Songs namedrop cities all the time. Ludacris used numbers. In 2001 he and Nate Dogg strung together dozens of three-digit area codes and left listeners to work out the geography themselves.
In “Area Codes” (2001), Ludacris names 43 U.S. area codes across 27 states and Washington, D.C. Florida and Texas get four each, California gets three, and Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico never come up.
Key Takeaways
The song names 43 area codes.
Atlanta opens the list with 770 and 404.
Only six codes are in the Far West, in California, Washington, Nevada and Hawaii.
Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, northern New Jersey, New York City and New Haven all appear.
What is Ludacris’s “Area Codes” song?
Ludacris released it on July 3, 2001, and it reached No. 24 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 8 of that year. Nate Dogg sings the hook and Jazze Pha produced it. It first appeared on the Rush Hour 2 soundtrack.
The hook claims women in different area codes. The verses read like a dial pad. A geography major named Stefanie Gray plotted the codes on a map in 2008 .
Which area codes does Ludacris name, and where are they?
213 Los Angeles, 415 San Francisco, 916 Sacramento
Alabama
2
205 Birmingham, 334 Montgomery
Georgia
2
404 Atlanta, 770 Atlanta
Illinois
2
312 Chicago, 708 Cook County
Louisiana
2
318 Shreveport, 504 New Orleans
Maryland
2
301 suburban Washington and western Maryland, 410 Baltimore
New York
2
212 Manhattan, 718 New York City outside Manhattan
Virginia
2
757 Hampton Roads, 804 Richmond
Connecticut
1
203 New Haven
District of Columbia
1
202 Washington
Hawaii
1
808 Honolulu
Indiana
1
317 Indianapolis
Kentucky
1
502 Louisville
Michigan
1
313 Detroit
Mississippi
1
601 Jackson
Missouri
1
314 St. Louis
Nebraska
1
402 Omaha
Nevada
1
702 Las Vegas
New Jersey
1
201 North Jersey
North Carolina
1
704 Charlotte
Ohio
1
216 Cleveland
Pennsylvania
1
215 Philadelphia
South Carolina
1
803 Columbia
Tennessee
1
901 Memphis
Washington
1
206 Seattle
Wisconsin
1
414 Milwaukee
Does the song still work with today’s area codes?
A 2004 New York Times article on area codes losing their tie to place quoted a man named Rojas, who doubted the song’s future. His line was “That song only works if people know where each area code is located.” Wikipedia notes the same drift, with area codes less bound to one region than they once were.
