNN-Wire
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